KANSAS CITY — Tara Houx has given up social media, as best she can, for Lent.

It’s harder than she thought. Her 35th birthday came and went without friends knowing how to reach Houx. A friend’s son passed away and there was no easy place for her to find and share information.

For many Lent-observing Christians, the notion of abstaining from online social networks or other tech temptations gained some buzz several years back. Yet just in that time the world has changed, making 40 days without Twitter, Facebook and Instagram a sacrifice too great for most to bear.

Houx, of Olathe, Kan., is soldiering on, having removed the social media apps from her phone when Lent started Feb. 18.

“It’s nice to have the time back,” she said.

The mother of two is replacing her allegiance to Facebook, where a quick check would swell to 30 or 40 minutes, with time spent pondering a devotion and reading her Bible.

(On Sundays until Easter weekend, she will visit the sites to catch up. Houx said that’s OK under Sunday exceptions to Lenten practices that she confirmed online.)

A poll by the church market researcher Barna Group found that among Christians who last year practiced a form of abstinence for Lent, 31 percent chose to sacrifice some aspect of technology — with social media and smartphones heading the list.

Perhaps the most surprising finding was that slightly more Americans went on a tech diet than abstained from chocolate, a perennial favorite for Lent observers to forgo.

Especially for young believers, a break from technology can be a smart and spiritually fulfilling act, said Barna Group’s Roxanne Stone: “For them it’s about making the ancient practices of Christian faith more applicable to the modern age in which they’re living.”

At the Lenten dinner recently at Calvary Lutheran Church in Kansas City, smartphones were at the ready next to plates of spaghetti and garlic toast.

Jim Sowders, the church’s building manager, was among a few trying to curb social media time at home. But should his phone light up with a Facebook alert from someone trying to reach him, absolutely he’s going to check it.

His work depends on social media, Sowders said.

“I’ve given up Instagram for Lent,” said John Stokman, a marketing major at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan.

It took a little while for him to adjust.

When presidential aspirant Rick Santorum recently gave a talk at Benedictine, Stokman instinctively snapped a picture of the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania to share through Instagram, where the student has 250 followers.

“Then I realized, ‘Oh wait, I can’t,’” said Stokman. He had removed the Instagram app from his phone.