Steven Croft

The Anxious Generation: a call for radical reform

The Anxious Generation

Dozens of books are published every year now on the risks of technology and AI. I can only read a fraction and I have to confess I start more than I finish. But every so often I am gripped by a book I can’t put down and then want everyone to read.

The last time that happened was Shoshanna Zuboff’s masterpiece The Age of Surveillance Capitalism in 2019 which exposes the economic and financial models, the risks and exploitation at the heart of Big Tech. It’s not a light read nor a short one at almost 700 pages but foundational to understanding the changes at the heart of the global economy.

The Anxious Generation is more focussed and altogether easier to read and understand – but I would say equally important. Jonathan Haidt is Professor of Ethical Leadership in the Stern School of Business in New York University. He’s a serious academic. More importantly he is also a parent and cares passionately about the wellbeing of young people.

His book deserves to be read by every parent and grandparent; by every headteacher; every church leader; every politician. It’s a cool-headed, factual and devastating analysis of what has happened to the mental health of children and young people since 2010. It’s also a cry for radical reform in relation to children, schools, smart phones and social media.

Life on Mars

Haidt begins and ends his book with a parable: “suppose when your first child turned 10 a visionary billionaire whom you’ve never met chose her to join the first permanent human settlement on Mars?”. Would you agree? Of course not. But what has happened to children and young people over the last 14 years has been the equivalent: a set of experiences Haidt calls the Great Rewiring.

The Great Rewiring happened in 2010 with three global developments in technology. The first was the widespread adoption of the smart phone with thousands of apps. The second was the invention of the front-facing camera and the arrival of the selfie. The third was the rise of social media, driven by algorithms and especially the like and retweet/repost buttons. The Anxious Generation is not a diatribe against technology as such, or the internet, or computer games but an analysis of what has happened to children and young people as a consequence of these key and almost universal developments.

Previous studies have demonstrated a correlation between the sharp rise in anxiety and mental health issues and social media. Haidt claims to take the evidence a step further and demonstrates clear causation. I was completely convinced by his arguments which underlined so much of what I learned during the long passage of the Online Safety Bill through Parliament. Some of his reviewers do still question his evidence base but the book is supported by a website with tables of statistics and updates for those who want to follow through on this.

Haidt follows through on his general analysis with more detailed studies of the differential effects of social media on boys and girls. These are probably the most chilling and serious chapters in the book. He sets the widespread use of social media in the context of an equally serious long-term trend: under supervision of children online combines with over supervision in the real world with fewer opportunities for real life play and experimentation has produced the current sharp rise in anxiety, unhappiness, self-harming and suicidal thoughts with tragic consequences for a generation.

The Prescription

Haidt’s prescription and call to action are specific and clear and undergirded by every argument in the book. He makes four recommendations:

• No smart phones before high school (aged 14)
• No social media before 16
• Phone-free schools
• Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.

Haidt demonstrates convincingly that the minds of young teenagers are still developing until the age of 16 and young teens are simply unable to resist the addictive behaviours taught by the algorithms which drive social media. Social media is therefore positively dangerous in forming addictive habits before the age of 16. He also demonstrates that the current social media threshold of 13 (ignored by many children and parents) is entirely arbitrary and has no basis in medical research. By phone-free schools he means more than no phones visible in lessons but a system whereby phones are locked away securely at the beginning of the school day and not unlocked until the end. The Times carried an article on 9 April exploring the radical difference this has made in one school in Kent.

Haidt’s conclusions are relevant to every school governor, every teacher and every parent in Britain. Young children want smart phones and are often given smart phones from the age of eight or nine. It’s currently considered normal to give your child a smart phone at the latest by secondary school with access to all the social media apps. It takes a determined parent and school to stand against the trend. But Haidt’s analysis speaks for itself. The current socially accepted norm is deeply damaging to the mental health of a whole generation.

Spiritual Practices

One of the most fascinating chapters in The Anxious Generation is the section on spiritual practices. Haidt himself is an atheist but he writes as someone who appreciates and sees the value of traditional spiritual practices for mental health. He outlines six which he believes are significant:

1. Shared sacredness (times and places set apart)
2. Embodiment and real-world experiences
3. Silence, stillness and focus developed by prayer and meditation
4. Transcending the self in worship
5. Be slow to anger and quick to forgive (the opposite to habits developed by social media) and
6. Find awe in nature.

This is an excellent list for churches and church schools to reflect on and to develop further. As a diocese we have done a huge amount of work in this area through SpaceMakers, our contemplative toolkit for schools to teach exactly these and other spiritual disciplines.

