Are they ‘the anxious generation?’

Listening to the Wrong Voices

This evening I joined a gathering of local churches to think together about youth ministry: how we might reach, support, and understand the next generation. It was a good evening, with thoughtful and committed people sharing their experiences. But I could not help noticing that, for all our talk about young people, there were no young voices in the room.

That is not meant as a criticism. The speakers were well prepared and clearly care deeply. Yet there is something quietly telling in trying to understand young people without first listening to them. I wonder how often we do the same in church life, speaking about people rather than with them.

When Correlation Becomes Theology

Both speakers drew heavily on Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, which has become quite influential in church and parent circles. It is an engaging read and raises some important questions about the digital world. But as I listened, I felt uneasy. The book seems to confuse correlation with causation, treating smartphones as the root of every modern ill rather than one strand of a much more complex picture.

My concern is not really the book itself, but how easily we in the Church adopt this kind of thinking. It is tempting to reach for quick explanations that fit our existing ideas rather than take time to ask deeper questions. We risk doing what Haidt’s book does, focusing on what feels safe and familiar instead of facing what might really be happening.

Correlation Is Not Causation

We see a statistic about young people’s faith and rush to reproduce it, forgetting that renewal often happens precisely where no one was trying to manufacture it.

Correlation is not causation.
Discipleship is not fashion.

Perhaps it is easier to follow the latest trend or conference idea than to stop and ask the more uncomfortable questions.
What is really going on?
What are we afraid of?
What might it look like to really listen to young people and learn from what they see and experience?

Teaching Young People to Think

If we want to form young disciples, we need to help them think well, not simply tell them what to think. The goal is not to shield them from questions but to guide them toward discernment, the ability to recognise what is true, good, and loving.

Banning smartphones until a certain age will not solve the problem. It only hides it. The question is not how do we keep them away from technology, but how can we help them use it in ways that draw them closer to God and to one another.

When I was younger, the great moral panic was video games. Before that it was television, then Dungeons and Dragons, then novels. Every generation has its fears about the next. In 1864, one writer warned that novel readers would have their health “shattered and their prospects of usefulness blighted.” It sounds familiar, does it not? There is always something new to blame.

Fear of the Next Generation

What troubles me most is the assumption that young people today are somehow uniquely broken, that this generation is worse and needs to be corrected to resemble the last. One speaker said that “cyberbullying did not happen in our day,” and of course that is true. But I wonder if the 1980s and 1990s did not have their own patterns of harm. Maybe the problem is not that the young are failing to live up to our standards, but that we have not always been honest about our own histories.

The real challenge is that digital technology gives people the power to question, to explore, and to speak. For those of us used to being heard without challenge, that can feel unsettling. Yet perhaps that is not a threat to faith, but an invitation to humility.

Amos and the Call for Justice

This Sunday I will be preaching on Amos 5, where the prophet calls for justice to roll down like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream. It is a reminder that God’s vision is not about control or fear, but about compassion and integrity.

We do not need another policy about managing access to technology. We need a theology of justice that asks what is really happening in the lives of our young people and how we might stand alongside them as they seek truth. They may have more to teach us than we realise, if only we will listen.

If my phone ever stops me from loving God or loving my neighbour, I should set it aside. But if fear or cynicism stops me listening to the next generation, perhaps that is what needs putting down instead.

A Redeemed Imagination

What we need most is not less imagination but a redeemed imagination, what theologian Willie James Jennings calls a Christian imagination. Jennings suggests that when the Church loses imagination, it replaces communion with control and freedom with fear.

I recognise that fear in myself sometimes, in how I talk about young people and the culture they inhabit. It is easy to retreat into what we know. But Christian imagination invites us to look again and ask, where might God already be at work here?

True Christian imagination is not about withdrawing or protecting, but about reconnecting. Perhaps our challenge is not to police smartphones, but to nurture the imagination to see God’s grace even in digital places. If our institutions and meetings leave no space for the voices of young people or for those on the margins, then perhaps it is those systems that need to be rethought. But if technology can help us build connection, empathy, and creativity, maybe it can become a means of grace rather than a source of fear.

Learning to Belong

Jennings also writes about belonging to God and to one another. We do not need to be afraid of change. We can listen. We can stay curious. We do not have to cling to a world that never was when God is calling us into a Kingdom that is coming.

In his book After Whiteness, Jennings says that the central work of theological education is to cultivate belonging, to learn how to love God, our neighbour, and ourselves. What a vision that is, not for control but for connection. Perhaps instead of asking how do we get them off their phones, we could ask what can they teach us about the world we share.

Maybe the better question is not how do we stop distraction, but how can we learn together to build lives where love, justice, and belonging shape the way we live.

I wonder what our schools, our churches, and our communities might look like if that were our goal. And if that were the world reflected in our screens, perhaps we would all feel a little less anxious.