Six Reasons to Rethink Bible Apps

I have several Bible apps. I use them almost daily. I think they are helpful in many contexts. I also think they can be dangerous. We all know the benefits of Bible apps – accessibility and convenience being at the top of the list, which aren’t bad things at all. So, let’s look at why Bible apps might not be helpful….

First, digital Bibles distract.

When I have a physical, print Bible in front of me, I really don’t have to have anything else around. I can go anywhere I want to and take nothing else with me. I can go out into the woods and read, or I can go into a closet, turn on a light, and read to my heart’s content without distraction… until my toddler toddles in to find me.

With a digital Bible, it often doesn’t matter if you go out into the woods or step into a closet. We are taking our conversations, our contacts, our to-do list, our YouTube watch lists, our game-notifications, and so much more with us. The potential for distraction is all over the place! And goodness knows how many people have nearly had a heart attack because their phone went off in the middle of church (See Digital Bibles Distract, It minimizes distraction for yourself, and It minimizes distraction for others).

Second, digital Bibles cut context.

The old saying “Out of sight, out of mind,” applies here. When I have my Bible opened in front of me, I can see the context clearly – its unavoidable! Often the next or previous chapter is on the same page. I can see how many pages are left in the Book I’m in. All I need to do to remember what I’ve just read is scan upwards with my eyes.

Not so with a digital Bible…

To see the next or previous chapter, I have to leave the place I’m reading in the moment. I don’t have a good idea of how much there is left in the Book I’m reading. I can’t get a grasp of if I’m in the beginning, middle, or end of a Book or Letter.

On average, you can only see around four to seven verses on your phone screen. Scrolling doesn’t give you more, it just changes the ones you have. 

I have to scroll, not just scan. I lose my place to go find another. It’s almost as if the Bible itself (in the digital form) because a distraction from itself!

Third, digital Bibles limit retention.

Up to this point, I’ve taken the structure of Matt Smith’s 2020 article Why You Should Ditch Your Digital Bible. Now, I just want to quote him at length…

A digital Bible provides fewer markers for our memory than its paper equivalent. Today, it’s widely accepted that our memories are visuospatial in nature. We remember things not just by seeing them but by locating them spatially. It’s why we remember how to get to places via landmarks rather than recalling maps.

A paper Bible exists in three-dimensional space. It has a certain size and shape and weight and thickness that subtly changes depending on which part you’re reading from. Each page is individually numbered and distinct in appearance and format and, significantly, the format and position of the words on the pages never change. There’s no zooming, scrolling, version-switching or hyperlinking. All this means that the paper Bible engages more senses and in an entirely consistent way. The result? Stronger memories and therefore greater retention.

I really don’t think I can improve on what he has written, so I’ll just leave it here as is (For more, see It helps you memorize verses better and Your mind works better reading ink on paper than looking at a screen).

That said, some people are audio learners. I learn very well that way. The first century church – in fact, the church for the majority of history – would’ve only listened to the Bible read. The important thing is to think about how God has designed you to best digest His Word, and get it into your heart.

Fourth, we are biological hardwired for reality.

Jared Cooney Horvath isn’t a Christian, but he provides helpful facts about how we work biologically. In this video, The Downfall of Learning in the Digital Age (with neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath), he states the following…

But so, basically, you have a broader context within which you learn, which makes that knowledge easier to kind of move between new contexts. Not easy, not automatic, but it’s easier. Okay, you learn on a screen. A screen is such a narrow context that our biology basically locks things down on your screen. So, what you’ll see is the very first alpha school was actually built in 1925. It’s over a century old. It was a school built based on teaching machines. It was basically cool, here’s a question, answer it, pull a lever, right or wrong, here’s your feedback, let’s do it again. It was the exact same model. Nothing’s different. They ended up going nowhere. It never took off because the founder himself said, “Look, they’re really good when they’re using the tool, when they’re using the machine. As soon as you asked them a question in a different context or took them off of the device, none of them could tell you anything. Almost nothing stuck.” They repeated this in the 40s with Skinner’s machines. They repeated this in the 60s with the auto tutor. We’ve been doing this again and again, and we keep collapsing because you get stuck on the machine. So if they’re learning more vocabulary words on a screen, I’d say your kid and my kid who vocabulary won’t even be close. Mine will kill yours because without a screen yours won’t know what the hell is going on. So you tend to lock that information into that context of that screen. It goes against biology.

