How Do We Stop Scrolling Ourselves to Death? (Candid Ep. 298)

What will it take for us to put down our screens and return to the real world that needs us? In this captivating conversation, Dr. Jonathan Youssef and special guests Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa, editors for The Gospel Coalition and authors of Scrolling Ourselves to Death, tackle how Christians can navigate their ever-evolving relationship with technology.

This conversation is condensed and adapted from episode 298 of Candid Conversations with Dr. Jonathan Youssef. Be sure to listen to Brett and Ivan’s interview in its entirety. Subscribe today on your favorite podcast platform or listen online at LTW.org/Candid.

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Jonathan: If I am out in public and take a moment to look around, almost every single person, old or young, is head down on their phone. Can you explain what we’re seeing today with social media, digital technology, and how this trajectory has continued for forty-plus years?

Brett: Nowadays we all have TVs in our pocket, and that’s a big change. TV has gone from being this thing you sit down in one room in your house and engage in to now being something that you take with you everywhere you go. You look around at waiting rooms, airports, or coffee shops, and everyone has their head down. Their eyes are glazed over, and they are scrolling.

With today’s technologies everything is so personalized, and the algorithm feeds you exactly the sort of content that you gravitate towards. So, if it was hard in the 80s to resist the addiction of watching television, it’s that much harder now in the scrolling age, when the deck is stacked against us because everything on our feed is perfectly tailored to us.

We all know that kind of challenge when you open your phone and then find yourself twenty minutes later still clicking on things, and you get in a loop cycle of pulling out your phone, meandering, and getting lost in the rabbit trail of algorithms.

Ivan: As you look at all the people who are on their phones, this is our mission field of people that are scrolling themselves to death. It’s also a discipleship problem within the Church as we think about not just people out there but ourselves. These are the realities that we have to navigate with our own hearts as we seek to follow Christ.

Brett: For most people, it’s not realistic to just get rid of your smartphone and live completely analog lives. So as the Church, we need to give people a practical vision for how to live wisely with these technologies and put them in their proper place. We can’t let them become idols that have a hold on us and become the centerpiece of every waking moment, which I think is arguably happening for a lot of us.

Jonathan: Let’s talk a little bit about how digital media and social media are beginning to become disciplers of us. How are they forming us as people?

Ivan: I think one thing I see in my own life is the temptation to value digital connections over embodied relationship. There is an over-prioritization of digital connections, “friends,” but then a small reality of people [truly] knowing you and not just what you like to project.

Brett: Sometimes it’s called “main character syndrome,” where the generation that has been raised in the smartphone era [believes] they are really the center of the universe. Everything revolves around their preferences; the algorithm serves them things; they have the ease of being able to follow/unfollow at their discretion. It’s the pinnacle of consumerism, really. That conditions us to go through life thinking we are the main character of every story and the world needs to revolve around us. We don’t need to subject ourselves to the accountability of a community; they need to affirm us. They need to serve us.

This is presenting real, practical challenges [in local churches] because you have people raised in this main character, smartphone age coming into church where, in reality, God is the star and you are to serve others. It’s not just you and your preferences that matter most. But everything else in digital life tells you otherwise.

Jonathan: So, let’s talk about Christian community. How can the Church respond in a social media, digital-friend age?

Brett: I think this is one of the areas where the Church can really be a tangible alternative in showing people another way to live because we are an embodied community. Every local church provides this kind of familial, beautiful expression of community. There are very few places in our society left that provide that. We believe the Church should lean into that. We need to make it a welcoming place. It’s important to remind them that embodied, real, face-to-face relationships are superior to friends on social media.

One practical tip that I’ve been giving churches is to make sure your greeting time on Sunday morning is pretty long—not just thirty seconds of shaking hands. Maybe we have five minutes in the middle of service, making it slightly uncomfortable for people, forcing them to get to know each other. Then make space before and after the service for social lingering and gathering because we really need to work hard in the age of loneliness to retrain people in the art of social interactions.

Jonathan: How do we handle the oversaturation of information as a church?

Ivan: Sometimes I’m so worked up about certain things I am seeing in the world that I really can’t do anything about—and yet I ignore my neighbor who is struggling or a friend who is going through depression or a child who needs my attention. I’ll forget about them because I’m scrolling myself to death in that moment. Those are the realities that call for my attention that I could do something about.

That’s not to say that things going on in the world don’t matter, that I shouldn’t have opinions on them, or that I can’t vote in a certain way to affect an outcome. But I think one of the lies of our social media age is that this is the most important thing. The reality is God has called me to be a husband, a father, a church member, and those are the things that I actually can do something about.

Jonathan: What are some of the things you would want Christians to be considerate of?

Brett: Rather than trying to be on top of trends, I think churches are usually better served by focusing on what we have always been about as the bride of Christ in this world of trouble and tumult. How can we offer people stability and hope that transcends all that?

What gives me hope is that the generation that has been raised in the constant flux of digital life actually seems to be seeking stability. The data shows that there’s a return of young people to church, and I think part of that is exhaustion and dissatisfaction with digital life. It isn’t leading to their flourishing, and there is growing evidence of this.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha intuitively know that they need a better story. They need a better answer. And I think the Church stands ready, as we have in every generation, to be that better story, to be that better answer. If we are faithful and gather together in a loving community of transformation around the Gospel of grace, we will serve people. I think people will find that to be an attractive option.