My Tech-Wise Life - A Review

It’s one thing to argue that a plan like the one Andy Crouch outlines in Tech-Wise Family would work. It’s another thing entirely to find out how the people who participated in the plan felt about it. The 2020 book, My Tech-Wise Life, which was co-authored by Amy Crouch (Andy’s daughter) and Andy Crouch provides a portal into one teenager’s thoughts on her family’s approach to technology.

Amy Crouch is a student at Cornell University. As she describes herself in this book, she is not an exceptional being in the ways that our world often describes it. She is not a social media influencer with her own cable TV show, she has not won Olympic Gold, she has not developed a new technology that will end malaria in the world. However, at the age of 19, she did complete a manuscript for this volume. This is someone who may not be extraordinary in the conventional sense, but is the sort of person that I’d like to hear from about how a method of navigating the distractions of our tech-saturated world can come through and be the sort of college freshman that can write a good book.

This is a short book, but a helpful one for this particular moment. In eight chapters, Amy explains why her family’s conscious, tech-minimal lifestyle was a good thing. Each chapter is accompanied by a letter of response from Andy Crouch, Amy’s father. In Chapter One, Amy begins by demonstrating how social media can make us feel inadequate through comparison. A casual photo highlights our imperfections, which can make our image-infatuated minds dwell on negative self-perceptions. The answer that Amy provides is not to revel in self-love and post more ugly pictures on purpose, but to recognize the limitations of technology, keep tech in check, and focus on real life relationships. In the second chapter the topic is distraction. Anyone who writes knows how easy it is to get sucked into the cycle of clicking through social media platforms, email, and anything but the task at hand. Those who get notifications will find their phones constantly buzzing, drawing them away from essential tasks. The result is a harried life of distraction and unproductivity, which if started at a young age can set up patterns that undermine a teen’s future. Amy’s answer is to take control, limit apps, take media fasts, and keep the main things the main thing. This is enabled by a family structure than supports, encourages, and, when necessary, enforces such discipline.

Chapter Three wrestles with the question of connection and isolation. She discusses strategies to use technologies to connect rather than isolate. This begins by recognizing how easy it is for our portable entertainment devices to keep us isolated and treasure the connection. Social media is a fine garnish, but our goal should be a life off-grid. The secret to getting there is recognition of which has the greater value. In the fourth chapter, the topic shifts to the problem of secrets, privacy, and the digital age. Amy’s emphasis in this chapter is the problem of porn, which is distorting self-perceptions, expectations about sex, and relationships. Additionally, she talks about how the prospect of secrecy or anonymity can enable negative behaviors. Amy recognizes the good of privacy, but also that it is a limited good, so that having parents who can help when you’ve been sucked into binge watching a fairly harmless, but not-particularly-valuable show can provide some direct feedback.

Chapter Five deals with the issue of lying online. This has been encouraged, in some cases, because of the age limits of apps like Facebook, so that 11-year-olds would claim to be 13 in order to get access. Now the realization that a million identities and faux accomplishments are only a few clicks away. The message here is that it isn’t worth it, your real friends will know the truth, so you are burning bridges by presenting a false front online. The sixth chapter tackles the topic of using technology to avoid boredom. Here Amy channels some of the wisdom of her father (the culture maker) to argue that boredom is a good thing and the source of creativity and greater community.

The topic opens in several earlier chapters, but Chapter Seven explores the issue of technologies replacing sleep time, especially among teens (who need more than most adults). The stats are inarguable. 24/7 access to phones and computers is taking away from the rest that kids (and adults) need to live healthy, cognitively balanced lives. Amy’s solution is to put boundaries on phones, keep them out of the bedroom, and practice Sabbath where minimal technology is available to distract from other activities. The final chapter is an exhortation to live in hope. Basically, we need not acquiesce to the negative influences of technology. We can, in fact, take control and have a more positive experience if we take control, set limits, and live in communities that encourage healthy limits to technology.

I commend both Andy Crouch’s book, The Tech-Wise Family, and the combined effort with his daughter, Amy, My Tech-Wise Life, to both individuals and families. My Tech-Wise Life is obviously marketed toward teens, but I found it to be refreshing and helpful in many ways. It serves to undermine the argument, which I have heard some parents make, that limiting access to technology is going to “make my kid angry for living like we’re Amish.” Amy shows that when the whole family tries to live a tech-wise life it can make for a much better experience.

This book is very important in the attention economy because it shows (rather than states) the possibility and promise of limitations to technology. Amy encourages asking why one should use a particular technology or platform, not merely how to get access to it. Though the applications will change faster and faster, the principals are the same.

If you are a parent, read The Tech-Wise Family and this book, too. If you are a youth pastor, buy copies to distribute to your students. If you are a pastor, read this book, buy copies to have on hand when you have families come in for counseling due to results of stress that a tech-harried life will cause. This book does not answer all questions or make detailed theological arguments, but it provides a way forward for one of the most pressing questions of our day.

My Tech-Wise Life: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices

By Crouch, Amy, Crouch, Andy

Buy on Amazon

NOTE: I made the decision to refer to Amy by her first name due to the fact that this was co-authored by her father, to simplify the language. Since there are distinct divisions between her work and her father’s the first name seemed the simplest way to make the differentiation.