I have read two interesting reports recently, one about the extremely high number of words that we read in a day, and the other about how we’re trying to squeeze more tv into more parts of our day.
The first article is article from the BBC which looks at a study from UC San Diego. It states, “An average US citizen on an average day, it says, consumes 100,500 words, whether that be email, messages on social networks, searching websites or anywhere else digitally.” I’m not sure if you’re aware–but that’s a lot of words. You’re reading a book a day at that clip.
But to where is all that reading being directed? Do we read short 140 character tweets and short one-sentence facebook posts? Is it countless articles from news sites? Do we devote a good portion of our those 100,000 words to God’s Word? It isn’t to say that we shouldn’t read anything else, but where are our priorities?
It seems like this word count is pretty impressive with how busy we seem to be, but even given our tight schedules, this other article was surprising, and you see why just in its title, How We’re Finding More Time to Watch TV. The author, Dorothy Pomerantz, takes a look at how new forms of media, like online videos, aren’t necessarily replacing more traditional television watching, rather they are coming in addition to TV. The author writes, “online video isn’t cannibalizing broadcast TV, it’s cannibalizing our non-screen time.” Traditional TV isn’t as much under attack as dinner time is. Again, it prompts us to ask about our priorities? All this technology at our finger tips along with some of the greatest minds of our day come together to work so that we can watch TV on the bus? Is that what we really hunger for? Maybe we need to go on an information diet.
This week we move along into week 9 of Year in the Bible, and I humbly offer you some words to read as part of your 100,000 per day.* We’ll read all of Hosea and 1 Peter, as well as some Psalms. Those first two fit very nicely together, and I hope that their pairing helps in your appreciation of these texts.
*Sorry, I just took almost 400 of them right now!
Year in the Bible 