As part of our Know Peace Online campaign, we’re exploring how faith, ethics, and care can guide our digital lives. This week’s focus is “Know Your Limits.” In a world that never stops scrolling, setting boundaries isn’t just healthy — it’s necessary.
Faith traditions have long taught the wisdom of limits. Sabbath rest, fasting, prayer hours, and mindful rituals strengthen our capacity to pause, reflect, and re-center.
In today’s digital world, those practices offer a model for setting boundaries that protect our health, our relationships, and our spiritual lives.
The Catholic Church recently reminded the faithful of this wisdom, even offering indulgences to those who fast from social media as a way to focus on God. Jewish communities have adapted phone fasting into Yom Kippur observances. Across many traditions, the message is the same: stepping away creates space to hear more clearly what truly matters.
Knowing your limits online can take many forms:
- Take intentional breaks. Research shows that constant scrolling heightens stress and anxiety. Harvard and the Cleveland Clinic both note that even a day offline can reset our perspective and improve well-being. Pick a day for a technology sabbath.
- Use digital tools to help you. Common Sense Media and Wired highlight practical strategies: turn off push notifications, set time limits on apps, or move your phone out of sight during meals and prayer — or any time you want to focus. I recommend the app Opal, which can lock you out of distracting apps entirely for as long as you choose. If your faith community is learning from the Know Peace Online curriculum together, ask others to share their tips for limiting phone use.
- Lean on faith practices. Whether it’s taking a deep breath and setting your intention before opening an app, praying before actually clicking “post” or “send,” or dedicating time offline for sabbath rest, faith traditions give us the tools to shape healthier digital habits. Perhaps your friend group or faith community can mutually commit to a few practices to support each other along the way.
Knowing our limits is not about withdrawal — it’s about stewardship. When we set boundaries, we create space to live out the other Know Peace Online pillars with more clarity: choosing our goals before posting, speaking truth, checking our facts, and taking responsibility for our impact.
Choosing limits is an act of care for ourselves, our neighbors, and the world we are shaping together.
May we have the courage to pause. May we have the wisdom to step back when we need to. And may our limits become a pathway to deeper peace, online and off.
Sara Cederberg is the Digital Communications Consultant for UCC Media Justice. She has spent the last 15 years leading digital advocacy, fundraising, and organizing campaigns for Democratic candidates, progressive causes, and nonprofits, including President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, the Sunrise Movement, and the Working Families Party. Join her in taking the Know Peace Online pledge today.