Author: Brett McCracken

We’re Living in the Dystopian Future That Neil Postman Predicted Forty Years Ago

Heads down. Phones out. Fingers scrolling. This is the humanoid posture of our age. We see it everywhere. Sit in a coffee shop and look around you. All eyes on devices.

April 24, 2025 by: Brett McCracken

The Posture of Our Age

Heads down. Phones out. Fingers scrolling. This is the humanoid posture of our age.

We see it everywhere. Sit in a coffee shop and look around you. All eyes on devices. Wait in line at the post office or grocery store. All eyes on devices. Sit at a red light and look at the drivers in the cars around you. Same story. More disturbing still, look at the drivers on the highway going full speed. Even some of them have their eyes darting between the windshields and their smartphones.

We see it in ourselves too. Sit down to read a physical book with your phone nearby. Observe how long you can go without scrolling, texting, or checking some notification. When you’re standing in line at a coffee shop and have forty-five seconds to spare, notice how hard it is to resist the urge to pull out your phone to do something— anything—to fill that blank space. More disturbing still, monitor how much time elapses between the moment you wake in the morning until the moment you unlock your phone and start scrolling.

For many of us, it’s only a matter of seconds.

From the rising of the sun to its going down, we scroll our way through the day. We scroll our way through life. And we are scrolling ourselves to death.

The death march of our scrolling society is not just a metaphor. In many ways, the smartphone is literally killing us (and not just in distracted-driving automobile accidents). Researchers have made compelling correlations between smartphone (especially social media) usage and rising mental unhealth (depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, loneliness), especially among teens and young adults.1 Consider the staggering rise in suicide rates among US youth and young adults since the dawn of the smartphone age. Between 2001 and 2007, the suicide rate for kids ages ten to twenty-four was fairly stable, but since 2007 (the year the iPhone debuted), it has skyrocketed, rising 62 percent between 2007 and 2021.2

Technology has also helped accelerate a “loneliness epidemic” with demonstrable, wide-ranging negative effects on overall health.3

The ominous term “deaths of despair” has become part of contemporary vernacular. And after steadily climbing for most of the last century, average life expectancies in the United States have, since 2021, started to decline.

Certainly more than technology is at play in these trends. But not less. When we consider the variables that have most changed in society in the last two decades, any answer we come up with will center around digital technology. We didn’t know what “social media” was twenty-five years ago. The term smartphone was first coined in 1997. The World Wide Web is barely three decades old. Each of these things has utterly reshaped the world in the last quarter century. And things continue to move fast—so fast that we rarely pause long enough to ask questions or ponder unintended side effects. As Antón Barba-Kay put it in A Web of Our Own Making, digital technology has so vastly transformed human life over just a few decades that “there is now arguably a greater chasm between someone age twelve and someone age fifty (or forty, or thirty) than there ever was between people separated by a millennium of pharaonic rule in ancient Egypt.”4

Our critical faculties struggle to keep pace with the scope and speed of the digital revolution. As a result, we’re often blind to the ways we’re being transformed. If we could jump forward in time a few decades, we could see more clearly. But since we can’t do that, our best path to wisdom is often in the other direction: looking back in time, learning from bygone eras and voices. What we can’t see now can be illuminated, at least in part, by the insights of generations past.

One book I return to again and again is Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. The book was prophetic when it released in 1985, and it’s even more prophetic now, four decades later.

Which Dystopia?

Just as today we look back to Postman’s book to help make sense of our cultural moment, so too did Postman look to the past from his vantage point in 1985, at the peak of what he called the “Age of Show Business.” The old books Postman looked to for insight were a pair of dystopian novels: George Orwell’s 1984 (published in 1949) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). Working on his book in 1984, Postman pondered: Had Orwell’s vision of that year come to fruition? Or was Huxley’s dark vision of the future more accurate?

What we can’t see now can be illuminated, at least in part, by the insights of generations past.

