TikTok and the Noonday Devil

here is no group of people on Earth more sick and tired of hearing about the ill effects and addictive properties of social media than teenagers. In their homes, classrooms, team meetings, youth groups, etc., Western kids are inundated with warnings about what could happen to them if they fall victim to criminals or manipulators over the Internet. Once those warnings are adequately covered, the next lessons about depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideations stemming from comparison and contrast are presented to them. Teens are exposed to statistics illustrating the rise of many different mental disorders and the devastating effects of these disorders regularly.

From the moment they enter high school until the day they graduate and head off into either the professional world or higher education, kids are instructed on what they ought to avoid. While these warnings and lessons are important, they never address the spiritual damage caused by endless scrolling and the pursuit of social currency through likes and clicks. For the Catholic, that fact should be a sobering call to arms. Protecting kids from spiritual malaise is to create a foundation on which to build a robust defense against secularism and the darkness of a fallen world.

The evil one hates children because not only are they precious to their families and the Church but they also represent endless potential. Christ Himself points to the faith and innocence of children as not only worthy of emulation but necessary for salvation when He says, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3, NAB). The space within the heart and soul of our teens today that was divinely designed and reserved for the Holy Spirit is being filled with digital piffle.

We can tell this from comparing the nature of prayer and observing modern teens. Prayer requires quiet, peace, repetition, introspection, and an emptying of oneself for the purpose of receiving grace more profoundly. God speaks to us in “a light silent sound” (1 Kings 19:12). The times when teens could find themselves in prayer or meditation on Our Lord are now taken up with video clips, salacious material, and their own desire for social standing within their peer groups through social media visibility. Distractions are found in many areas of life, but none are so ubiquitous in Western teenage society as the smartphone. The result is a generation of teens who are anxious, depressed, frustrated, angry, and largely spiritually ignorant.

To spoil the fertile ground in which the seed of the Gospel may find root, the evil one needs only to isolate and cover the soil. If teens are not giving Christ time to soften their hearts, then the work of a fallen, secular world becomes far easier. The first line of defense against the temptations of secularism has always been the domestic church. The world, with its pessimism, atheism, and post-modern philosophy, was held at bay by the front door and the faith of the parents who determined what was spoken about and what forms of entertainment were allowed in the home.

Today, those formidable ramparts are all but worthless when it comes to the fluid nature of imagery, influence, and information that pours out of smartphones and tablets. Today, if a young man or woman is searching for meaning and purpose in their lives, they are far more likely to look for answers on Instagram and TikTok than they are in Mass, in the confessional, or with a rosary in their hand.

What comes from this distraction from grace is either an adversarial stance taken by many teens toward the Church or complete ambivalence toward the divine. While they may not feel spiritually restless, the inner turmoil that does not get sated no matter how much media they digest comes from a lack of time spent with Christ in quiet contemplation and supplication.

They are happy to carry a placard and march in the streets for any movement that they feel generationally beholden to supporting. They will argue and scream in an attempt to promote their social legitimacy in the economy of performative suffering they have built around their generation. They will perform the rituals, spout the prayers in the form of slogans, and idolize their idols with the greatest of ease. All the while, Christ looks on and sees what would have been some of His most important and transformative soldiers in the Church Militant march away behind the standard of “real life” as defined by Screwtape to Wormwood.

I have personally witnessed this descent into spiritual malaise in my classroom. It would seem, at times, that my teenage students have a nearly visceral fear of silence. They are simply incapable of sitting silently in our chapel, at school Mass, or even in class. They are in constant need of stimulation, and the phone is their go-to drug of choice. Students today are also much quicker to complain and find the most innocuous incidents of inconvenience as major hurdles that require over-the-top displays of emotion.

As monk and theologian St. John Cassian said, “The monk who is beset by acedia is horrified at where he is, disgusted with his cell, and contemptuous and disdainful toward his brethren.” While the life of a fifth-century monk is much different from that of a 21st-century American teen, the sentiment remains the same. When acedia—or spiritual malaise and restlessness—becomes prevalent, the work of the Holy Spirit is all but halted within the individual. For teens, this is a by-product of shutting themselves off from the reception of grace and the overwhelming, transcendent peace that flows from Heaven and manifests itself in their quiet moments with the Lord. They do not even know where to begin to look for such peace, and the gap between them and Christ widens and deepens.

The most frustrating aspect of this new battlefield of spiritual warfare is that it is so easily observed but so awkwardly approached. It seems as if the devil doesn’t have to convince us he does not exist anymore. He only needs to be the more attractive momentary distraction now. Unfortunately, most parents and guardians have tacitly permitted the evil one to enter their kids’ lives by providing the electronic devices they become obsessed with and addicted to.

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