Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices, according to the research firm eMarketer … . In one recent survey, female students at Baylor University reported using their cell phones an average of ten hours a day … . [w]e check our phones 221 times a day—an average of every 4.3 minutes … This number actually may be too low, since people tend to underestimate their own mobile usage …

Our transformation into device people has happened with unprecedented suddenness. The first touchscreen-operated iPhones went on sale in June 2007, followed by the first Android-powered phones the following year. Smartphones went from 10 percent to 40 percent market penetration faster than any other consumer technology in history … Yet today, not carrying a smartphone indicates eccentricity, social marginalization, or old age.

What does it mean to shift overnight from a society in which people walk down the street looking around to one in which people walk down the street looking at machines? We wouldn't be always clutching smartphones if we didn't believe they made us safer, more productive, less bored, and [useful] … At the same time, smartphone owners describe feeling "frustrated" and "distracted." … Nearly half of eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds said they used their phones to "avoid others around you."

Possible Preaching Angles: And what does this mean to cultivating a life of prayer and attentiveness to God?