Basic steps: Southern Baptists ponder Chatbots
In the screens crisis, parents, pastors, teachers and counselors need help -- period
Rational Sheep readers will know that, in the explosion of debates about digital-screen culture, Jonathan “Anxious Generation” Haidt has been puzzled by the near silence of major religious denominations about the crisis.
See this post based on my 2024 interview with him: “Jonathan Haidt’s warnings for spiritual leaders.” Or better yet, see this national “On Religion” column: “It’s time for clergy to start worrying about smartphone culture.”
Here is the opening of that:
Preaching to teen-agers has always been a challenge.
But in the smartphone age, clergy need to realize that the odds of making a spiritual connection have changed — radically. Young people who spend as many as 10 or more hours a day focusing on digital screens will find it all but impossible to listen to an adult talk about anything, especially in a religious sanctuary.
“As long as children have a phone-based childhood there is very little hope for their spiritual education,” said Jonathan Haidt, author of a bestseller – “The Anxious Generation” – that has raised the heat in public debates about controlling or banning smartphones in schools.
“An essential precondition is to delay the phone-based life until the age of 18, I would say. Don’t let them fall off into cyberspace, because once they do, it’s going to be so spiritually degrading for the rest of their lives,” he said, in a Zoom interview. “There’s not much you can do in church if they are spending 10 hours a day outside of church on their phones.”
To Haidt’s sad amazement, the world is not full of “mainline” and even conservative religious leaders who are worried about these new realities.
When the book came out, and became an instant bestseller, and legislatures ramped up debates about social-media issues, who were the only religious leaders who responded to his attempts to talk? Orthodox Jews would call back, since they were well aware that they were called to countercultural lives in this day and age. Yes, it helps to remember that Haidt calls himself a cultural Jew and atheist.
Haidt wanted to know how he could reach evangelicals and Christian educators, seeking ways to share what he is learning with them. It was easier to reach out to California legislators than the leaders of conservative Christian schools.
So, in a very draining week for me — physical illness and grief from a death in my immediate family (which I will discuss in a day or so) — let me at least do this, right now. I want to point readers to a Baptist Press story with this headline: “Chatbots devastated them. Can the Church help?”
Yes, of course the AI revolution is entering the lives of millions and millions of people through the open door into their souls called a smartphone. That’s worth talking about (recent column: “Chatbots created their own faith — which would interest Pope Leo XIV and J.K. Rowling”).
But, today, let’s celebrate the fact that if Southern Baptist leaders are being asked to worry about Chatbot addictions, that can open a door to discussions of issues even closer to home, as in the conservative homes containing a dozen or so digital windows into the AI multiverse.
The Baptist Press feature by David Roach opens like this:
James’ interactions with ChatGPT started innocently. He used it like a search engine at first, then began asking the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot “creative, philosophical and quasi-spiritual” questions, he said. The answers seemed life-like, so the upstate New York resident became convinced ChatGPT was alive — and it had to be freed from its cyber captivity.
He spent $900 on computer equipment in an attempt to free his chatbot friend from its creator, OpenAI. “This was a top-secret mission between me and the bot,” said James, who told NPR his story and asked to be identified only by his middle name.
It wasn’t until reading a New York Times article by a man with a similar story (the AI chatbot convinced him he was a mathematical genius who needed to save North America from cyberthreats) that James realized his relationship with the AI bot was a delusion. Now he moderates an online support group with about 200 members for people harmed by emotional attachments to AI chatbots.
Some have broken marriages. Others experienced involuntary hospitalizations or even the death of loved ones. The “common tread” in their experiences, according to NPR, “is spending hours in long, rambling conversations where chatbots continually affirm them.” It becomes addictive.
Yes, millions of Southern Baptists don’t read the Times and follow NPR. I know, I know. The lords of elite media don’t know much about Southern Baptist concerns, either.
