Scrolling Ourselves to Death edited by Brett McCracken, Ivan Mesa

(Wheaton: Crossway, 2025), 238

This collection of essays revisits Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death four decades after its initial publication and gives an Evangelical Christian interpretation of his prophetic work. Postman's argument is that our tools for thought shape that very thought, with television doing so in destructive ways for public discourse. Television traffics in decontextualized information distant from our agency and served up only for our entertainment.

Postman's warnings have proved prophetic and deserve our attention today, especially his exhortation to "take arms against a sea of amusements". Extending Postman's work, Chapter 1 in this collection is a helpful overview of how the destructive tendencies of television have only been amplified and unleashed in our age of "dopamine media"—available at anytime and anywhere, and engineered to extract every ounce of our attention. I think few serious Christians would disagree with the nature and magnitude of the challenges we face from these technologies or the dangers they pose to our children.

I read this book in the spirit of Evangelicals and Catholics Together and as a Catholic who daily prays for Christian unity: I hoped to learn from my Evangelical brethren about their challenges with digital technology and potential solutions.1 I also seek to think deeply about a response to these challenges from the Catholic tradition.

The best solutions put forward in these essays are largely the same regardless of our ecclesial traditions, namely biblical literacy, strong communities, old books, and a slow life (see Chapter 4).

What struck me, particularly in Chapter 6, is how some of these challenges articulated by American Evangelicals are characteristically American and Evangelical, while some of the solutions proposed sound very Catholic and Traditional. The Evangelical aspect is highlighted by Collin Hansen's observation: "Evangelicals have tended toward early adoption of technology—but, as Postman warned, not always to their benefit" (97). The American dimension arises because "American evangelicals largely equate technology with progress", and perhaps there is too fine a line at times between American pluralism and outright relativism (99, cf. Leo XIII on Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae).

I couldn't agree more with many of the solutions proposed by Nathan A. Finn in Chapter 9, some of which sound very Catholic. Pages 142-143 are my most annotated in the book because of the many variations of words like "tradition", "liturgy", "history", "saints": all of these suggestions point to Tradition and Liturgy. Liturgy is the principal instrument of the Church's Tradition, where Scripture is lived (cf. Letter and Spirit).

A defining feature of Catholicism (as well as Orthodoxy and certain "high-church" Protestant denominations) is that the Tradition naturally guards against some problems from digital technologies. Many symptoms mentioned in the book—pastors on iPads (98), the low commitment of "showing up online" (193), "livestreamed church being more convenient for a busy family" (99), and, ironically given Postman's warnings of television as "Show Business", preaching from a "stage" (122)2—are naturally avoided in orthodox Catholic parishes where the liturgy forms the focal point for the community. There are Missals and Lectionaries instead of iPads, altars and lecterns instead of "stages", bibles and breviaries instead of apps, and flesh and blood sacraments (literally, see Jn-06!) instead of "livestreamed church". An embodied, sacramental tradition is not so easily hijacked by decontextualized social media.

I'll conclude with two anecdotes that arose during while reading this. First, we made a family pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee and to visit family. On the ten hour flight back we let the big kids watch some of the awful kids' TV shows on the plane so that we could focus on the baby. They watch no TV at home and were naturally glued to the screen. A few hours of one-off mindless watching will not have long term effects, but it was curious to see how their behavior was "off" for the next few days after that experience. I can only imagine the behavior that would result from continuous exposure.

Finally, given the death of Pope Francis while we were in Rome, we welcomed Pope Leo XIV shortly after our return. One of his first public statements was strikingly relevant to this collection of essays:

Communication is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture, of human and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and discussion. In looking at how technology is developing, this mission becomes ever more necessary.
–Pope Leo XIV, Address of the Holy Father Leo XIV to Representatives of the Media, 12 May 2025

As Christians and parents we are continually involved in the "creation of a culture". We do well to heed the warnings of Postman and his contemporary interpreters as we work to build a culture that is integrated, embodied, and Christ-centered.

Notes


Contents


Introduction: Back to the Future: How a 1985 Book Predicted Our Present

by Brett McCracken

Summary: Postman showed how technology (television in his day, the internet and smartphones in ours) traffics in attention and shapes our thinking. This book invites Christians to reflect on his warnings and apply them to the proper use of technology today.

