A Review of Arlene Pellicane’s “Calm, Cool and Connected”

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A trend of sorts emerging in the Christian publishing world are books on Netiquette. I’ve already reviewed one that was supposedly about the dangers of taking too many selfies, but somehow managed to turn itself into a hysterical attack on homosexuals. Well, there’s a new kid on the block, and this time the danger is more omnipresent. Yes, the Internet. But, also, social media. Television. These items are on the “tune out” list of Calm, Cool and Connected, an actually pretty reasonable book and one that isn’t very offensive at all.

The deal with this self-help tome is that we’re spending way too much time multi-tasking and checking e-mails, so the author has devised an acrostic out of the word “habit” for guidance on curbing our tendencies to sit in front of various screens. The book also offers up daily prayers, although the bulk of the book — which does have its share of Biblical quotations, which must have been a tough feat to pull off putting together given that the Internet wasn’t around when it was written— is actually pretty science-focused, pulling its information from stats and research. (Shocking for a Christian book? Yes, I know.)

There’s a quiz at Calm, Cool and Connected’s start that will gauge how much you actually need the book. Without lying, I can say that my answers meant that I wound up in “danger zone” territory. Yes, having the cellphone beside your bed (a habit that I practice and that will be hard to break) means that I have a tendency to be too connected to the online world. So this book was probably meant for the likes of me, notwithstanding the feminine cover art.

However, what I didn’t know was that people checking their smartphones over lunch when they’re supposed to be eating or taking with a dinner date is a problem. Honestly, I’ve never experienced that — but that’s because my friends don’t tend to have their cellphones on them when they come for a visit. Still, there’s probably a good segment of the population that could use some lessons from this book, regardless if it is for a Christian audience or not.

I suppose this begs the question: are these books only aimed at Christian readers, and do secular books on the dangers of overusing technology exist? I wonder. I mean, I could research this point, but, you know, I’d get sucked down a rabbit hole that I wouldn’t come back from — clicking away madly on my mouse as I go further and further along. Which is part of the point of the book. Just as God has a purpose for our lives (or so I’d like to think!), this title recommends actually having a purpose to your surfing before you even stick a toe into the Internet’s waters. Mindless surfing, this book posits, is not a healthy thing.

All in all, at about 150 pages in length, Calm, Cool and Connected is a very short read. It doesn’t have much to say on some matters, which is why, at times, it does make some stretches, such as putting the dangers of online pornography and the seduction offered by online shopping into the very same chapter. That’s not to say that I disagree with any of the points the author was making, just that the two topics seemed to be really strange bedfellows, if you’ll pardon the image.

I did like the author’s suggestions at breaking certain habits. I’m not sure about putting the Bible beside the bed in place of the smartphone — part of the smartphone’s allure is its simplicity in content offered, while the Bible is very, very complex — but I’m willing to try. I also like the suggestion to get out and enjoy nature more often. And I think the creation of “technology-free” spaces, such as at the dinner table, are apropos.

You’ll have to forgive me a little bit, though, because I’m kind of kicking myself for not writing this book first! I mean, it’s so simple and to the point, a lot of the knowledge offered here is of the common sense variety. However, it goes to show that a lot of people just don’t have common sense in abundance. And we have a habit as a species of taking things to the extreme. Instead of binging on food, we now binge watch TV in ways that the generations that came before us had no idea of doing.

Indeed, a lot has changed in how we interact with technology. Alas, there’s a slightly conservative feel to the tone of the book. While author Arlene Pellicane doesn’t come across as a Luddite, she does have some old fashioned values that will charm you at times and annoy you at others. She puts the blame squarely on individuals when it comes to their online surfing habits. I actually think the whole problem of “too much Internet” goes beyond an individual sometimes.

For instance, Pellicane complains that we’re checking our personal email so often at work that we’re not being productive, which does nothing to curry us favours with God or our bosses. But where in the book does Pellicane describe how workers’ rights are being eroded slowly, and so doing something such as checking our mail is also a form of rebellion about work’s intrusion into our social sphere? The answer? Nowhere.

That all said, I got a bit of a kick out of Calm, Cool and Connected. For one thing, it’s short. For another, it’s short. The author basically makes her points without hammering things home too much, and that makes for a bit of a guilt-free read. I enjoyed it. Even though the author has ties to Focus on the Family (shudder), the most conservative of conservative Christian outposts, there’s nothing that I can think of that twigged anything in me as being “off”. In any event, if you spend too much time online and want to do something about that habit, read this book. You’ll come up with some suggestions as how to back away from the online world from time to time, and that can’t be a bad thing. (Can it?)

Arlene Pellicane’s Calm, Cool and Connected: Five Digital Habits for a More Balanced Life will be published by Moody Publishers on September 1, 2017.

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