Is technology robbing us of our ability to think? (Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash)
A United Methodist Insight Commentary | April 4, 2026
I think it was the three-way struggle to pay our kind and generous plumber that finally did it for me. It took three of us – my husband, the plumber and me – to negotiate all the steps to send him $75 via an online money transfer system for a service call.
That, or spending almost an entire day installing, troubleshooting and finally reinstalling the app that’s supposed to monitor my blood glucose. It’s supposed to keep running “in the background” to track the continuous glucose monitor stuck to my upper arm. Unfortunately, it stops running and then the “signal loss” alarm beeps three times loudly, scaring one of our two dogs. I’m convinced their previous owner was also diabetic, because one of the dogs associates the beeps with bad things and jumps into my lap to see if I’m still alive.
Or maybe it was having to create a new identification login for Medicare – which had already “retired” my previous insurance number by giving me a new one without notice. Medicare didn’t send me a new ID card; it simply directed me to download and print my own. But first I had to scan the front and back of my Texas driver’s license – the one with the “Real ID” bar code – plus a digital photo of myself to prove my identity.
Or maybe the final straw was the struggle to untangle and re-establish my online payment methods, thanks to my credit card’s expiration. No sooner had I done that but I received an email from our bank inviting me to join a “new, simpler” online payment system.
Whatever the spark that set me off, Good Friday found me pondering if this kind of techno-stressed life was what Jesus’s Crucifixion-Resurrection is meant to sustain or to overcome. I’m beginning to think living in this “virtual environment” is rotting my soul.
There’s some consolation – not much, but some – in finding out I’m not alone in my techno-tribulation.
Jonathan Merritt, a writer whose work I greatly admire, puts out a weekly newsletter called “The Faith & Culture 5.” Through it he documents five happenings at the intersection of religion and culture that got his attention. During Holy Week, Jonathan noted a New York Times essay by Cal Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of “Deep Work,” a book on computers’ effects on human cognition.
In turn, Professor Newport referred to research from Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Mark’s study “indicates that our attention spans are about one-third as long as they were in 2004, with the biggest drops happening around 2012. Long-running surveys reveal that the share of U.S. adults who struggle with basic reading or math has risen markedly over the past decade, while the percentage of 18-year-olds who report difficulty thinking and concentrating jumped in the same period. A Financial Times article about these findings proposed a shocking but relevant question: ‘Have humans passed peak brain power?’”
Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash
The implications get even more sobering, says Newport: “Many of these declines in cognitive skills became notable starting in the mid-2010s, exactly the period when smartphones became ubiquitous and the digital attention economy exploded in size. An increasing amount of research implies that this timing is no coincidence. A meta-analysis released last fall showed that consuming short-form video content, as delivered by apps like TikTok and Instagram, is associated with poorer cognition and reduced attention, and the results of a clever experiment from 2023 found that the mere presence of participants’ smartphones in a room significantly reduced their ability to concentrate.”
I concur with Professor Newport: “The loss of our ability to think is a big deal.”
While Newport et al fear for the state of our economy – he writes that “close to 40 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product comes from so-called knowledge and technology-intensive industries” – I fear for the state of our souls. We’re replacing our ability to connect with God and one another with a digital network that short-circuits our humanity.
I hope I’m not being hypocritical and hyperbolic in reaction to my awful, terrible, no-good very bad day with technology. Nonetheless I’ve noticed more cognition decline in myself as my dependence on technology has increased with our family’s health crises.
For example, I converse more often these days with our beloved family doctor via a “patient portal.” It’s convenient for both of us, and gets me quick answers about symptoms and treatment. My husband also has a patient portal for his cancer treatment; all his medical appointments are scheduled that way.
But what happens when the human end of this technological miracle skips a beat? Recently we ended up with a daylong chemotherapy session because no one entered a required blood test into the appointment, meaning treatment was postponed several hours until the blood work was done.
Even more than my own operator digital incompetence, I fear the spiritual, cultural and emotional effects of AI. As I was writing this essay, Kalpana Jain, senior religion + ethics editor, director of the Global Religion Journalism Initiative, sent out a newsletter on AI with a disquieting introduction: “My South Asian friends often tell me how dismissive AI is of their worldview. One said that AI cautions him against being ‘mystical,’ in response to some of his questions.”
Ever “the challenger” (I’m an Enneagram 8), I’m inclined to further questions at this news. What does “mystical” mean to AI? How would AI react to an inquiry about interpreting a vision or dream with spiritual symbolism? Can AI even recognize an inquiry about discerning God’s will amid today’s happenings?
For me and many others, these and similar questions lead directly to the meta-question: what does it mean to be human in today’s technological world? Are we meant to be merely end-users and content producers that can be monetized solely for the benefit of the ruling tech class? Is God really in cyberspace, as some claim, or does God only visit there to woo us away from it and back to a more tangible, transcendent human experience?
Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash
Futurist Ray Kurzweil says he’s looking forward to the day when we’re directly connected to the internet via nanobots inserted through our capillaries. I grant that on rainy days like today, when the damp seeps into my bones and arthritis inflames my joints, I’m tempted to apply for the first android body to come off the assembly line. Yet still I wonder: did God create humans through millennia of evolution solely for us to be consumed by a new golden techno-calf?
I think not. The technology that has enabled me single-handedly to write, edit, produce and distribute United Methodist Insight for the past 14 years has been invaluable. Nonetheless, both digital publishing and its corollary technologies have reached the point of tyranny, We must find that “via media,” to borrow a phrase from our Episcopalian cousins, where the many benefits of technology don’t overwhelm our triune identity of human body-mind-spirit.
Somehow we must embrace the opposite of warp-speed algorithms that transform us into commodified beings useful only for producing and consuming. We must demand our right to remain messily, clumsily, gloriously imperfect humans, even when we’re thrust into the frustration and inconvenience of adjusting to our digitized information age.
What’s called for now is due diligence – remembering to ask the essential question “why is this necessary and is there a non-digitized alternative?” In Christian parlance, we’re “testing the spirits” of technocracy against the gospel that calls us to love God and our neighbors above all. Technology, for all its wonders, already leads us to greater separation from each other. Social media puts more hate than love into into a hate-filled world. Whenever such separation occurs, we ought to say “no thanks” and use our imaginations – while we still can – to pursue the path of Jesus.
Perhaps that’s a new meaning of Easter Resurrection for our time.
Cynthia B. Astle
Photo by Taylor Walters Denyer
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011 as a media channel to amplify news and views for, about and by marginalized and underserved United Methodists.