What can schools and churches and chaplaincies do?

The Anxious Generation is a vital book. Read it for yourself and recommend it to others. We are in the midst of a mental health pandemic and not just for children. Many of Haidt’s lessons apply equally to adults addicted to their phones, constantly checking into social media and unable to focus on any single thing for more than a few minutes.

Churches are well placed to form communities of resistance to technology addiction for both adults and for children and young people. Draw people together. Host conversations. Get medical experts in. Develop strategies together.

School heads and governors have key responsibilities here to ensure that church schools are places of safety and learning. That will mean taking very seriously the call to ban smart phones during the school day though decisions need to be carefully made and prepared for.

We have scores of chaplains across the diocese working in universities, the armed forces, prisons and other settings with a generation of young adults already addicted to technologies but also beginning to look for ways to grow stronger.

Looking back from the future

I am convinced that in 10 or 20 years’ time, the world will look back in anger at our carelessness in exposing children and young people to addictive technologies, harmful content and permanent distraction through what Haidt calls the Great Rewiring of childhood and adolescence. It is time to wake up to the reality of the crisis in child mental health and its causes. Jonathan Haidt’s book is a really significant step forward – but we need to take action together.

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Steven Croft

Rooted in God the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Spirit of God awakens a new life, both dead and alive, detail of stained glass window by Sieger Koder in church of Saint John in Piflas, Germany

Some of us might have been surprised to see Artificial Intelligence so high on the agenda for the Prime Minister’s meeting with the President Biden this week. The President pledged to support Britain’s convening of a major global conference on AI regulation later this year.

The calling of the conference is part of the government’s response to a series of concerns about AI voiced by leading figures in the tech industry in recent months warning of the need to regulate both research and deployment of AI. Many of you will know that I have been working in this area now for a number of years in my work in the House of Lords and for three years as part of the government’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. This seems a good moment to bring the Synod and the Diocese up to date on the potential and concerns around AI and also with developments in the Online Safety Bill.

Artificial Intelligence is developing apace and is affecting every part of our lives. Global investment is increasing. New products are rolled out with bewildering speed. Microsoft launched Chat GPT on 30th November last year. By January it had become the fastest growing consumer software application in history gaining over 100 million users worldwide. Chat GPT is currently leading the field among new AI’s available to the public based on Large Language Models: the manipulation not just of data but of language in a way which seems human and intelligent. Chat GPT is already transforming search, the way children do their homework and possibly the way clergy prepare sermons. Version 4 was launched in March; an App came out in May. Microsoft will incorporate a version into Office later this year.

The software has the potential to reshape the legal profession, call centres and knowledge based enterprises. Other developments in AI are transforming medicine particularly in the rapid diagnosis of cancers or more accurate scanning and in the development of remote medicine.

There is huge potential here but also significant jeopardy. Two of the three godfathers of AI, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Benigio have sounded warnings about research and deployment running much faster than regulation and public debate. In May a coalition of industry experts including the head of the company which developed Chat GPT and of Google Deep Mind issued a serious warning that Artificial Intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity. They argue that:

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”.

What are the risks? They include the weaponization of AI by bad actors; the generation of misinformation to destabilise society, including in elections; the concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands enabling regimes to enforce narrow values through pervasive surveillance and oppressive censorship”; and enfeeblement, where humans become dependent on AI.

These warnings are not uncontested and we are currently seeing a pushback against some of these dire warnings. We are probably decades away from an autonomous general artificial intelligence. These Terminator like scenarios can be used to distract attention from the more immediate but real dangers – such as the rapid deployment of facial recognition technology in security and policing without proper governance. But more not less public debate is needed which is mindful both of the immense good this technology can enable and the severe harm.

What then has this to do with the Church and with Christians? We clearly need to engage in an informed way as this technology develops for the sake of present and future generations. As Christians we have a distinctive understanding of human dignity and person hood and what it means to be human. Our identity is rooted in the faith that humankind is made in the image of God, to quote Genesis 1. We place our faith and trust in our Father in heaven who made us and who loves us. We are able to work in partnership with technology and machines of all kinds. But not uncritically.

If technology undermines personal safety or dignity, through stripping away capacity for creativity and meaningful work, then we should be concerned. If technology undermines the democratic process or public truth, we should sound a warning. If the development of autonomous weapons gives life and death decisions to a machine we should raise our voices in every way possible.

