ArticleWith the government’s social media ban in place this Christmas, I wonder how many parents would be tempted to place a dumbphone under the tree for their freshly TikTok-estranged 14-year-old to unwrap. I’m told the Nokia 3210 works well! It would probably be rubbing salt into a wound to try that, but what if the stakes are even higher than we think – if such a move could help thwart a devilish plot?
It’s a question raised by Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist, author of The Anxious Generation and supporter of Australia’s social media ban for under-16s.
Haidt recently picked up on a viral trend that asked ChatGPT this question: If you were the devil, how would you destroy the next generation without them even knowing it? At the end of a long and chilling answer the AI chatbot concluded:
“In short: if I were the devil, I’d destroy the next generation not by terror or violence, but distraction, disconnection, and the slow erosion of meaning. They wouldn’t even notice, because it would feel like freedom and entertainment.”
Haidt is not a religious person himself, but his concern about the psychological, social and emotional impacts of technology on young people is so deep that he believes the harm involved takes on even spiritual dimensions. Haidt saw immediate links between his research on the impact of technology and social media on children and the plans articulated by Chat GPT’s “devil”.
There is plenty of scepticism that the social media ban will be effective, but it reflects a broad concern that long lasting harm is being done and that the whole smart phone phenomenon, while delivering astonishing technological gains, might be a stealthy demon in our midst.
And let’s be honest, it’s not just the kids. We all have a nagging sense that we are subject to a kind of Faustian deal we signed up to without understanding the consequences and apparently being powerless to resist them.
Might the Christmas season have something to offer us as a kind of antidote to these particularly modern challenges and puzzles?
Firstly, ChatGPT’s metaphorical devil has created, in the smartphone, the perfect means of eroding sustained thought and presence, something Jonathan Haidt says is crucial for human flourishing. When people “lose the ability to be fully present with a task, a book, a friend, or a romantic partner, they become less likely to be successful in love and in work,” he writes.
Christmas traditions, at their best, do require attentiveness and time and the rituals force us to engage in ways we might be neglecting for much of the year. There’s the setting up the tree, working your way through an Advent calendar, sourcing the ham and plum pudding (for traditionalists) and the prawns (for the rest). There is a need for planning for gifts and get-togethers and careful management of certain relatives! And, as Paul Kelly’s perennially popular “How to Make Gravy” attests, the best Christmas lunches are long and lazy celebrations and commemorations of family and longing, loss and love.
And if, as Haidt’s thought experiment suggests, the devil’s plans to corrode the human spirit would be aided by making everything a marketplace, modern life lived on smartphones seems the perfect vehicle. “If every experience – play, art, sex, spirituality, even friendship – becomes commodified, then nothing remains sacred,” writes ChatGPT.
The Christmas season is hardly innocent of crass commercialism and rapacious consumption, but it can also involve generosity and the satisfaction gained from gift-giving and not just receiving.
It forces us out of ourselves with an orientation to others that all the experts tell us is the key to true satisfaction.
Lastly, ChatGPT’s diabolical deliberations would have us replace real relationships with digital substitutes for friendship, love, and intimacy. “People will accumulate ‘connections’ while feeling lonelier than ever,” it wrote. There was a 33% rise in searches for “AI girlfriends” in 2024, with Australia leading the way in that gloomy statistic. The loneliness epidemic in this country is most acutely present in Gen Z, and Mark Zuckerberg’s assurances that the AI companions he is selling will solve this challenge somehow doesn’t fill me with confidence.
When we consider the algorithmically confected nature of the “intimacy” to be found in AI chatbots, the claims of Christmas stand out as radically counter-cultural. The idea of God himself becoming a vulnerable child born in blood and straw and shame and danger encapsulates a deep and determined physicality; an earthiness that suggests divine approval of our creatureliness and an affirmation of our embodied reality, as messy and inconvenient as that can be.
As such, the old Christmas story serves as a startling counterpoint to the increasing virtuality of modern life. It is also an invitation to us—ever-more lonely, anxious and online generations—to think again about the value of physical presence and to consider where we might source real and lasting connection, deep satisfaction and ultimate meaning.
Simon Smart is the Executive Director of the Centre for Public Christianity. An edited version of this article was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald.