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

cover

half title page

title page

copyright page

a letter to Amy

to the reader: hello

1. we dont have to compare ourselves
when social media freaks us out

2. we dont have to be distracted
losing attention in a swarm of devices

3. we dont have to be disconnected
scrolling alone

4. we dont have to live with secrets
hiding with tech

5. we dont have to edit our lives
lying online

6. we dont have to avoid boredom
bingeing entertainment

7. we dont have to be exhausted
when screens replace sleep

8. we can live in hope

Amys acknowledgments

notes

about the authors

about the Barna Group

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back cover

Dear Amy,

As I sit here on the porch of the home where you grew up, I havent yet opened the file you sent a few days ago with the completed manuscript of this book (complete, that is, except for my letters back to you). I want to read itIm eager and excited to read itbut I wont until Ive finished this letter.

I want to write you this letter before I read a word, because I want you to know the most important thing I could say at the beginning of this book: you are loved.

I love you, not because of anything youve done but because you were given to me as a gift. Indeed, you were given to the world as a gift, and I believe that all thats truly good in your life is a gift.

Gifts arent earnedI did nothing to deserve to be your father, and you did nothing to deserve to be my daughter, but we were given to one another to love. And though I havent always loved you as well as I should, this foreword is one chance for me to do it right: to tell you youre loved, before youve done anything to impress me or earn my love.

I love you the way I loved you in the first days after you were born. Youve always been a watcher, an observer, and you were such a careful observer in those first days that your mom and I actually wondered for a couple days whether you could hear sounds. You were so quiet, so still, no matter what was going on around you, even though your eyes were wide open. I remember one sleepless night, wondering if, for some reason, you would grow up without hearing, and what it would be like to be a parent to a deaf child.

The next day you startled at a noise, and we realized you could hear after allyou just liked being quiet, watching and listening. And soon enough you started babbling and then talking.

But one thing I realized during that sleepless night is that if you did turn out to lack typical hearing, we would love you just as much. In fact, I was overwhelmed by the realization that I would love you no matter what it turned out you could or couldnt do.

So I love you before Ive read a word of this book. I dont know, yet, what is in it. Im sure there are some parts that will make me very proud of youbut thats not the same as making me love you more. Im sure there are some parts that will be hard for me to read, moments of honesty about struggles your mom and I never knew about, or you even hid from us at the time. Nothing you could write could make me love you more or less.

And I love you no matter how you sort out, exactly, how to live in this world stuffed with technology.

I know that, like most kids and parents, you and I may disagree to this day on where some of the boundaries should lie. But I want you to know, as we start this book, that the most important thing is not technology and how we use it.

The most important thing is real lifefullness of life, the life that really is life, as Paul wrote to his young partner Timothy two thousand years ago. Its about growing up to do things that matter in the world, that are deeply worthwhileand being the kind of people who can actually do something worth doing. And nothing is more deeply worthwhile than love. Life is a school of loveand family is our first school of love, though not the only one and maybe not the last.

Im incredibly grateful to be in the school of love with youone school that well be in for the rest of our lives. Im incredibly proud of the person youre becoming. And Im so excited that, through this book, a lot of other people will get to know you and start to imagine with you a different and better way of living the life that really is life in this beautiful and broken world.

Love,
Dad