Phone and faith
A Christian digital fast: a simple 7-day plan
A digital fast is a set time when you go without some or all of your screens, so you can give that time and attention to God. It's a simple idea, and a week is long enough to notice a real difference without being so long you dread starting.
Is a digital fast biblical?
Not by name, and I think it's worth being honest about that. When the Bible talks about fasting, it means going without food, usually for a day or a set number of days, alongside prayer. Jesus assumed His followers would do it:
When you fast, do not be somber like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they already have their full reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that your fasting will not be obvious to men, but only to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
A screen fast borrows the heart of that. You give up something ordinary and good for a while, and you use the gap it leaves to turn to God. The other half of it comes from the Sabbath, the day God gave His people to stop and rest:
Then Jesus declared, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
So a digital fast isn't a command, and it doesn't earn anything. It's a way of making room. If you're able to fast from food as well, and it's safe for you to, that's a separate and older practice, and nothing here replaces it.
Jesus' words about fasting also give us one rule for this week: there's no need to announce it online. Tell the people who need to know, and leave it at that.
Before you start
Decide what still counts as allowed. Most people need calls and messages from real people, maps, banking and whatever their work requires. Write down what you're keeping, so you're not renegotiating it at eleven at night. Then tell the people closest to you, so they know why you're slower to reply.
The plan below builds up through the week rather than cutting everything on day one, which makes it easier to keep going. Each day has a verse to read in the morning, one thing to cut and one thing to put in its place. The putting in matters as much as the cutting, because an empty gap tends to fill itself back up with the phone.
Day 1: Give God the morning
In the morning, O LORD, You hear my voice; at daybreak I lay my plea before You and wait in expectation.
Cut: the phone for the first hour after you wake up. Charge it outside the bedroom tonight, and use a cheap alarm clock if the phone is your alarm.
Put in its place: a few minutes of prayer before anything else. Read the verse, tell God what the day holds, and ask for help with it. If you'd like words to start from, there's a short morning prayer for each day of the year.
Day 2: Quiet the notifications
For the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, has said: “By repentance and rest you would be saved; your strength would lie in quiet confidence—but you were not willing.”
Isaiah was speaking to a people who kept running to Egypt for help instead of trusting God. It's a different situation from ours, but the offer of quiet confidence, and the sad last line, are worth sitting with.
Cut: every notification that isn't from a person. On iPhone this is in Settings, then Notifications, one app at a time. It takes ten minutes and you may want to keep it this way for good.
Put in its place: two or three set times to check messages, and a short prayer at each one, before you open anything.
Day 3: Step away from the feeds
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Cut: social media, news apps and video apps, for the rest of the week. Deleting them is easier than trying not to open them. You can put them back on day 7 if you want to.
Put in its place: prayer for the people you'd have seen there. Think of the friends and family whose posts you'd normally scroll past, and pray for a few of them by name each day. You'll probably find you think about them more this week, not less.
Day 4: Take back the evening
I will lie down and sleep in peace, for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.
Cut: screens for the last hour before bed. That includes the TV and the laptop as well as the phone.
Put in its place: something slow. An evening reading, a psalm, a paper book, a conversation, or just sitting still for a few minutes and telling God about the day. Spurgeon's Morning and Evening has a reading for every night of the year, if you'd like one.
Day 5: Leave the gaps empty
Yet He frequently withdrew to the wilderness to pray.
Cut: the background noise. Podcasts on the commute, a video while you cook, headphones on every walk. For one day, let the small gaps be quiet.
Put in its place: short prayers in those gaps. Silence can feel strange at first and your mind may race, which is normal. Use one line, like “Lord, I’m here”, and come back to it whenever you drift.
Day 6: Keep a Sabbath from screens
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Cut: the phone for a whole day, or half a day if a whole one isn't possible. Put it in a drawer and leave it there, apart from anything you decided before you started that you truly need.
Put in its place: people and worship. Go to church, eat a long meal with someone, go for a walk, sing a hymn. There are hymns with organ sing-alongs on this site if you'd like to sing at home, though that does mean a screen, so maybe print the words first.
Day 7: Look back and choose what to keep
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting.
Cut: nothing new. Keep going with what you've already cut.
Put in its place: an honest look back. Pray the verse slowly, then write down what you missed, what you didn't miss at all, and what you noticed about God or yourself during the week.
How to end the fast
The worst way to end is to reinstall everything on Sunday night and scroll until one in the morning. Instead, pick two or three things from the week to keep for good. For a lot of people that's the phone out of the bedroom, the notifications off and the first part of the morning given to prayer. Then bring the apps back one at a time, only if you actually want them.
If you'd like something to keep you honest afterwards, you could set one of the apps you brought back to show a prayer first. Mutter's App Guard does this, and there's an honest comparison of the apps that do it. Grayscale, Downtime in Screen Time, or a friend who asks how it's going will all help too.
Using this plan for Lent
Lent, the forty days before Easter, is when many Christians fast or give something up, remembering Jesus' forty days in the wilderness. This week works well as a start to Lent. Do the seven days in the first week, then keep the cuts from days 3 to 6 going until Easter, with a screen-free Sabbath each week. It also works on its own at any point in the year, whenever you can tell the phone has started taking more than it gives.
Questions
Is a digital fast in the Bible?
Not in those words. The Bible talks about fasting from food and about keeping the Sabbath. A digital fast takes the same idea of going without something good for a while, so you can give God that time.
Can I still use my phone for work during the fast?
Yes. Decide before you start what you truly need, like work, calls, messages and maps, and keep those. The fast is for the things you reach for out of habit.
What if I break it?
Start again where you are, without beating yourself up. Pray, put the phone down, and pick up the plan at the next day. A week with a few slips is still a week with much more room for God in it.