  • He opens describing the problem: "Heads down. Phones out. Fingers scrolling. This is the humanoid posture of our age." (1)
  • "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." (2)
  • Lots of studies about smartphones and the internet creating more issues with mental health, suicide, and a "loneliness epidemic" (2, cf. The Anxious Generation)
  • Change is fast: "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." (3, cf. A Web of Our Own Making)
  • "Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death was prophetic when it released in 1985, and it's even more prophetic now, four decades later." (3)
    • Postman concluded that Huxley's dystopia, not Orwell's, better predicted the shape Western society took in the latter half of the twentieth century. (4)
    • "'Amusing ourselves to death' is still a highly accurate description of what mass media does to us. But now the dominant form it takes is scrolling." (5)
    • "Just as Huxley helped Postman make sense of his world in 1985, Postman can help us make sense of ours." (5)
  • "I'm convinced he's a thinker whose wisdom is vital for the contemporary church. This present volume is an attempt to introduce Postman to a broader audience of Christians." (6)
  • Postman: televisions function is to gather an audience that can be sold to advertisers, not through responsibly informing or truthfully reporting but by constantly amusing (cf. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism). The internet also "traffics in the currency of attention." (9)
  • Goal of the book: "Christians in this cultural moment should slow down and think wisely about the ever-changing technologies swirling around us...No technology is neutral. New technologies shape our thinking...Because getting people to think well about God and the Bible (theology) is central to Christian mission, we must be aware of how thinking is changing as a result of different technologies and how our habits of worship, preaching, evangelism, and apologetics might need to adjust to these shifting dynamics." (10-11)

Part 1: Postman's Insights, Then and Now

Chapter 1: From Amusement to Addiction: Introducing Dopamine Media

by Patrick Miller

Summary: We have moved from Postman's age of "entertainment media" to "dopamine media" which is addictive and disorders our love.

Chapter 1 PDF

  • What are the trade-offs of digital technologies?
  • We now live with "dopamine media" (cf. Dopamine Nation, The Anxious Generation): "Your phone is a digital syringe. It's a gateway to a lifelong, brain-altering, relationship-destroying addiction." (21)
  • Unlike television, dopamine media is mobile, available on-demand, tailored to our history with recommendation algorithms, features micro-length content, and has constantly variable rewards (27)
  • "Our addiction to dopamine media is training us to love much what ought to be loved little." (28, cf. ~On Christian Teaching)
  • Dopamine media is not shaping us to love Jesus most, and social media platforms are "pseudo-institutions" and "counter-institutions." (28-29)

Chapter 2: From the Clock to the Smartphone: A Brief History of Belief-Changing Technologies

by Joe Carter

Summary: Technology is not neutral and the church needs to proactively engage.

  • Postman's central argument is truer now: technology is not neutral but rather a medium with inherent biases (34)
  • Mechanical timekeeping led to the conception of time as a quantifiable and controllable entity (37)
  • Paradox for Christians: technology brings easy access to good, but also has a trivializing effect upon those goods (41-42)
  • The church needs to "proactively engage these issues" (45)

Chapter 3: From the Age of Exposition to the Age of Expression

by Jen Pollock Michel

Summary: Resist the modern turn inward and rather turn upward for the meaning of our lives.

  • Taylor's "individuating revolution": When self-expression rises to prominence, authority becomes suspect and sin disappears. (51, cf. A Secular Age)
  • Christians should "expose the logical limits and self-contradictions of expressive individualism" (53)
  • We are not self-made but God-given (55)
  • "A life-giving experience of a healthy church community should supplant our desire for thin, fragile online connections." (58)

Chapter 4: The Origins and Implications of a Post-Truth World

by Hans Madueme

Summary: We now live in a post-truth world. Christians can combat this through biblical literacy, strong communities, old books, and a slow life.

  • Truth: All truth is God's truth, it is absolute (unchanging and universal) and personal (not merely propositional). All truth finds its unity in and coherence in the person of Christ. (63-64)
  • The shift from modern rationalism to Postmodernism paved the way for our post-truth era. (65)
  • Social media represents the "ultimate ascendance of television over other media" as Postman observed (68)
  • Private corporations have prevailed over public interest via deregulation in this arena (70-72)
  • How do Christians navigate this post-truth world?
    • Cultivate habits of biblical literacy
    • Form healthy communities
    • Read old books
    • Slow down (cf. Cal Newport)

Chapter 5: Striving for Seasonableness in a “Now . . . This” World

by Samuel D. James

Summary: Avoid the anxiety and exhaustion of social media by applying "Seasonableness" of all things in their proper place.

