When my wife and I were young parents trying to survive the days of toddlerdom, we made a gross misstep. We had YouTube on the TV, and our kids discovered a channel called “Ryan ToysReview” which was essentially a three-year-old boy named Ryan “unboxing” and playing with toys on camera. I felt instant revulsion at both the kid and the whole schtick, but my kids were transfixed. I’d like to think we were alone as young parents in accepting scraps of respite in such a way, but I doubt it. Ryan Kaji’s channels have surpassed 67 billion (with a “b”) views on YouTube and have earned the boy and his parents over $25 million from merchandise sales. 

My sense of revulsion came from the seemingly ludicrous logic: my kids would rather watch some kid on the Internet play with toys than play with toys themselves. It’s not like playing (playing!) with toys was hard work. It was supposed to be fun. So why was this Internet kid who was robbing them of that joy so popular? 

Now, with two teens under my roof, I find myself settling into bed at night and behaving like my children did 10 years ago with “Ryan’s ToyReview.” I’m not immune to the culture. Rather than read the Summa or some other book of theology, I watch an episode of Pints with Aquinas, where Matt Fradd and his guest talk for three hours about this or that. Instead of calling up a friend to get together and engage in discussion about UFOs or the Epstein list over a beer, I let the algorithm feed me some Joe Rogan or Chris Williamson podcast and settle for being a spectator of other people having interesting conversations.

The podcast phenomenon is really strange. Women get together to chat while men “do things,” as the saying goes. But these days, not only are men spending one, two, three hours online chatting over cans of Liquid Death water—and making a career online doing so—but other men are tuning in to watch them chat. And these are not effeminate hosts necessarily; the aforementioned podcasters like Rogan and Williamson definitely have an alpha male persona. And yet, tuning in to listen to them is a completely passive enterprise—like a toddler watching some other kid online opening and playing with toys when they could be actively playing with toys themselves. 

Algorithms themselves are another twist on viewership that I have been wrestling with. Whereas I used to lay awake at night a couple decades ago thinking about things to think about (How do I tie a bowline hitch? What is the capital of Uzbekistan? How much space do you need to raise meat rabbits? etc.) and then actively research those things on the Internet, a new breed of laziness has moved on to the block. I open up a browser and am spoon fed “You may like…” content. Some of the things may be new and interesting, but I was never actively searching for much of it. I’ve become a spectator. Reading, thinking—these active and noble enterprises have simply become too hard when compared to the alternative ease of passive consumption. 

I’ve become a spectator. Reading, thinking—these active and noble enterprises have simply become too hard when compared to the alternative ease of passive consumption. Tweet This

I saw an article the other day that said young people are partying less today compared to former generations (like mine), and another on how nightclubs are shuttering left and right. While I’m sure there may be some upsides to that, it still made me sad. Socializing is the sacrificial victim in this scenario—it’s simply “not worth the effort” to try to talk to someone new, to go out somewhere IRL, even if it involves spending some money or imbibing some alcohol to prime the social pump. This is probably one of the most anti-social generations, with a more than 35 percent decline in face-to-face socializing over two decades among the 25-and-under crowd; and young people are actually more anxious than ever. 

St. Paul uses the term malakos (μαλακός)—yielding to touch, soft—in 1 Corinthians 6:9 to refer to the passive element of same sex activity. The opposite of this term in Greek is karteros (καρτερος)—strong, staunch, mighty, steadfast, obstinate, violent. The millstone that does the grinding is karteros–that which is ground is malakos. Passive content consumption is a kind of malakos. We receive rather than initiate, while our attention spans get ground to dust on the stone of the pounding algorithm. Laziness, sloth, acedia, tepidity, apathy, softness—anti-virtues, aka vice—are the result. 

If dopamine is the drug, screens are the pacifier. When we feel uncomfortable in a social situation, we pull out our phones rather than going outside to smoke a cigarette (not that smoking is necessarily a good thing; this simply highlights the changing nature of anti-social dopamine fixes). Or we simply don’t go out at all because the “all-in-one” nature of the smartphone means we don’t have to. We can stream content, text friends from a distance, or doomscroll rather than doing anything constructive or, gasp, active. 

It’s as if we’ve outsourced this active role to a handful of influencers who do the hard work of, say, building a tiny house in the woods or cycling across Europe while they document such adventures for our passive consumption. We have lost those “interstitial moments” that Christine Rosen refers to—of daydreaming (which is active), of creating something, of reading or simply striking up conversations—in favor of a digital malakos of passivity. For men especially, passivity is not an endearing or edifying descriptor and is almost always used in the pejorative.

We’ve outsourced this active role to a handful of influencers who do the hard work of, say, building a tiny house in the woods or cycling across Europe….Tweet This

Contemplative prayer can sometimes be accused of being “passive” in the sense of “not doing anything” when juxtaposed against active ministry in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. But anyone who engages in mental prayer knows that it is neither easy nor passive; rather, it is an active working of the will to the mind of God. This hasn’t changed in centuries of Christian tradition. But I do fear that the vices the technocratic age has injected into our society make it harder to read, to meditate, to serve others rather than oneself; and they have turned us inward and made us anti-social as a result. This doesn’t bode well for society or Christians alike, and another “app” is not necessarily the fix, I’m afraid. 

In Matthew 11:16-17, our Lord laments, 

To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: “We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.”

And in Matthew 22, our Lord relays the parable of a wedding banquet—a party—that no one bothers to show up for, citing a litany of excuses. And this fills the king with rightful rage. In John 2:1-12, we see our Lord supply over a hundred gallons of wine to the guests when the jugs had run dry in order to grease the social skids and celebrate a joyous occasion. 

What will we say of our generation? From the stump of cultural passivity grows the shoots of laziness, lukewarmness, apathy, and yes, even anti-social behavior which is content to self-isolate with their pocket-iGods. I’ll take a party and a beer any day over doomscrolling. I just don’t want to be the only one.