Who’d dare put a dumb phone under the tree for a kid? You should do it for adults, too

2 hours ago 2

Opinion

December 21, 2025 — 4.30pm

I wonder how many parents might be tempted this Christmas to place a dumb phone under the tree for their freshly TikTok-estranged 14-year-old to unwrap. To try that, given the government’s social media ban for under-16s, would probably be rubbing salt into a wound.

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.

It’s the connected generation, but it’s struggling for connection.

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: “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, but his concern about the impacts of technology is so deep that he believes the harm involved takes on spiritual dimensions. He saw immediate links between his research and the plans articulated by ChatGPT’s “devil”.

There is plenty of scepticism about the effectiveness of the social media ban, but it reflects a broad concern that lasting harm is being done and that the whole smartphone phenomenon might be a stealthy demon in our midst. And let’s be honest, it’s not just the kids. We sense that we all signed up to a kind of Faustian deal and are powerless to resist the consequences.

Might the Christmas season be something of an antidote to these particularly modern puzzles?

ChatGPT’s metaphorical devil has created, in the smartphone, the perfect means of eroding sustained thought and presence, which 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, require attentiveness and time and the rituals force us to engage in ways we frequently neglect. There’s the setting up the tree, working your way through an Advent calendar, buying the best ham or prawns. You need to plan for gifts and get-togethers and carefully manage certain relatives! 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 the “devil’s” plans to corrode the human spirit are aided by making everything a marketplace, 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 without crass commercialism, yet it can also involve generosity and the satisfaction gained from gift-giving, not just receiving. It compels an orientation towards others that all the experts tell us is the key to satisfaction.

ChatGPT’s diabolical deliberations would have us replace real relationships with digital substitutes. “People will accumulate ‘connections’ while feeling lonelier than ever,” said its extended response to Haidt’s question.

There was a 33 per cent rise in searches for “AI girlfriends” in 2024. 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 don’t inspire confidence.

When we consider the confected nature of the “intimacy” to be found in AI chatbots, the claims of Christmas stand out as radically countercultural. The idea of God himself becoming a vulnerable child born in blood and straw and danger encapsulates a determined physicality – an earthiness that suggests divine 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 – and to our anxious, online generations to think again about the value of physical presence 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.