Reels, or short-form videos, are a deep dark pit that suck you in relentlessly if you let them. Addictive by design, they have transformed an entire generation and diminished attention spans drastically. We once read books, we watched feature-lenght movies, and we had the patience to listen and conversate. Nowadays, it’s increasingly difficult to keep our attention and we get distracted easily. We have no patience for anything, unless it presents itself in a small dopamine size shot, the length of a reel.

Late-night scrolling hurts our eyes, causes headaches, and steals our sleep. We fall asleep with our phones in our hands, watching reels. Useless and terrible content gets pumped into our brains as it’s trying to shut down for the night. We consume reels religiously, and we allow our children to do the same thing at a very young age. Can we really forbid them when we suffer the same addiction?

We must ask ourselves, do we listen to God’s call for attention as much as we listen to our phone’s notifications? God is at the door and knocks, and if we open, he will come in and eat it with us. Revelation 3:20. Are we as attentive to God’s knock as we are to the “knock” of notifications on our phone? Certainly not.

God did not say, thou shalt not watch reels, but he did call us to redeem our time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:15. The world shows us daily that the days truly are evil. We have limited time here on earth, and we are called to do great things with the gift of life. God has given each one of us a set of skills, or talents. We are called to use those talents to glorify God and not let them go to waste. Unfortunately, the devil is filling our world with distractions, and ample opportunities to waste our time.

Let us pray to God that he may guide us out of our screen addiction, so that we may have more time for Him, for our families, friends and ourselves.