“Heads down. Phones out. Fingers scrolling. This is the humanoid posture of our age.” So begins the latest release from Crossway publishing, Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age, edited by Brett McCracken & Ivan Mesa. This book is a compilation of essays by 14 different contributors, all reflecting on the prescient work of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. (“Prescient” being the contributors’ highly favored adjective to describe Postman’s most popular book.) Scrolling Ourselves isn’t simply a regurgitation of a forty year old book. Instead, the compliation of essays updates Postman’s message for the digital age, seamlessly attaches a Biblical worldview, and calls on the church to make some overdue changes.
The strengths of this book lies in the cohesive story McCracken and Mesa have managed to create, the depth of knowledge from which the contributors have written, and the wisdom they each exude. I do have a few critiques, but none that I think went unnoticed by the contributors and editors alike. Let’s unpack this all in reverse.
My Cautions
Despite the popularity of Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, his work is still largely unknown to many people. McCracken and Mesa, of the Gospel Coalition, clearly weren’t intimidated by this lack of familiarity, but putting such effort into rejiggering Postman’s original work is a bit of a gamble. If McCracken and Mesa manage to succeed in getting the attention of the church, I think the benefits will be astounding.
Scrolling Ourselves is obviously a Christian book, while the original Amusing Ourselves is not. Postman wrote frequently about religion and having grown up Jewish, he did so with authority and care. (His take on the 2nd Commandment is the best I’ve ever read.) Is it possible that Postman’s secularism will turn off a few Christian readers who sit into today’s worship auditoriums? Yeah, probably so.
Written by an intellectual crowd, Scrolling Ourselves includes some terminology that may be unfamiliar to the casual reader. For instance, the word epistemology1 frequently jumped off the page. Defining uncommonly used words is far more arduous in stand alone essays, than if the book had one continuous author. This is a minor critique in the age of Google, of course, but one I feel is worth pointing out.
Finally, I will add that there are a lot of chapters that repeat parts of Postman’s work. The “Now… this” metaphor was clearly a favorite of the contributors and after awhile, it left me hoping for a fresh idea.
The Strengths
The first chapter, “From Amusement to Addiction” by
is the cup of cold water to the face we all need, with the important reminder that Jesus still sits on the throne. Miller manages to swiftly unpack the dangers of unnaturally high levels of dopamine caused by digital media and why the church should care. After all, if we don’t understand the problem, we can’t possibly go about determing how to solve it. I read multiple paragraphs aloud to my husband while fist pumping the air. Miller cuts right to the heart when he says, “Your phone is a digital syringe… The best of us are responsible users who can consume media in moderation. But none of us is fully sober.”2 Miller is also one of the few contributors who directly speaks to minors and digital media use, writing, “Ninety-five percent of teens between thirteen and seventeen are using digital dope, and most parents can’t bring themselves to tell them to stop, even though social media’s dangerous and addictive effects are now widely known.”3 Amen and amen! About Jesus, Miller encourages us with these words, “His spirit can heal broken minds. He commands time itself. We’re not on the losing side of a pointless battle.”4 Another amen!Helping us futher understand the problem is Hans Madueme’s chapter, where he writes, “The post-truth culture has all the hallmarks of the church’s three-headed foe - the world, the flesh, and the devil.”5 He rightly places the modern mental health crisis in the spiritual realm. This is where I believe most Christians really needed to be pushed. We’ve been circling the wagons for a long time as it relates to digital habits, and its time we stop pretending that the just right time limits or accountability app will solve a spiritual issue. As Madueme states, “many of us need to step away from particular social media platforms for a season or even for good. It may sound radical, but this could be the remedy we need to stay true to Christ in a world gone mad.”6 (I have previously written about my own spirital journey walking away from Instagram and Facebook, so I know first hand how serious Madueme’s charge is.)
I appreciated Colin Hansen’s chapter aimed specifically at pastors, though clearly I’m not one myself. I think it’s important that pastors not only take the time to understand digital culture as it relates to their congregants, but also as it relates to how churches do or don’t engage with digital media. He notes the educational decline that began in 2012 as smartphones rose in popularity and tablets replaced textbooks in school. All of this is of particular interest to me and if Hansen expands it into a full length book, I’d be delighted. In essence, as literacy rates fall in the classroom, this has real world effects on instructing the next generation of Jesus follwers in Biblical literacy. (Educators in Christian schools would also benefit greatly from this chapter).
One of my favorite chapter’s is the 7th, “Apologetics in a Post-Logic World) by
. He expertly discusses the Lincoln-Douglas debates (a part of Postman’s work that I have always found especially interesting) while encouraging the reader to, well, keep reading. Plummer writes, “Reading requires thoughtfulness, attentiveness, reflection, and the ability to follow a train of thought or line of reasoning carefully. Comprehension presupposes coherence of the text to which one is attending.”7 I won’t spoil all of the riches here, but instead will leave you with Plummer’s wisdom: “Instead of making arguments about God or theology via back-and-forths on social media or in YouTube comments sections, we should nudge people toward the importance of slower, more deliberate, more focused thinking about topics of eternal significance.”8 Slowing down enough to think deeply and Biblically about the havoc digital culture is wreaking on all of us is a task the church must engage in. Determing how we do this is worthy of a six hour long Lincoln-Douglas style debate I’d love to be apart of.Moving along,
’s pastoral tendencies come through as he provides bullet points for developing spiritual discipline, including charges to read a physical copy of the Bible and put effort into learning church history. G. Shane Morris calls a spade a spade, writing, “When you get right down to it, scrolling isn’t that fun. It’s just something to do.” This is one of many times where the individual contributors really play off of each other in a beautiful way. The overall take away is that learning incites joy, while scrolling makes us anxious.One of the contributors I was unfamiliar with is Read Mercer Schuchardt, a former graduate student under Postman. My pencil was getting a work out in his chapter entitled “Embrace Your Mission.” I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking, praying, researching, and discussing digital technology and Christianity, and Schuchardt clearly has as well. He writes, “You were not created to be a predictably programmed series of increasingly addictive responses to the stimuli of digital dopamine delivery systems. You were definitely not called to create the Christian version of those demons. You were called to be sober, alert, and watchful...” He reminds us to stay focused on the life that Christ has called us to, referencing 1 Chronicles 12:32 and 1 Thessalonians 4:11 and leaves little wiggle room for not taking digital media consumption seriously.
I could go on and on, but I’d hate to ruin all of the delights you’ll find in Scrolling Ourselves.
, , , Joe Carter, Thaddeus Williams, and Andrew Spencer round out the list of contributors, each with their own unique and valuable perspectives.McCracken and Mesa have managed to build on Postman’s work and tell a cohesive story about the spiritual battle we are facing in this digital age. We were meant for more and our souls won’t find rest until they rest in Christ alone. I pray that this book is the beginning of a wake-up call within the church. The contributors may throw some hard hits at time, but I find their honesty refreshing. I believe they have spoken the truth in love, making Scrolling Ourselves to Death the book every Christian needs to read this summer.
Epistemology is simply what we know and how we know it
pages 21; 27
pages 20-23
page 30
page 73
page 75
page 109
page 113
Thks for the review. I got Postmans book in the early 2000s and I was applying it to what was called cyberspace back then. His book led me to Marshall McLuhan and academic Todd Gitlin.
What pains me the most is that Christian youth conferences are out to lunch on this issue. They are still have workshops like...how to use Instagram to stay connected to your teens. These conferences still promote the cool older adult youth pastor archetype and they want to appear just as wired as the teens.
Will pick up the book. Thks.
Very kind, Emily! Thank you for reading the book and writing this engaging review.