Welcome to Bright Point, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Coulson Center, I'm John Stone Street. About a hundred years before the invention of television, Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote this: quote, Suppose some one invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube, which, say, could be heard over the whole land. I wonder if the police would not forbid it, fearing the whole country would become mentally deranged if it were used. ⁇ Well his prescient comment was part of a criticism about the daily press, specifically how the constant stream of news in his day inflated the importance of momentary events in people's minds.
Imagine what he might have said about the evening news on television 100 years later, once a literal tube, which Neil Postman also criticized for making us all dumber. But still, in the end, it's not television, it's the smartphone, along with social media platforms like TikTok, that has finally fulfilled Kierkegaard's nightmare. The ultimate talking tube that goes everywhere with us, the smartphone, has proven to be particularly detrimental, especially to young people. The connection between social media use and things like depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems is now well established for all the reasons that Kierkegaard foresaw. And now, as it turns out, social media platforms are also effectively making users less interested in having children.
Recently, Finnish sociologist Anna Rotkirch published an article in the Berlin Review that was entitled The TikTok Baby Bust. In it, she explained how the introduction of the app coincided with a rise in antinatalist values and memes. worsening mental health, especially for girls, and degrading social skills. Specifically, she said, TikTok users became, and I quote, more likely to embrace the idea that I want to do other interesting things in life besides having a child.
Now, one way that TikTok discourages fertility is by portraying the child-free life as more fulfilling than parenthood. And another way is by portraying singleness as more fulfilling than marital life. This combination of the device, the platform, and these messages broadcast on them. have, sociologist Brad Wilcox remarked, proven to be the ultimate contraception.
Now, of course, few influencers will outright just say, don't get married or have babies because it'll ruin your life. But the platform does reward constantly other messages.
So what consumers consistently hear in subtle and quiet ways is that life is about self-expression and public performance. And you need to be pretty at all costs. And sex is only for pleasure. And your fertility is an obstacle to your happiness. And oh yeah, there are already too many people on the planet anyway.
I often ask parents and teachers what they would do if a creepy old man were walking around their school or their house just whispering awful messages in the ears of their daughters and students all the time.
Well, that's TikTok in a nutshell. The messages common to the platform are damaging already, but the medium itself adds to it power and influence. In a practical guide to culture, Brett Kunkel and I talk about the importance of artifacts in shaping culture. Any idea that influences or transforms a culture, for better or for worse, requires tangible things to enable the message.
So the Protestant Reformation would have never happened without the printing press. The sexual revolution would have never happened without the pill and porn. And in the same way, the antinatalism of our age is made possible by the smartphone equipped with TikTok. Platforms like TikTok make it possible to think about ourselves in radically disembodied ways that weren't thinkable in times before, using a business model that relies on envy and addiction. The constant, unapologetic demand for screen time catechizes users to reject personal relationships as if the opinions and experiences and values of complete strangers that are put before them by an algorithm matter more than the real people in their real lives.
So-called influencers are put on a pedestal where they not only champion bad ideas but reward followers who imitate their lifestyles with a promise that they too can be famous. No wonder that over half of millennials report today that their ultimate career goal is to be an influencer. In his book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt urged parents and educators to get smartphones out of their kids' hands. Exposing young people to the messages that are common on social media on a limitless basis, behind closed doors or during school, was simply insanity. A cultural revolution as deep as the TikTok baby bust?
requires our co-option. My guess is, had Kierkegaard seen the smartphone or come across TikTok, he would have warned us of it as well. After all, he understood, as too few philosophers in his day did, that human beings are not brains on sticks. We're creatures of habit and body and relationship, which means what we believe has a lot to do with what we repeatedly do. And if we are to effectively make a new case for why marriage and family matter, why children are gifts of God, why young people should prioritize real-life relationships, it's going to take more than just words.
In this battle of ideas, we have to grasp that this convenient little talking tube in each of our hands is one of the things deranging young minds today. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And you can always find us online at breakpoint.org.
