Global advertising market in 2025.
Christian formation for men in an age of engineered attention and attachment
GROUNDED
You were not made to fight the feed alone.
A small weekly practice: phones outside, men in a room, Scripture open, silence long enough to notice what has our hearts, and one concrete commitment at a time.
The map
One practice. Seven connected parts.
Scroll the page and the map follows the story. Tap any part to jump there.
The scale
Attention is an industry.
There is no honest single number for “the algorithm.” But public figures show the scale of the commercial and technical systems competing for attention.
Share of 2025 global ad spend that WARC estimated was digital.
Alphabet research and development expense in 2025.
Meta research and development expense in 2025.
These are scale markers, not a sum, and not a claim that every dollar is spent to keep people scrolling. Alphabet and Meta R&D includes broad product, infrastructure, and AI work. The point is simpler: individual willpower operates inside systems financed and optimized at extraordinary scale.
GROUNDED does not answer that with panic. It answers with formation, practice, and other people.
The north star
The goal is not less technology. The goal is a life more deeply formed by Jesus.
If our love is rightly ordered, technology becomes a discipleship question instead of a screen-time contest.
“I would never do this consistently on my own.” The lesson that carried over from F3
Why together
The insight came from doing hard things with other men.
F3 taught me something I could feel in my body. I would show up for difficult workouts with other men that I would not reliably choose alone. There was regularity, shared effort, rotating leadership, conversation, and a Circle of Trust at the end.
The lesson was not “try harder.” It was that community changes what a man can faithfully sustain. GROUNDED applies that lesson to attention and spiritual formation.
Most of us are used to acting like lone wolves. This is deliberately the opposite.
Why practice
Trying harder is not the same as becoming different.
“Disciplines are ... activities in our power that enable us, by grace, to do what we cannot do by direct effort.”Dallas Willard · How Does the Disciple Live?
Willard’s insight fits GROUNDED almost exactly: formation is not merely deciding harder. We arrange our bodies, habits, time, relationships, and attention so that grace can meet us where direct willpower fails.
That is why this is not a lecture about technology, and not a tech-detox contest. It is an embodied Christian practice: solitude, silence, Scripture, prayer, fellowship, accountability, and small experiments in obedience.
The weekly rhythm
What happens in the room.
No guru. No performance. One man can guide the rhythm each week, then someone else can guide it next time.
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01
Arrive
Personal smartphones stay outside the room. We come in as people, not as notification endpoints.
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02
Notice
We talk honestly about what technology has been doing to our attention, desire, prayer, work, relationships, and ability to be present. No shame score. No screen-time contest.
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03
Read
We practice a simple Lectio Divina rhythm with a short passage of Scripture: read, reflect, respond, rest. Slowly. With silence between words.
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04
Share
What did you notice? What stirred? What felt difficult? We listen before we fix. The point is not to manufacture insight or perform spirituality.
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05
Commit
One small practice for the week. Something concrete enough that another man can ask about it next time.
Outside the room
Personal smartphones
Not face-down on the table. Not in a pocket. Physically outside the room.
Inside the room
People, Scripture, silence
Plus one simple emergency line.
Emergency line: a basic prepaid call-and-text phone can stay in the room. Families get the number beforehand. It exists for urgent contact, not browsing.
Why silence matters
Instant answers can become a substitute for discernment.
An LLM is not a spirit. The concern is more ordinary: a fluent, personalized system can become the first place we turn every time uncertainty opens.
The instant-answer reflex
- Always available
- Fast and articulate
- Personalized to your language
- Ready to fill silence immediately
- Often easier than waiting, asking, or wrestling
The GROUNDED practice
- Scripture
- Silence
- Prayer
- Waiting
- Embodied Christian community
The temptation is not that AI literally becomes the Holy Spirit. It is that instant, personalized language can begin doing work we should sometimes reserve for Scripture, prayer, the Spirit, wise people, and patient discernment.
Lectio Divina is not magic, and the group is not trying to manufacture a voice from God. We read Scripture slowly, pray, wait, listen, and make space to respond together.
The better question
Minutes are not the whole measure.
A long day at a computer for work is not automatically worse than ten compulsive minutes of scrolling. GROUNDED asks what the technology is forming in us.
Was this use chosen, or was it automatic?
Did it make me more available to God and the people in front of me?
Was I creating, learning, connecting, working, escaping, or numbing?
Did I use the tool, or did the tool set the agenda?
What happens in me when I have to wait without filling the silence?
What would a relationship with technology that glorifies God actually look like?
Start small
One small group. Once a week. Four weeks.
The first goal is not to scale GROUNDED. It is to learn whether this practice helps men become more present to Jesus and to one another.
One shared weekly commitment. Ask about it next week. Adjust the practice. Keep what bears good fruit.
Sources and notes behind the public page
- F3 Nation core principles: free, open to men, outdoors, peer-led in rotating fashion, and ending with a Circle of Trust.
- Dallas Willard, “How Does the Disciple Live?” and related writings on spiritual disciplines, solitude, silence, and formation. \n
- Center for Humane Technology, “Attachment Hacking and the Rise of AI Psychosis”: Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin, and Zak Stein on the shift from attention incentives toward attachment risks in conversational AI.
- WARC 2025 global advertising estimate.
- Alphabet 2025 Form 10-K.
- Meta 2025 Form 10-K.