Navigating our online life

SCROLLING OURSELVES TO DEATH:
Reclaiming Life In A Digital Age
Editors Brett McCracken & Ivan Mesa
Crossway. 256 pages. £13.99
ISBN 978 1 433 599 446

If you are interested in becoming a stronger Christian, and you also engage daily with modern technology (surely that’s most of us?), then Scrolling Ourselves to Death, a series of mini-essays about the church and digital technology, will be a vital read.

Taking its cue from Neil Postman’s well-known (but not Christian) 1985 thesis Amusing Ourselves to Death, about the perils of a TV-saturated culture, Scrolling Ourselves To Death extends Postman’s arguments to the Christian church of the 2020s. Some of the contributors actually studied under Postman at university, making the purpose of this book more obvious and personal.

The book is split into three parts, and while Part 1 (Postman’s Insights, Then and Now) might make Christians feel slightly guilty for having ever picked up a smartphone or signing up to a social media account, the main theme is actually the superficiality of modern discourse, and the distractedness of modern life, both hugely exacerbated by technological advances that seemed unimaginable in Postman’s pre-internet age. We have come from the lengthy written discourses of previous centuries to 45-second, 280 character-length declarations (TikTok and X, respectively). Needless to say, the effects of these changes lead to shallow, divisive arguments and alienation from the truth, and often from the real, physical, world.

The book is not anti-technology, per se, although restating how Postman complained about the detrimental effects of the mechanical clock on our lives demonstrates that the authors are aware of Postman’s foibles. But, for Christians everywhere, the challenge is laid down: What problems is technology trying to solve for the church? And do we review the potential downsides of these technologies? How does technology add to, or subtract from, the ‘Acts 2’ early church model? For Postman, television watered down religion, and made it emotional and less rational. It will come as no surprise that livestreaming and online church come in for a lot of criticism, with the belief that it promotes low-commitment Christianity. However, with a convincing justification, social media is the real evil of the piece, with a cogent explanation of how our time is wasted scrolling through personalised feeds of trivia, designed to display advertising to us and further waste our time with yet more content!

Part 3 “How the Church can be Life in a Scrolling to Death World”, becomes a challenging Christian manifesto for a radical life in Christ. Embodied, in-person church and fellowship, and live exposition of the written word, are the Biblical basis for countering our superficial world. Even the Amish get a complimentary mention, with their large believing families, their commitment to make their mark upon a real, physical world and – vitally – their commitment to assessing the usefulness of all new technology.

Whatever your personal viewpoint on the book, and I think the book somewhat downplays the blessings of technology to save us time, stay in touch and propagate the gospel more widely, if you find yourself wasting time distractedly scrolling through social media on a regular basis, you will surely find impetus to change. I predict that, as a starting point, Christians will delete some of their social media accounts after reading this book. I already have!