Heart Check Before You Use Monitoring Tech
Technology has changed so rapidly that it is hard to slow down and question what tech is good or bad for us individually. When a new gadget or app comes out, it is tempting to fall in line with the rest of the world and accept it, purchase it, and use it without question or hesitation. We all know that technology offers some dark places to stay far away from, but what about tech that is made to help us?
Monitoring technology seems like a simple way to help build trust in a marriage, since each spouse can see how much money the other spends, or know where their spouse is at any given time. But how does all this technology affect your marriage? Should we track our spouse’s every move (literally!) because our phones and a thousand apps say we can? If we want transparency and honesty in our marriage, isn’t all the extra information that technology gives us wholly good?
Total transparency is needed in a marriage, but I’ve seen some of this monitoring technology go wrong in marriages. A spouse becomes obsessed with the information they can gain. One spouse uses technology to control the other. Trust in each other isn’t being built, but rather trust in what the technology says is real.
We are able to instantly gain an abundance of information about our spouse without even speaking to each other. Here are just a few examples of the information we could easily access on our spouse due to modern monitoring technology:
Tracking their location via their phone or app
Bank alerts for every purchase they make
Checking their social media accounts
Checking their porn accountability software
Checking the web history on all their devices
Tracking what door they open and when in our homes via home security systems
Tracking their every movement via video home surveillance
Tracking when they log into wifi
Is it healthy to track all these things all the time? Transparency is good. Obsession with any of this information is not. I believe many of these things can become addictive for some people.
Even if obsession doesn’t take place, there are kind and unkind ways to use technology and the information it provides. There are healthy and unhealthy ways to monitor our spouse.
So how do we do this well? How do we use technology in a healthy way without becoming obsessed? How can we utilize the good parts and stay away from the dark parts? How can we use the information we have kindly?
There is no one who has gone before us to show us the way, because our parents and grandparents didn’t have this tech-filled life we have. But praise be to God, He really does want to guide us and help us. Our God is in the details and cares for us deeply. If we prayerfully think through these things, check our hearts and call out to God, He will faithfully guide each of us.
I’ve created a short resource designed to help you think through the types of monitoring technology in your life and be intentional about what tech is healthy for your marriage and how to use it in a way that doesn’t cause conflict. Use this Heart Check resource to prayerfully decide together how to use monitoring tech wisely in your marriage.
*As a disclaimer, if you have reasons not to trust your spouse due to trust being broken by an affair or other dishonesty, it is likely that monitoring tech will need to be more present in your marriage than the average marriage. This resource may still be helpful for you to think through things and read through the Heart Check Questions, but when trust is broken it takes time to rebuild and tech may need to be used for accountability. If you have serious trust issues in your marriage, this resource is not the tool to help you, instead we advise you go see a professional Christian counselor to have these discussions.
This post is written by Christina Dodson, COO of Awesome Marriage and Co Host of the Awesome Marriage Podcast. She lives in Raleigh, NC with her husband Dylan and children Finley and Roman. Together Christina & Dylan planted New City Church in 2017.
You can follow Christina on Instagram.