Lent will soon be with us, and with it a perennial question for Catholics: “What will be my abstinence?” It is also a Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church, a year of forgiveness, reconciliation and renewal. It is a year to repent for sins, to forgive others and to focus on spirituality. In that spirit, why limit your abstinence to Lent? A Jubilee Year brings the opportunity to earn plenary indulgences, and in doing so you may also improve your life in the here and now. The Vatican’s decree on the granting of indulgences during Jubilee Year 2025 offers a myriad of options, but one especially caught my attention: futile distractions. As the decree states:
In particular the penitential nature of Friday can be rediscovered through abstaining, in a spirit of penance, at least for one day of the week from futile distractions (real but also virtual distractions—for example, the use of the media and/or social networks), from superfluous consumption
Give up futile distractions. Specifically, why not give up non-essential internet use for one day a week, every week? And not just for the 40 days of Lent, but for the entire year?
Whether it’s consuming YouTube, Instagram or TikTok videos, perusing Facebook or Twitter posts (I still think X is a dumb name!), or doomscrolling on Reddit or your favorite news feed, you are likely wasting your time with an activity that is all too often dis-edifying—a futile distraction. It is time from your life that you have fed to the algorithm demons so they can better target you as a consumer. Abstinence would benefit your mental health and your pocketbook, as well as the larger community if enough of us did it.
It is a small promise to make but a hard one to keep. This I know, since I have in effect lived it for the last two years as a Jesuit novice. I can also attest that if you can keep that promise, it will give you back far more than you give up.
I am old enough to remember a time before the internet. A time when my favorite pastimes were reading books and listening to music on records, tapes and CDs. A time when social media might have meant a group of friends going out to see a film together. A time before the internet’s information overload.
As the internet matured, so did I, working in the tech industry but also playing and recreating in this new space. Then there was the smartphone revolution, giving us sleek, powerful computers in the palms of our hands that allowed us to have all the latest internet applications with us all the time. It was empowering but also incredibly addicting. It soon became the fidget device for every idle moment in our lives, an all-consuming futile distraction.
In 2022, after much soul searching, I decided to radically change direction, and I applied to the Society of Jesus, was accepted and joined the Jesuit novitiate. Upon entrance to the novitiate, I went from having three desktops, four laptops, iPhones, iPads, a smartwatch and several televisions to having no personal technology at all. My only LED screen was the one on my CPAP machine.
There were over a dozen of us with three computers for shared use, to be used sparingly in our free time but, in the spirit of abstinence, not on Fridays. On Friday we did actual socializing: sitting and talking with each other, or perhaps playing sports or board games, but practicing some kind of human interaction the way it had been for all the millennia before. The technology habit was still there, of course: Many of us would come back from our assigned jobs and instinctively head toward the computer room—only to meet a closed door with a sign reading INTERNET-FREE FRIDAY. But I learned to turn away and find something else to do, even if it was only picking up a newspaper.
I am currently back in the “real world” as I type this on the 11th floor of a Manhattan high-rise surrounded by all the trappings of modern technology. I have a laptop, an iPhone and an iPad. They are useful tools, but just tools. My iPhone has no social media apps installed. The app that I use the most on the iPad is Books. I enjoy conversations more, talking to my colleagues, talking to random people that I might encounter. I haven’t given up all technology—in fact, I still believe that most technology is a good thing—but Ignatian spirituality tells us to find good in all things while also avoiding disordered attachments.
Christ didn’t shy away from human contact. He sought it out, and it was an integral part of his mission: to be fully human, to walk among us, to listen, to teach, to heal, to be the light of nations. As Christians we are given two main directives, love God and love your neighbor. To love your neighbors you need to know them, and the best way to do so is face to face, without the polarizing filter that technology can create.
So this Lent, and even better this entire year, give up the futile distractions of online life. Reject doomscrolling and negativity, and go outside to play and socialize. Try internet-free Fridays and get yourself an indulgence, or combine it with formation activities (a study of, say, Vatican II documents or the Catechism of the Catholic Church), spiritual direction, or a visit to the sick, the elderly or the imprisoned (which can get you a few more indulgences).
The indulgences aren’t the point, of course. What the church is encouraging us to do is to be less self-absorbed, to recall the clear examples of Matthew 25:35-36. Remember that when it is time to collect on those indulgences, Christ the King won’t be letting you into heaven because of your social media badges and likes and your standing in the digital realm. He will be judging you on what you did in the material plane, on what you did for others, for the poor, the hungry, the stranger, the immigrant, the oppressed. So get out there and do more.
[Read next: “What is a Jubilee Year? The history and meaning behind a centuries-old tradition.”]
