2026: The Year We Break Free From the Phone?

The choice gets easier all the time

Could this be the year we finally start collectively breaking free from the grip of our phone addiction?

Look, we’ve all talked about looking at screens less for years. We know that we’d truly rather read a Bible verse than a post, to play with our kids or grandkids rather than watch another 25 TikToks, to have someone over rather than to re-binge a show… yet so many of us still can’t make the right choice.

Maybe that changes this year.

I don’t mean it’ll change in a New Year’s resolution sense, that we’ll all finally get up the gumption to walk away.

Rather, it might change almost because we have no other choice.

The quality of our addictive material is declining so sharply that I believe it’ll soon be easier to walk away than it is to stay plugged in. In other words, even though we struggle to pull away from the dopamine drip that has us addicted, the faucet drying up might force our hand.

Here are three reasons why it is easier than ever to break free from your phone

The quality is falling off a cliff

I know many people enjoy it, but the AI slop is getting so bad. By the end of this year, real video and AI video will be indistinguishable. You won’t be able to take anything at face value, which is a great reason to disengage.

Beyond that, many writers are trading in the work of reading, studying, developing ideas, writing them down, and editing them into something they can stand behind for… just putting a prompt in and getting an “article” generated for them. There is no soul, no consideration, no wisdom to be shared. It’s socially acceptable plagiarism. (And if you couldn’t tell, I take the pledge to never post ai-generated content under my name.)

The excitement of discovery the internet used to provide is gone. So why waste your time scrolling through so many posts? Knowing that so much of it is slop, it gets easier to reduce our content consumption to a handful of producers and thereby limit the time spent scrolling.

Nothing happens

You ever watch one of those TV shows that keeps you sucked in with cliffhanger after cliffhanger until you realize it isn’t really going anywhere? (Shout out to Lost.)

Yeah… that’s the news cycle these days. Election promises died out after a month. Epstein and Diddy drama isn’t resulting in any justice. Charlie Kirk conspiracy theorizing has been nothing but hot air. Spoiler alert: nothing’s going to come of the Somali daycare fraud story either. Even fiction can’t deliver the goods, as I gather from people’s Stranger Things posts.

Knowing that’s the case, there is zero incentive to follow any of these stories. Why try to stay apprised if it’s only going to get you upset about something without any hope of resolution? Once again, we might be putting our phones down out of boredom rather than discipline.

Experience > info

Many of us get stuck in the false belief that the more knowledge we accumulate, the better prepared we’ll be to do what we need to do. That’s only true up until a point—and a rather early point, at that.

In most pursuits you need to know your general direction, and after that, you learn by doing. The lessons you learn from messing up and improving are worth a bookcase full of volumes on the same subject. The more time we have with our phones, the more this becomes painfully clear, which is why I’m bullish on it being a factor in 2026.

As Solomon once wrote, “But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). If books can have a threshold at which they go from being useful to being a waste of time, think about how much more quickly we reach that threshold for tweets and posts.

We can talk about how to walk with God better, and that helps to a point—but then we have to do it. We can talk about what the church should be, and it’s good to ponder these things together—but then we have to go and learn by trial and error. We can talk about what should be done to fix our culture—but theorizing online will never produce as much as connecting with people in real life.

I realize this is perilous territory for me to tread on as a writer and a podcaster. Telling my audience to read less and do more is bad for business. But it’s good for life. Refine your consumption. Make sure the things you’re taking in benefit you practically. Shut out the rest. Then, get out in the real world and use what you know.

Conclusion

Every January 1 my mind goes back to Psalm 90:12: “So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”

With each passing year, the number of days grows smaller. And man, I don’t want to spend them mindlessly scrolling tweets, posts, and reels I’m not going to remember 5 minutes after I see them.

We have all the data we need to know it isn’t a wise way to spend time, our most precious commodity. Now all that’s left is for us to do what we know we should.

Thankfully, that choice just gets easier every year. Lord willing we make it another 365 days, you and I will not regret passing on the endless rage bait and AI slop coming our way this year. Make 2026 the year you take back control of your phone.

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Notes

I’ve been very blessed to meet many of you while guest preaching over the last 3 years, and I’d love to meet more of you in 2026! Whether for a Gospel Meeting, a summer series, or a fill-in spot on a Sunday or Wednesday, reach out to jack@focuspress.org and we’ll see what we can set up!