A woman wakes at 6:40 and reaches for her phone before her feet touch the floor. By breakfast she has read forty posts, two headlines about a new virus, and a stranger's argument about politics. She has not opened her Bible. By noon she feels heavy, and she cannot say why.

Nothing happened to her. She took in words. That is all.

The ear is a gate, and the eye is another. Every word that passes through them goes into the heart. The heart then produces what it holds.

"Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." Proverbs 4:23 (NKJV)

A social media feed is words. So is the news. One person shows off a new house. Another predicts disaster. A third is angry at someone you have never met. It is words, words, words, and hour after hour they poison the heart. They breed comparison. They invite discouragement. Some days they push a child of God into depression.

The fruit matches the seed. If you spend the evening on the same bad headline six times, you should expect stress, confusion, and a sense that you do not know what to do next.

Jesus gave His disciples a short instruction about this.

"Then He said to them, 'Take heed what you hear.'" Mark 4:24 (NKJV)

This does not mean you must delete every app or pretend the world is fine. You live in the real world. Knowing the general news is wise. Checking a friend's post is harmless. The danger is absorption: the scroll takes the hours, and God's Word gets whatever time is left over.

The principle runs both ways. Paul says faith grows the same way discouragement grows.

"So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Romans 10:17 (NKJV)

Whatever you hear most will shape what you believe most. The question is not whether words are entering your heart. The question is whose words get the larger share.

So count. Your phone already tracks your screen time. If it reports three hours of scrolling and your Bible received four minutes, you know which voice has been shaping you this week.

Then change the numbers. Read a chapter before you open the feed in the morning. Play a sermon in the car instead of a news show. Close the app when you catch yourself on the same story a third time. Give the Word more hours than the world gets.

Your heart grows whatever you let through the gate most often.