Are smart phones evil?

I lived the first fifty years of my life without a mobile phone (in some countries they are called cell phones). The first mobile phones I had made phone calls and let me send text messages. The texts were pretty painful to construct. Tiny screens and keyboards. Now I have an iPhone. It makes phone calls, easily sends texts, plays music, holds books including God’s Bible, and gives me access to the web. And a great deal more. It, and most phones available today, are much more than phones. Hence the term ‘smartphones’ has entered our language. In fact, my phone gives me access to Zoom and if I was a Facebook user I could have that as well.

So we have arrived at the question - are smart phones (and the enabling software like Zoom and Facebook and the like) evil?

The answer: of course not. They are simply enablers of good, or evil, communication. Inherently their moral position is neutral. It is how they are used that counts. The photo that leads into this blog shows an open Bible in front of a screen full of people. It conveys the idea that the people including the person out of shot behind the Bible, are studying that Bible. I don’t have to spell out how Zoom could be used to convey evil content. It’s the same with the much maligned Facebook. Aside from data privacy issues, what the people who use it write, or show in illustrations is in their control.

Like so many things in life, even those where we are confronted with evil, our actions are under our control. And there’s a brilliant guidebook for how we should deal with it all. It’s God’s Bible and it’s readily available. But it’s not much use if we don’t read it! Even better if we read it and like the people in the photo, talk to each other about it.