MAKATI (SE): “Some people are proposing a digital detox… I don’t know how to do it. But they say, through silence, return to reflection and prayer life,” said Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, the archbishop of Manila on January 19, CBCPNews reported.
 
Speaking at a panel discussion at San Carlos Seminary, Guadalupe, Makati City, Catholic media in challenging times, the cardinal praised social media and its great potential for evangelisation, and posited that immersion in the digital world could be leading people back to silence and reflection.
 
Cardinal Tagle, who hosts his own television show, The Word Exposed, said that at a time when many enjoy multiple means of social communication, “people are looking for silence.”
He said, “When people are talking about communication, they also rediscover the need for silence.” 
 
CBCPNews reported him as saying that, while social media opens up opportunities for “solidarity, growing in unity” as well as the “deepening of faith through prayer and through formation,” constant digital exposure has a downside.
 
“…There are also some threats. Being hooked constantly is the contemporary version of noise. You don’t hear any noise, but you are constantly being bugged… It is the new form of noise, the lack of silence,” he explained.
 
He recounted one priest revealing that in the past, the first thing he did in the morning was to pray, now, it is to check his phone for messages.
 
Cardinal Tagle said, “For me, (one of the threats is) the lack of time to reflect. There is no more time to think. It’s like everything should be fast, (but) there are things that need to be studied, (and) thought about.” 
 
He pointed out how, as early as 1963, the Second Vatican Council was already calling on the faithful, particularly parents, “to help the youth learn moderation and self-control in the use of the means of social communication,” adding, “Now they’re talking about addiction to the gadgets and it is a form of addiction.”