Stepping Away From Games During Lent, Ramadan or Shabbat

Every February a few readers write to ask whether giving up video games for Lent is a real fast or a lazy one. Around the same time of year, a different group asks something quieter: they observe Ramadan, they play games to unwind after long days, and they are not sure whether a session after iftar honours the month or wastes it. And once in a while a reader raised in an observant Jewish home asks how to explain to a gaming friend why the console stays off from Friday sundown.

These are three different traditions with three different logics, and I do not want to flatten them into one tidy "digital detox" message. What they share is a question that sits under all of them: when you step away from something you enjoy, what do you do with the space it leaves? Answering that badly is why most game fasts collapse by the second weekend.

Three traditions, three different reasons

In most Western Christian practice, Lent runs forty days from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday, with Sundays traditionally not counted as fast days. Giving something up is meant to clear room for prayer, almsgiving and attention to others. Games are a common choice now because they are often the thing that most reliably eats an evening. The Sunday exception matters here: some people keep it, some do not, and both are defensible, but deciding in advance prevents a lot of guilt.

Ramadan works differently. The fast is from food, drink and certain behaviours between dawn and sunset, for twenty-nine or thirty days. Games are not forbidden in themselves. Many Muslims I have spoken with treat the month as a time to cut back on idle entertainment so that more of the night can go to prayer, Qur'an recitation and family. Others keep a modest gaming habit and simply move it later. I am not a scholar and will not tell you which is correct for you; that is a conversation for your own imam or community.

Shabbat is weekly rather than seasonal. For many observant Jews, operating electronic devices falls within the categories of work avoided from Friday sundown to Saturday nightfall, roughly twenty-five hours. Here the game is not given up as a sacrifice so much as set aside because the day has a different shape entirely. Less observant households may keep a looser version, such as no screens at the Friday table.

A fast that only removes something is half a practice. The other half is what grows in the gap.

Why game fasts fail more than other fasts

I have watched a fair number of people try this, including myself in 2019, when I gave up Civilization VI for Lent and lasted eleven days. The pattern is consistent enough that I think it is structural rather than a lack of willpower.

Games are designed around return. Daily login rewards in titles like Genshin Impact, weekly resets in Destiny 2, seasonal battle passes with a deadline: they are built to make absence feel like loss. Giving up chocolate does not send you a push notification saying your streak is about to end. Your phone game does. Several people told me their fast broke not from boredom but from a "limited time event" landing in the middle of Lent.

Second, games often fill a specific slot: the forty minutes after the children are asleep, the commute, the hour before bed. When that slot goes empty, the default replacement is another screen. Giving up console games and spending the same evenings scrolling is not much of a fast, as one honest reader put it to me.

What actually helped the people who kept it

From the conversations I have had, the people who finished a game fast tended to do four things before the first day rather than during it.

1. They decided the boundary precisely. "No games" is vague. "No games on the Switch or phone from Ash Wednesday to Easter morning, Sundays included" is a rule you can keep or break, and you know which.
2. They turned off the pull. They disabled notifications for every game app, logged out of Steam on the work laptop, and in two cases handed the console controllers to a spouse. On Nintendo Switch the Parental Controls app can set daily play time to zero; Xbox Family Settings and PlayStation's family management offer similar limits.
3. They named the replacement. One man moved his evening game slot to a short compline prayer followed by a walk. A woman observing Ramadan put her post-iftar gaming hour toward reading a juz of the Qur'an with her sister on a video call.
4. They told one person. Not to be held accountable in a strict way, just so the fast existed outside their own head.

If you are curious about the deeper reasons behind fasting, beyond what you remove, our piece on fasting as a spiritual practice rather than a diet goes further.

When the fast breaks

It probably will, at least once. My own Lent in 2019 ended on a rainy Saturday when I told myself one turn would not hurt and played until two in the morning. What I learned was less about games than about how I respond to failure. I had treated the fast as a test I could pass or fail, so once I had failed, the remaining twenty-nine days felt pointless.

Most traditions are kinder than that. Catholic teaching on Lent is not pass or fail. In Ramadan, a missed fast day can be made up. Shabbat comes back every week, which means every week is a new start. If you break your game fast, the most faithful response is usually just to resume it the next morning. The piece on what doubt does to a practice speaks to that feeling of having ruined something.

A word for people who play with others

If you play in a regular group, a fast affects them too. A raid team missing its healer for six weeks has a real problem. Tell them early, give them the dates, and if you can, suggest a substitute. People of different faiths are generally respectful of this when it is explained plainly. A message such as "I'm stepping back from games for Lent, back on Easter Monday, here's who might cover Tuesdays" is enough. Observant Jewish players often mention Shabbat in a Discord bio so nobody schedules a Friday night match for them.

For ideas on keeping technology in its place the rest of the year, see simple technology for a more intentional life.

If a season is coming up

Pick the next one that applies to you, whether that is Lent, Ramadan, a single Shabbat or simply a self-chosen week. This week, write down three things on a piece of paper: the exact boundary, the slot that will open up, and what you will put in it. Then go into your phone's settings and turn off notifications for every game you own. That small act, done before the fast starts, does more than any amount of resolve on the first day.