Postman concluded that Huxley’s dystopia, not Orwell’s, better predicted the shape Western society took in the latter half of the twentieth century. As he explained,

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.5

If Postman was astute in 1985 to observe the Huxleyan shape of our “trivial culture”—where opted-in distractions and diversions kept us numb and dumb—how much more accurate does his prophetic vision describe life in 2025?

When Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves, he had television mostly in view as the chief purveyor of trivial information that swept us away in a “sea of irrelevance.” Forty years later, we still have TV—albeit hundreds more channels and a growing number of streaming TV platforms. But we also have YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and other always-on pipelines of content, algorithmically designed to grab our attention and keep us watching and scrolling, eyes glued to screens.

“Amusing ourselves to death” is still a highly accurate descriptor of what mass media does to us. But now the dominant form it takes is scrolling. And while Postman, who died in 2003, never lived to see the way smartphones, streaming, and social media would transform the world, his wisdom and warnings ring out with potent relevance.

Just as Huxley helped Postman make sense of his world in 1985, Postman can help us make sense of ours.

Notes:

  1. See especially Jean Twenge, iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood (New York: Atria Books, 2017) and Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America’s Future (New York: Atria Books, 2023); and Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (New York: Penguin, 2024).
  2. Sally C. Curtin and Matthew F. Garnett, “Suicide and Homicide Death Rates among Youth and Young Adults Aged 10–24: United States, 2001–2021,” NCHS Data Brief, no. 471, June 2023, https://www.cdc.gov.
  3. Tatum Hunter, “Technology’s Role in the ‘Loneliness Epidemic,’ ” Washington Post, April 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/.
  4. Antón Barba-Kay, A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature of Digital Formation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 15.
  5. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 20th anniversary ed. (1985; repr., New York: Penguin Books, 2005), xxi–xxii.

This article is adapted from Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age edited by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa.

Brett McCracken is a senior editor for the Gospel Coalition and the author of The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World and Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community. He lives with his family in Southern California.

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Practical Tips for Parents of Scrolling Kids

Kids today need to know that the real world has always been, and will always be, more awesome than any virtual world.

April 14, 2025 by: Brett McCracken

Healthy Spiritual Formation

I’m a parent of three young children (ages 6, 4, and 3) who are growing up in an age of ubiquitous screens. Like most parents in today’s world, I worry about how they’re being shaped by today’s technologies. Here are a few suggestions for practical ways Christian parents can encourage healthy spiritual formation in a scrolling age.

1. Mind what you’re modeling.

So much of how kids learn is caught, not taught. And it’s mostly caught by parents—a child’s primary models for life, from birth to adulthood. Parents in the scrolling age need to be mindful that it won’t work to tell your kids, “Get off your phone!” if you are constantly on your phone yourself. Do as you say. Let your words be reinforced by your own discipline. Ask yourself: Are you frequently filling every gap moment in your day with scrolling? At family meal times, are you on your device? Do you and your spouse put your phones away and engage one another in front of the kids, modeling relational presence rather than distracted half-attention? If your kids see mom and dad always tethered to their smartphone, they’ll naturally grow up assuming devices like this will be critically important for them too.

So work on your own habits, and let your actions speak as loudly as your words.

2. Place boundaries around devices.

Limits are not legalistic or cruel. They’re loving. If you put boundaries around your kids regarding how far away from home they can ride their bikes, or how many cookies they can eat for dessert, do you also put boundaries around the when, where, and what, and how long of screen usage? Arguably, the hazards of screens pose greater risks to your kids than bike-riding or cookie-eating. In his book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt’s big point is that we tend to overprotect our kids in the “real world” and under protect them in the virtual world.

Consider these practical ideas for putting guardrails around your kids’ scrolling time:

  • Designate times during the day when screen time is allowed and when it isn’t. We let our kids watch a little TV while they have breakfast, and then usually after school for a bit while they have a snack. But in both cases, it’s a limited period and then it goes off.

  • Limit your kids’ media or scrolling activities to common rooms or areas where they can be closely monitored. Especially once they get older (but increasingly, even at very young ages), the things they are tempted to do on screens in bedrooms or private spaces are very dark and damaging.

