My Tech-Wise Life: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices
Authors: Crouch Amy , Crouch Andy 
Published: November 2022

MY TECH-WISE LIFE: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices by Amy Crouch and Andy Crouch. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2020. 208¬†pages. Hardcover; $15.99. ISBN: 9780801018671. *My Tech-Wise Life is a book about life before it is a book about technology. Through a discussion of her own experience growing up in a "tech-wise family," Amy Crouch shares her struggles and successes as a young adult navigating a world that is obsessed with technology. She honestly shares how she doesn't have it all figured out, while describing the ways that she keeps technology in its place as a tool in her life, rather than as a controlling force. *Technology causes us problems that aren't rooted in technology. It changes the problems that we face, but it doesn't create fundamentally new problems. Sometimes it exacerbates problems that we have always faced, such as distraction. Other times, it covers up problems--this sounds good, until you realize that it also covers up the solutions. We experienced distraction and loneliness long before the distractions from phone notifications, and the loneliness from seeing Instagram posts of parties we weren't invited to. This book is about how to live--with and without technology. *In each chapter, Amy tackles a different facet of technology, exploring how we can be free of the demands of technology in a way that helps us to be more engaged in our own lives. Some chapters address specific technologies: for example, social media, and how "we don't have to compare ourselves" (chapter 1). Other chapters cover how we can use all of our technology better so that "we don't have to be exhausted" (chapter 7). *Each chapter is paired with a letter from her dad, Andy Crouch, the popular Christian author of The Tech-Wise Family. Each chapter also ends with "What to Do Next," beginning with questions of reflection, then moving toward the challenges of how to start conversations with your family and friends about how you want to be using technology, and ending with suggestions for how to change your habits surrounding technology. *My Tech-Wise Life reads more as an invitation than as a lecture. It is encouraging to hear this from Amy's perspective, as someone who grew up with smartphones and Instagram as a central part of high school. Amy is honest about how she struggles with what she's writing about--including issues of secrecy, loneliness, and exhaustion. These negative effects aren't invented by tech companies, but they are reframed and coded into the devices we carry around. She doesn't pretend that our problems can be fixed by purging our life of technology. Yet our situation isn't hopeless; Amy offers stories of her successes too. We are not inevitably going to lose to technology. There are ways to live a more meaningful life and to not succumb to the exhaustion of the endless scroll. *The book would be a valuable read for any young adult, but it is written to be most relevant for teens. This is apparent in some of her prompts to discuss technology use with parents, as well as in the emphasis placed on the teen demographic in the Barna research statistics scattered throughout the book. These statistics are based on surveys of young adults, so they primarily add confirmation that everyone else is struggling with the same technology problems. Aside from the statistics and a few of the prompts, the book is applicable to anyone who grew up with digital technology and is needing to reassess their relationship with it. *With its easy-to-read style, My Tech-Wise Life is a quick read, and would fit well for a small group wanting to read a book together. It is a hopeful, yet realistic book. It is honest about the problems that we face in using technology wisely, but it also offers concrete suggestions to be more mindful of technology use. Amy invites us into a life that is shaped around relationships and wonder rather than around technology. *Reviewed by Elizabeth Koning, graduate student in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.