  • We live in an "endless ocean of stuff" (79-80, cf. The Shallows)
  • Our "performative behavior" (i.e. showing off online) cultivates anxiety and exhaustion. (82, cf. The Anxious Generation)
  • Rather, we should learn "Seasonableness" from the wisdom literature of the Bible: all things find their proper place. (83)

Part 2: Practical Challenges Facing Christian Communicators

Chapter 6: How the Medium Shapes the Message for Preachers

by Collin Hansen

Summary: Evangelicals tend to adopt new technology, and Postman's warnings may be helpful. Reading this as a Catholic, this is an interesting exposition of the non-sacramental nature of evangelicalism and how that is perhaps more easily susceptible to some of the downsides of new technology.

  • The internet has become the primary place where Christians are formed today, and preaching is expected to confirm the convictions already developed through the internet. (94)
    • "The best preaching tells us what we don't always want to hear." (103)
  • "Evangelicals have tended toward early adoption of technology—but, as Postman warned, not always to their benefit." (97)
  • "American evangelicals largely equate technology with progress." (99)
  • A glimpse at Evangelical 'sacramentalism' (or lack thereof): "Even campuses with recorded sermons don't prepackage the music. They recognize the congregational experience can't be replaced. You can't perform a digital baptism. You need actual water. You can't partake of the Lord's Supper in the multiverse. You must taste the bread and wine for yourself." (101)

Chapter 7: Apologetics in a Post-Logic World

by Keith Plummer

Summary: We live in a world of contradiction. Meet people where they are but bring them to the simple (and slower) message of the gospel.

  • What is truth? We are in an "epistemological crisis" (105)
  • We have become comfortable with contradiction because we're shaped by a scrolling world in which discontinuity reigns. (110)
  • Don't exacerbate the problem: "meeting people where they are does not necessarily mean meeting people in the media forms they most prefer" (112). We should "nudge people toward the importance of slower, more deliberate, more focused thinking about topics of eternal significance" (113).
  • "The gospel's truth remains simple, beautiful, and powerfully transformative." (115)

Chapter 8: Telling the Truth about Jesus in an Age of Incoherence

by Thaddeus Williams

Summary: Christians can tell the truth in a post-logic world by seriously proclaiming the choice Jesus forces and telling the best story—the story of salvation history.

  • Postman: No technology is epistemologically neutral. Each will foster certain habits of the mind. (118)
  • Four strategies for Christian truth-telling in a post-logic world:
    • Beyond Relativization: "We must be clear that Jesus is not just another lifestyle choice or guru to emulate; he is 'the same yesterday and today and forever' and 'the way, the truth, and the life'." (123)
    • Beyond Trivialization: "We must present Jesus as he is, which is anything but trivial." (125)
    • Beyond Disinformation: "We present Jesus's death and resurrection as factual and historical, not fake news" (125), and we refrain from "irreverent babble" (127)
    • Beyond Disintegration: "To minds conditioned by disintegration—the loss of a grand unifying story—we show Jesus as the supreme integration point in whom everything finds meaning." (127)
  • How is this anecdote not an illustration of the "Show Business" that Postman warns against: "A church in my neighborhood makes a point every Sunday to declare from the stage..." How is an evangelical service not a "show" if the attention is focused on a "stage"? (122)

Chapter 9: “Unfit to Remember”: The Theological Crisis of Digital-Age Memory Loss

by Nathan A. Finn

Summary: We must resist "spiritual dementia" with Liturgy and Tradition.

  • The church is always tempted by a form of "spiritual dementia", which is incompatible with Christian faithfulness. (134)
  • Orwell imagines the Ministry of Truth and "memory holes": the internet functions like a memory hole designed to keep us fixated on the present. (137 cf. The Shallows)
  • Remembrance is at the heart of Israel's devotion. (140, cf. Dt-06-9)
  • "Learning in War-Time" by Lewis
  • "We need to resist the tyranny of the present by cultivating habits that help us remember the stories that matter most." (142)
  • "Remembering is resistance...The present always lasts only a moment, but the wisdom of the Christian past will continue to speak into eternity." (143)
    • →All of the suggestions in this essay drip with Tradition and Liturgy. Liturgy is the principal instrument of the Church's Tradition, where Scripture is lived (cf. Letter and Spirit).

