Kyle Kellams: Oh, those screens in our lives. Science lets us know that an abundance of time staring at our screens can affect our sleep cycle, our moods, our anxiety, our focus. Putting some distance between us and our phones will be the subject of the next talk in the King Speaker Series, curated by First Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith. Carlos Whittaker, author of "Reconnected: What Happens When We Put Down Our Screens and Wake Up to the Community Around Us?" will discuss his experiences migrating away from being connected. The talk will be at the U.S. Marshals Museum Friday night, Sept. 18. The Rev. Tasha Blackburn of First Presbyterian says the King Speaker Series is named for a member of and donor to the church who wanted to encourage conversations about Christian education.
Tasha Blackburn: The goal from the beginning has been to share with the River Valley and beyond that Christian faith is both deeper and broader than we may realize. For those of us who go to church, we tend to go to one church, that one church, and we don't really know what's happening in other churches. And then for those of us who are not very interested in going to church, we may not know how wide the Christian faith can be in all its many streams of it.
And so that was one of our big goals, was to bring in speakers who could share with the River Valley some of that difference in belief and how we can still find unity in the difference. So we've had everybody from, we had the, they call her the mother of the Enneagram, Suzanne Stabile. We've had her in. We had in Rachel Held Evans, was one of our first speakers. We've had all kinds of folks come in over the years.
Kyle Kellams: This time it's Carlos Whittaker, who is an author. He's a speaker, he's a podcaster, and he seems to really lean in to what you're talking about with community and unity.
Tasha Blackburn: Yes, absolutely. One of his taglines is don't stand on issues, walk with people. And he has this whole little section of the Instagram world that they call the Instafamilia, where especially during COVID, he had quite a following, because you might remember in COVID, we had some disagreements among us. And he was out there online saying, hey, don't we have more in common than we have different? And can't we sort of look for that community even in our disagreements? So he calls his little section of Instagram the Instafamilia.
His first book was "How to Human." And it was talking about those kinds of things of how we can be better humans together. And then his most recent book, which he's going to be talking about at our event, called "Reconnected," is one day he was looking at that weekly survey, that weekly data of how much you've been on your phone. I assume you have seen that as well pop up in your life, where it says, oh, this week you were on your phone. And his was seven and a half hours a day.
Kyle Kellams: A day.
Tasha Blackburn: And it just really...
Kyle Kellams: Yes.
Tasha Blackburn: And now listen, he's a social media guy.
Kyle Kellams: Sure.
Tasha Blackburn: So he talks about, he's like, listen, I get that it's part of my job. But what... And so he starts to extrapolate out how many years of his life that means he will be on this screen. And so it really took him into an experiment where he set aside his phone for seven weeks. He went and lived in various communities where technology is less used. He went to a monastery for a while. He went to an Amish farm for a while. And he had his brain scanned both at the beginning of the experiment and then at the end, to see what would change in his life and what might even literally change in the synapses of his brain. And, spoiler alert, a lot changed in both realms. So that's, the book is about that. And that's what he's going to talk about.
And he's not an anti-tech guy. I mean, he understands these are very helpful. They've been very helpful to him in his life. But how do we live with these screens and still have a full life? How are we using them rather than they use us?
Kyle Kellams: One thing about a Sunday service is you're there. Whether you're behind the pulpit, whether you're in a pew, it's face to face. It's a chance to be in community every week.
Tasha Blackburn: Yeah, absolutely. And Carlos is coming to this from a Christian perspective. And I know not everybody is, but we all are dealing with this issue of having real life community rather than just distant community or online community. And it really is a place to connect with someone. I often tell people, even if you aren't ready to join a community, even if you aren't ready to come, have all these conversations with strangers, come and sit. Go into a church, go into a worship space and sit and be, just put everything aside and sit and be. And it can start to work on you. That community aspect can work on you even through that.
We're seeing a lot in our schools, around the state and around the country, where we are taking in this information and how important it is for our younger people to set down screens. And when I look around, Kyle, I don't know if you see this, but I see a lot of adults who are having some of the same problems, that I feel like we lay those problems on kids as if they're the only ones facing it. But this is a real opportunity for each of us to reset how I want to live my life with the technology I have accessible to me. So I think a lot of us could learn something from it. I know I have.
Kyle Kellams: There's the old cliche, no one on their deathbed says, I wish I would have spent more time at work. I don't remember ever hearing someone say, gosh, I wish I was just on my phone a little bit more.
Tasha Blackburn: Wouldn't that be so funny if we updated that old adage and said nobody on their deathbed ever says, I wish I'd gotten to another level on Candy Crush.
Kyle Kellams: Or another argument on Facebook.
Tasha Blackburn: Exactly, exactly. I mean, and if they would, I don't know that I want to sit at the desk. But I mean, nobody does that. And it is, it's such a, I'm just very honestly, I think all of us could admit to, it's a self-soothing. It's a self-soothing. It's, oh, I'm bored. Well, I don't want to be bored. Oh, I'm feeling anxious. Well, I don't want to feel anxious. Oh, I'm feeling lonely. I don't want to feel lonely. And so instead of just living in and through whatever that is we're doing, we just pick up the phone. But it doesn't satisfy. It doesn't satisfy in the long run.
Kyle Kellams: The Rev. Tasha Blackburn from First Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith. Carlos Whittaker, author of "Reconnected: What Happens When We Put Down Our Screens and Wake Up to the Community Around Us?" will speak Friday night, Sept. 18, beginning at 7 at the U.S. Marshals Museum in Fort Smith. Cost, $10. That covers the talk, cheesecake and coffee. He'll also take part in an intimate free question-and-answer session and book signing at the church at 12th and B in downtown Fort Smith Saturday morning, the 19th, beginning at 11.
