Eminent rabbis have spoken strongly against unfiltered smart phones. I have listened carefully and I have agreed, but I have never heeded their warnings. This is because the first time I saw this device perhaps 20 years ago, I said to myself: I never, ever, want to own such a thing. And I never have.
I saw people mesmerized by their phones, taking a minute scrolling up and down and inputting this and that, just to come up with a piece of information that, often as not, was not needed. I said to myself as I watched all this finger-pushing on a screen: Minute by minute, if I owned such a device, there would go my life. My time for Torah study and reading, already limited by professional and family obligations, would drastically drop.
I soon saw that it it wasn’t minute by minute, it was 10 minutes and 20 minutes and an hour at a time. Even when no bullying and no inappropriate material popped up on the phone, the device was addictive, to a greater or smaller degree. It has become common to see people not seeing each other any more because they are looking at their phone. I see some people, a split second after the morning prayers are finished, bent over their phone. I wonder: What am I missing so early in the morning? I wonder: If I know some major development around the world an hour later, what have I lost?
I learned that some people cannot consider Shabbos observance because they can’t possibly conceive of 25 straight screenless hours. If that is not an addiction, what is?
I recoiled the first time I saw a smart phone for another reason: distraction. Of course an addiction is also a distraction, but I mean something else. Even if a phone is used only judiciously, the screen distracts. It is not necessarily a smooth transition from a full day of professional responsibilities to a focused conversation with the people I love or with friends, or to Torah study or reading for pleasure. Focus requires, well, focus. When images flicker before my eyes, focus takes longer.
The Rabbi Simcha Zisl Ziv (c. 1834-1898) would require a five-minute Torah-study session in his school. His idea was to train students to focus immediately. It’s a critical discipline, and not an easy one, not acquired without much practice. Rabbi Ziv wanted to nurture that discipline, so that his students would not waste their time. A screen often before my eyes tells me: Focus on the screen. The screen is seductive. I should be focusing on people and on Torah. It’s harder to do so if I am swimming in images.
I confess to a degree of hypocrisy. A smart phone is sometimes essential, such as when one is lost on the road or otherwise needs good directions. For these and other essentials, such as health information, I rely on others and their phones, asking them to help me out. Of course, I couldn’t do so if these devices did not exist. When I add up the time lost by not owning a smart phone as over against the time gained, there is no contest. The gain is immense. I am asked: When do you have time to write books? I answer: When you are saving time on your smart phone.
I also confess: I know that worthy educational and other opportunities are available on the smart phone. For this I do not rely on others’ devices. I forgo the opportunities. Here, too, as I measure the gain in time and in an uncluttered mind, there is no contest.
For many years I have read of terrible incidents — tragic consequences — for teenagers arising from bullying over the smart phone. I said to myself: Where is it written that a teenager must own a smart phone? For those who deem that approach unrealistic, where is it written that the phone must always be on? These devices are so addictive and so assumed to be essential to life itself that it is only after many years that public schools are beginning to impose common sense limitations on the use of smart phones in school.
We read of other terrible incidents — anti-Semitic and otherwise — arising from alternative realities stoked by access to vile data via the smart phone and other devices. I have no global solution to this major perplexity, this reorientation of society. But it is clear to me that ultimately there is only one solution: free choice to value life itself, the reacquisition of internally driven values. This, as I understand the Torah, is what the Torah wants from us: freely to choose to be servants of the L-rd, and to find joy in this for its own sake.
Not with the same intensity, yeshivas struggle with this issue, too. The difficulty in imposing restrictions on smart phone use is that the restrictions are received as either punitive or as necessary to avoid danger. There is no debate on the danger question. Even so, there is a prior and superior reason for restrictions on smart phone use: self-worth, inner freedom. Both of which are essential for openness to Torah and love of life.
The essence of the matter comes down to this: Who is in charge of my life? Me, or forces outside me? Am I controlled by forces external to me, be they frivolities or dangers or something else, or by my own true self? It takes focus, time and soul-work to develop one’s true self.
When I first saw a smart phone and how it slowly but steadily degraded the ability to focus on eternal values and inner growth, I said to myself: Choose life!
© IJN 2025