There is a lot of truth in this. Suffice to say, the further we get away from the dust God gave us to play in, the less capable humans we seem to become… even for all our progress. But, make of it what you will.

Fifth, gamification

There is a real concern that our priority becomes winning the game.

At one point, the YouVersion Bible app (which is the one I have and still use the most) did yearly recaps of activity. Kind of like Spotify wrapped. I love statistics and graphs and making progress – who doesn’t! And sure enough, my Bible reading became heavily about getting more highlights, notes, and badges. I was still reading the Bible – maybe more than I would have been otherwise. However, my priority was… flawed. Rather than seeking to see Jesus, I was chasing something else.

Rather than chasing after God, I went after something else. What I was doing wasn’t wrong, what I was “earning” wasn’t wrong, but my pursuit was shaped by something other than God Himself. That was wrong.

Now, I do believe I learned and remember much of what I read. But I don’t think I engaged with God or His Word in the same way or to the same extent I would have if I had read from a physical printed Bible. That’s anecdotal though, so let’s go back to some evidence. To quote from Horvath again in “The Digital Delusion” Author Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath,

So this one of the big movements with tech is gamification. If you make learning fun and engaging, then kids will learn more. But engagement and learning are very different things. So when I grew up, our big video game was the Oregon Trail. Played that thing for hours. To this day, I could tell you everything about the game. What do you have to press to ford the river? What do you have to press to shoot a bear? The trick is I just a couple years ago, someone told me that game was meant to be a history lesson. It was supposed to teach us about the Oregon Trail. I couldn’t tell you anything about the Oregon Trail. I don’t know when it started, who did it. And the problem with gamification is that is it forces your attention towards the mechanics of the game, right? Can I get a high score? What do I have to do to get the star? And it forces your attention away from the content, which is what you really need to be learning by doing these kind of games. So, it kind of circumvents the whole purpose of having a learning program.

Our values shape what we pay attention to, and what we pay attention to is what transforms us.

Sixth, extra content.

As I’ve said, I like the YouVersion Bible app. My biggest complaint against the app, however, is the fact that they have some truly terrible plans. And I’m talking about heresy level at worst. In fact, I’d say the vast majority of plans utilized are unhelpful.

After a few years of engaging with them in one form or another, I really do encourage everyone to ditch them. Even the good ones – the few there are. It’s better to pull up DesiringGod’s website than trying one of their plans on the app. Same with John MacArthur’s sermons/commentaries. It cuts through a lot of the noise, and steers away from bad or unhelpful content that might be tricky to spot before you’re on the last day of a month-long devotional – or worse, you don’t realize it at all.

I’m not the only one with this gripe, so that makes me feel better about my grouchy self (see The dark side-effects of Bible apps).

Conclusion

I still love Bible apps because I love the Bible, discipleship, and evangelism. Bible apps are helpful in all of those respects. However, we do need to think carefully and clearly through the downsides of using a Bible app. Awareness is half the battle – our hearts are deceptive.

So, today, when we read our Bible, might I recommend…

Lay aside weights that distract you from pursuing Jesus (Hebrews 12:1).

Let God’s Word speak with its full voice and volume by handling it correctly (2 Timothy 2:15).

Find the way God has designed you to best digest His Word.

Primarily, seek God in His Word, not other secondary things (John 5:39; Acts 17:11).

Get grounded in God’s Word, and don’t be tossed here and there by every new doctrine or devotional you come across (Ephesians 4:14).

For more on this theme, click here.