Pope Francis called young people’s attention to the danger of excessive use of cell phones, assuring that they can “stunt desire” and prevent people from appreciating what they really want.
“The time in which we live seems to favor the maximum freedom of choice , but at the same time atrophies desire, mostly reduced to the desire of the moment,” the pontiff said during Wednesday’s general audience before hundreds of faithful in the Plaza de Saint Peter of the Vatican. “We are bombarded by thousands of proposals, projects, possibilities,” he added, so “we run the risk of getting distracted and not allowing ourselves to calmly assess what we really want.”
Francis warned that there are people who live in the moment without thinking about the future or valuing their dreams or desires. “Let’s think for example of young people with the phone in hand, they search, they watch videos. But, do you stop to think ?” he questioned. “If you live in the moment, satiating yourself in the moment, you can’t grow,” he maintained.
According to the pope, many people suffer from not understanding what they really want from their lives because, probably, they have never made contact with their deepest desire. “Therein comes the risk of spending your existence between attempts and expedients of various kinds, never getting anywhere, wasting precious opportunities,” he pointed out.
He also lamented that in today’s world sometimes “wanting to do becomes an illusion” and criticized the attitude of continually complaining. “Be careful because regrets are a poison for the soul and life , they do not let the desire to move forward grow,” she warned.