The Real Problem with Phones (Isn’t Phones)

TL;DR:

Our problem isn’t our phones—it’s our desires. Smartphones mirror a culture that’s forgotten what to love and why. Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation points to anxiety and distraction, but Augustine (and Andrew & Kara Root) point deeper: we’re restless because our desires are disordered. The Christian story offers not another life hack, but a reorientation of love itself—toward God, neighbor, and the kind of transcendence that gives life meaning.

A Moral Panic or a Crisis of Desire?

I’m driving my daughter to church for youth group. Since it’s about a 20-25 minute drive depending on traffic, I usually go grab some dinner nearby and bring a book to read. This time, I’m finishing up the Root & Root book A Pilgrimage into Letting Go and starting Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. My daughter’s middle school is giving them away and I can’t resist a free book.

Interestingly enough, when the book was just sitting in my car one day, my daughter picked it up and started reading it. So, as we make our way to church this evening, we’re discussing the book. Having listened to podcast interviews and read some articles about his broader points, I’m familiar with his main thrust and I talk about how Haidt’s obsession with banning phones sort of misses the point; phones and the internet are just sort of a stand-in for a broader hunger or desire within humans. Then, it hits me, Haidt has essentially created a moral panic around smartphones.

A moral panic, also called a social panic, per Wikipedia, “is a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society.” But more, this fear is magnified around something visible and tangible, while the real issue lies deeper and more elusive. When I was a kid, it was rock music. Today, it is smartphones, which make for an easy target because they are physical, glowing symbols of our collective anxiety. But what if they aren’t the cause of our restlessness, only its symptom?

The problem, I think, isn’t technology. It’s desire. We no longer know what our desires are for—no, rather it’s that smartphones simply amplify the cultural message that we should desire our own happiness and fulfillment, that this is the point of life. But when we continually can’t find happiness, despite following all the social media trends or maybe not getting enough likes on our posts, it becomes hard to get out of bed in the morning. Cleary, we’re doing something wrong. But where do we look for answers? That same phone.

Jonathan Haidt writes in The Anxious Generation:

“My central claim in this book is that these two trends—overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation” (12).

Haidt’s observation is correct—but incomplete. The phone isn’t the cause of our inability to be present; it’s the mirror reflecting our deeper confusion about what life is for. The device in our hand isn’t the disease, it’s the symptom of a culture that has lost its story and, with it, its sense of purpose.

Andrew and Kara Root, in their new book drawing on Augustine, put it this way:

“The Christian life according to Augustine is not what you know or believe, and in some sense not even what you do… The Christian life is first and foremost what you desire. What is your longing pointed toward? What motivates your living and directs your life (i.e., what shapes your belief and moves your action)? What is the point? What’s it all for?” (A Pilgrimage into Letting Go, p. 188)

Desire doesn’t emerge in isolation; it’s shaped. As they also write:

“Desire is shaped through compelling stories that spark imagination and inspire attunement to certain frequencies, orientation in certain directions. The habits we cultivate or take on without realizing, the practices we intentionally and unintentionally rehearse—and so also model to one another—are what shape our loves.” (A Pilgrimage into Letting Go, p. 188)

And this formation is not neutral.

“The world around us is always trying to both satisfy our desires and direct our desires toward the products and experiences that maximize profits. We live in response to our desires—making choices and taking actions that address our longings—but also the very actions we take and choices we make shape what we desire.” (A Pilgrimage into Letting Go, p. 189)

It’s not that smartphones are blameless—they are one of those habits. But their power lies not in what they show us, but in how they shape what and how we love. In a culture where desire has been redirected toward profit, the smartphone becomes the perfect liturgy: a device designed to keep us loving the wrong things longer.

If Haidt is right that our generation is anxious, Augustine might say we are anxious because our desires are disordered. The smartphone only reveals that disorder; it doesn’t create it. Our constant scrolling, swiping, and checking are spiritual acts—rituals of misplaced longing, directed toward the wrong telos.

And, this is where Haidt sort of gets it right, as early in the book he offers some guardrails, such as no smartphones before sixteen, but I really sense that he fails to grasp the greater point. These are, like Andrew Root writes about in his book The End of Youth Ministry, tactics simply to delay the inevitable in some regard.

Later in his book, when he does talk about spiritual practices, he frames them as ways to “improve our own lives” and “to flourish” (202). They are then, sort of life hacks, practices to be “controlled,” that if I read Root & Root correctly, will never quite get at the resonance and transcendence we ultimately seek. What Haidt doesn’t seem to recognize fully, to borrow from the words of Pedro Arrupe, or what smartphones exemplify, is that life is about what we love, and where we set our affections and desires.

I’m reminded of this poem, attributed to Pedro Arrupe, the Jesuit priest who famously wrote:

“Nothing is more practical than finding God,
than falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination,
will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love,
stay in love,
and it will decide everything.”

Our crisis, then, isn’t digital—it’s devotional. The moral panic over screens misses the real story: our hearts aren’t captivated by the right kind of love. We’ve fallen out of love with transcendence, with mystery, with the story big enough to hold our lives.

The Christian story—the gospel of Jesus—offers a radically different vision. It insists that when our desires are oriented toward the love of God and the service of neighbor, we discover the very purpose, fulfillment, and meaning that our culture keeps promising but can never deliver. In learning to desire rightly, we don’t just find peace—we find life itself.

Driving home from youth group, I dialed up a spotify playlist I’d made with songs recommended a while back from my friend and college Paul Romig-Leavitt. Among them were classics like “Hey Jude,” “Piano Man,” and “Don’t Stop Believing.” But, as we neared the house, the song “We Americans” by The Avett Brothers came on.

“This is a good one,” I said.

I pulled into the driveway, and the song was about halfway through. “Let’s stay in the car and listen,” and I let the car idle, something I never do, so the music wouldn’t be interrupted.

The song finishes with this:

We are more than the sum of our parts
All these broken bones and broken hearts
God will you keep us wherever we go?
Can you forgive us for where we’ve been?
We Americans

We Americans

Love in our hearts with the pain and the memory
Love in our hearts with the pain and the memory
Love in our hearts with the pain and the memory
Love…

As it ended, I turned off the car and asked her, what she thought.

“Slay,” she said. Which I think means it was good.

As The Avett Brothers sing, the history of America is chalk full of disordered desires.

What I told my daughter is that in the Christian story, the way of Jesus, we find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in loving God and neighbor.