  • If your kids have their own devices, consider device lockers or secure storage where they must be kept at certain times of the day.

3. Vet the voices.

So much of spiritual formation has to do with where we’re giving our attention. What feeds our minds feeds our souls, and what we give our limited attention to has profound power to shape us. Are you aware of the voices, podcasts, YouTube channels, and influencers your kids give their online attention to? Be proactive in vetting the media they consume, knowing it’s usually not a one-and-done but an ongoing process of being tuned in to what their watching and who they’re listening to.

4. Suggest alternative activities.

It’s a mistake to focus only on the “what you can’t do” aspect of digital habits. Parents need to creatively suggest “what to do instead” alternatives that are fun, compelling, and healthy for kids. We created a list that we put on our fridge, detailing about twenty ideas for activities not involving screens: reading books, doing puzzles, building a fort, playing with sensory bins, painting, board games, practicing Scripture memory, singing worship songs, hide and seek, etc. Yes, these activities can often lead to messes requiring cleanup. But protecting your kids is more important than protecting the house’s cleanliness. And part of protecting kids is helping them grow in analog wonder, boredom-fueled imagination, and tactile creativity. As Read Mercer Schuchardt argues in his chapter in Scrolling Ourselves to Death, we need to encourage young people to be tangible participants in life, not just scrolling spectators of it.

5. Get them outside!

Kids today need to know that the real world has always been, and will always be, more awesome than any virtual world. What they can see in the sky, and touch in the dirt, and smell in the garden will always be more interesting than what they can scroll through on their screens. Most kids have an ingrained curiosity that leads them to explore nature, climb trees, catch grasshoppers, and make mud pies. Let them. Encourage it.

Work on your own habits, and let your actions speak as loudly as your words.

God’s creation is an underrated source of Christian wisdom1, and time outside is something many experts note is crucial to childhood development2. So send your kids into the backyard for unsupervised play. Let them run around in local parks. Hike mountains as a family. Trek through forests. Go often to lakes, rivers, oceans. Look for wildlife. Plant whatever fruit trees, herbs, and vegetables that grow where you live. Be attuned to the seasons. Geek out over the weather. Encourage your kids to notice the real world around them, and teach them from a young age that this isn’t just random evolutionary happenstance; it’s our Father’s world. He created it intentionally, for his glory and our good.

6. Don’t beat yourself up.

I often feel guilty that I’m not doing any of the above things enough. Even as I write books about the importance of healthy habits in the digital age, my own family can sometimes be inconsistent. I’m sure most parents can relate. We realize we’re scrolling on Instagram while our kids shout, “Come play catch with me outside!” Or one of them gets to the point where they have to yell, “Daddy, get off your phone!” These are ouch moments. And they can be helpful, convicting wake-up calls.

But parents today shouldn’t expect perfection. And when you’re on a plane or long road trip, in a quiet public place, or at a nice restaurant, don’t stress if you temporarily ease up on screen time to keep the chaos contained. We’ve all been there. You’re not a bad parent if you break your own “rules” from time to time. In most cases, the norm matters more for our spiritual formation than the exceptions. Missing church once in a while isn’t a big deal if our long-term norm is weekly attendance. Going a few days without praying or reading your Bible isn’t detrimental if the norm of those habits is consistency.

The same is true for digital habits: aim for consistency, but don’t expect perfection. And above all, seek God’s guidance in the process. Pray for wisdom and discipline, but rest in his grace.

Notes:

  1. https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/thestoriedoutdoors/episodes/Ep--17-Brett-McCracken-Senior-Editor-For-The-Gospel-Coalition-epvsgl/a-a4i6elk
  2. https://www.amazon.com/Last-Child-Woods-Children-Nature-Deficit/dp/156512605X

Brett McCracken is coeditor with Ivan Mesa of Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age.

Brett McCracken is a senior editor for the Gospel Coalition and the author of The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World and Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community. He lives with his family in Southern California.

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