Two news items that caught my attention this past Thanksgiving season are the new federal law in Australia forbidding youth under sixteen from having access to social media and the new book by humanist chaplain at MIT, Greg Epstein, who argues that “technology has become religion.” Epstein’s book title gives the thesis, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation.[1]

The combined arguments of Epstein and of Jonathan Haidt in his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,[2] might be expressed this way as a theological truism: The power of the cellphone, with constant access to the internet, combined with social media, has replaced God and the biblical world with a compelling and dominating social, personal, and even spiritual force that is reshaping what it means to be a human made in the image of God.

Our children (and their parents!) are being formed more by technology than by the Bible, worship, prayer, and Christian fellowship combined. Have you seen the statistics on the amount of time teenagers spend on their cell phones (mostly on social media and pornography not reading the Bible)?[3] It amounts to a full-time job (forty hours or more) for nearly half of teens.

Social media is engaging, enticing, visual, and relentless. It can be used wisely for personal edification and ministry, but it is fueled by some of the best minds to capture both your attention and your money. Programmers are really good at what they do: creating addictive behaviors.

Haidt is concerned about brain development, and so am I. Young people, and now college students have a hard time reading a whole book because of attention-span problems related to brain development.[4] Epstein is “concerned” that technology has become a religion. I am concerned about both. Mostly, I am concerned that many are not concerned, or that at least alarms are not being sounded in evangelical circles I participate in.

It was Paul Tillich who began to talk about religion not primarily as a matter of transcendence, but as “man’s ultimate concern.” Many theologians followed this line and have written about how politics often functions as a religion, or how sports are a religion for many people. All of the rituals, the personal sacrifice, communal effervescence, and even chants or songs reinforce the “religion” of sports or “politics.” We now need to understand social media as religion (“ultimate concern”); a religion that the demons use (for demons often use religion) to unmake or cloud the very image of God that is at the core of our humanity.

The four to eight hours a day that some folks spend on social media can form us into self-absorbed individuals who rarely confront the major virtue we must develop to be followers of Jesus Christ: self-control. Overuse of social media, in essence, “disciples” users to avoid self-control, and instead to live a life of self-absorption and self-serving vice.

I believe the time has come to have robust conversations about how the effects of overuse of social media form (or distort) our habits and sensibilities as Christians. Every church, every mission agency, every counseling service, and, yes, every seminary needs to take this head-on. I believe we must model and exhort people to choose to spend more time each day in Bible study and prayer than on social media.

We should make this pledge for ourselves, then encourage the same for our children and for each new convert in the church.

[1] Greg M. Epstein, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation (Boston: MIT Press, 2024).
[2] Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (New York: Penguin Press, 2024)
[3] David Rosenberg and Natalia Szura, “Teens Are Spending the Equivalent of a 40-hour Work Week on Their Devices. Here’s How to Help Them Find the Right Balance.” Fortune Well. October 24, 2023; Luke Gilkerson, “Internet Safety: Teens Are Using Porn at Alarming Rates.” CovenantEyes. October 30, 2020.
[4] See Haidt, Part I and Part II.

Dr. Scott W. Sunquist, President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, is author of the “Attentiveness” blog. He welcomes comments, responses, and good ideas.