Part 3: How the Church Can Be Life in a "Scrolling to Death" World

Chapter 10: Use New Media Creatively but Cautiously: Video as Case Study

by G. Shane Morris

Summary: Christianity is an embodied religion.

  • "The limits our bodies impose on our time, our relationships, our work, and our worship can be good. These limits are not always obstacles we should strive to overcome with technology." (154)
  • "Christianity is a physical religion involving tangible sacraments." (155)
  • "Redeem the Medium" via efforts like BibleProject and The Chosen

Chapter 11: Reconnect Information and Action: How to Stay Sane in an Overstimulated Age

by Brett McCracken

Summary: Some tips...

  • For Christians:
    • Audit your news and information diet
    • Embrace your limits
    • Rejoice in how God designed you
    • Pray
  • For Church leaders:
    • Disciple people in media habits
    • Promote localism
    • Gather people for prayer
    • Call people to action

Chapter 12: Embrace Your Mission: Tangible Participation, Not Digital Spectating

by Read Mercer Schuchardt

Summary: Get going. Live in the real world.

  • "How would Jesus mediate his relationship to his followers if he were to come back today?" (179)
  • 1 Thes-04-12: "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, work with your hands, and be dependent on no one." (180)
  • The average American uses screens for 10.85 hours per day: "that digital life is robbing you of your lived, embodied , real, and valuable life." (181)
  • Having a large family: "Did you know that the people who have the most people tend to win the heart and soul of any culture? The future has always belonged to those who show up for it." (183)
  • "The etymology of the word religion (according to Cicero) is relegere: to reread." (184)
  • "Get going." Live in the real world. (188)

Chapter 13: Cling to Embodiment in a Virtual World

by Jay Y. Kim

Summary: The pandemic showed how commitment is lacking in churches that prioritize convenience.

  • Covid showed the problems of a digital church: problems of convenience and commitment. Meaningful connection is always inconvenient and meaningful community always demands high commitment. (193)
    • →This appears to be more of a problem for non-sacramental evangelical churches; the sacraments are in person. But it also echoes Ratzinger's warnings to the Catholic Church in 2021-07-03-Faith and the Future about the Church "will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning..."

Chapter 14: Heed Huxley’s Warning

by Andrew Spencer

Summary: Resist what is unhealthy in digital technology and restore habits of health.

  • "Technopoly": when a culture no longer simply uses the tools it develops but rather is being ideologically shaped by them, unawares." (211)
  • Resist technopoly by refusing to use certain technologies, taking a Sabbath, and positively replacing electronic media with Scripture, Church, nature, books, etc. (213, cf. The Tech-Wise Family)

Epilogue

by Ivan Mesa

Summary: Similar to Bezos' conviction of building a business on the things that don't change, Mesa suggests we are best to build a church on the truths that don't change.

  • "One of the many reasons I benefit from studying church history is that I'm disabused of the notion that we need to return to some pristine past." (219, cf. we've had it worse before, ~An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine)
  • Jeff Bezos said how he doesn't try to predict what will change, but what will stay the same (preference for lower prices and faster delivery), and then build a business around those things. Mesa argues that, likewise, "Christianity's unchanging aspects will best propel us forward." (220-221)
  • "We'll need frequent reminders of how the ancient gospel can speak truth and shape life in our brave new world." (222)
  • Aside: "After all, the church over two millennia has held fast to the same book..." (I wish it had, cf. Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger)

Topic: Amusing Ourselves to Death

Source

Created: 2025-04-11-Fri
Updated: 2025-06-02-Mon

  1. I'm grateful from reading this book to have come across thoughtful Evangelicals who think deeply about history, especially Matthew Barrett, cf. The Reformation as Renewal. ↩

  2. Big screens in churches and preaching from a "stage" recall Postman's warning: "The danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that television shows may become the content of religion." (Amusing Ourselves to Death, 124) ↩