Second, our understanding of what it means to be human is rooted in the incarnation. We believe that Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth, became a human person in a particular time and place to redeem all of humanity in every time and place. There is no higher statement of value and worth for humankind that the truth that God became a person in Jesus and a person who embodies the distinctive Christian character of the beatitudes: contemplation in a relationship with God, compassion in love for the world and courage in a desire for justice and for peace. We are called to embody those values in the life of the Body of Christ, the Church.

This means again that the Church will need to be both critical and cautious in response to new technologies. Our humanity is not negotiable. We need to say clearly that the future of humankind is not unlimited enhancement and mechanisation and automation and delegation. We will want to see robust public debate and good governance which is alert to dangers. We will want the commonly owned values of our society, based on our Christian inheritance, to be lived out online as well as offline. We will want to ensure a strong role for government in regulation. If this is in the hands of major global tech companies then power and wealth and influence will be concentrated in an ever smaller group of unaccountable technocrats. We will want to see strong human- AI partnerships as a foundational principle in medicine, in law enforcement, in automation of work, in education.

And third our understanding of our humanity is formed by our faith and trust in the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God. The Spirit of God comes to dwell within the heart and life of the believer, to give life in all its fulness, to form us into the likeness of Christ and to empower us to change God’s world for the better.

The Spirit leads us into all truth, we believe. One of the concerns to be alert to in this present phase of AI development is truth and authenticity. The new tools make the creation and dissemination of authentic deep fakes much easier. How do we know on the night before an election that the picture of the politician saying or doing something terrible is true or not? If Chat GPT or Google tells us that something is true, how do we test that in the real world if the internet is our only source of information? The preservation of truth has to be one of the highest priorities in a democracy and for the Church.

One of the other marks of the Spirit’s life is creativity. Remember in Exodus how the Spirit is given to skilled workers in fabrics and metals and wood in the building of tabernacle; remember how the Spirit inspires architects and builders and musicians and the arts.

The new generation of AI has a massive capacity for creativity. For the very first time we can all access a tool which will write a greetings card in the style of a Shakespeare sonnet or produce a new play or opera. So far the quality is not high – but it will get better.

My colleague Simon Cross, who is funded by the Templeton Foundation and works with me on these issues, has recently summed up the shift in the new generation of AI tools in this way:

The first iteration of digitalisation extracted data about us. In the first digital world, facts like our age, ethnicity, location and viewing habits could be extracted – or inferred with ever increasing granularity – and then used to tailor our attention: surveillance to sell. But the onus was on our information and opinions, not our ideas. There have been a host of downstream harms and unintended consequences that we are still discovering. But now, even before that first clean up is complete, Generative AI is coming for our creativity. Everything, but everything we write, or say, or sing, or paint, or draw, or sculpt, or… everything: all of it, is – or soon might be – hoovered up inside a ‘foundation model’, because our creativity is the coal that powers this new generative AI furnace.

What will the consequence be for our humanity and identity if AI takes the major share of human creativity: the arts as well as the sciences. The answer is that we become less than human, less than we can be. The spark of the divine image begins to be extinguished. We need to be alert; we need our prophets; we need to preserve truth and creativity and dignity for future generations.

Finally, as Simon argues there, the first clean up is not yet complete. Indeed it has hardly started. The Online Safety Bill currently in Committee Stage in the House of Lords is a key piece of legislation. It is not yet strong enough and over the last three months I’ve been working with a cross party group of peers, charities and agencies, and connecting with MPs, to seek to strengthen the Bill, with Simon’s support and that of other Lords Spiritual.

I am increasingly convinced that the world has created a deeply toxic environment for the mental health of children and adults through social media. We will look back on the last two decades and the lack of regulation in future years with disbelief. The range of harms affects every section of society but children and the vulnerable most of all.

The Letter of James is absolutely clear about the power of the tongue and of words to do harm.

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire. And a tongue is a fire….a restless evil…. full of deadly poison.”

This fire, this evil, this deadly poison is magnified a hundred fold by social media and online engagement and has a massive effect on peoples real lives in a range of ways. The multiplication happens through 24 hour access even in our most private spaces; through the clever fostering of addiction; through algorithms which drive the most controversial content to our feeds and now increasingly through AI generated material.

I have been corresponding in recent weeks with Amanda and Stuart Stephens well known to some members of this Synod whose 13 year old son Olly was tragically murdered in Reading in 2021 by other children of a similar age. Social media played a massive part in his murder especially through incitement to knife crime. Amanda and Stuart have joined other bereaved parents in campaigning for a stronger bill.

The harms caused to children by pornography have been a feature of several of amendments and especially for strong age assurance and verification protection.

Adults too are not immune to harm from social media as many here will know. The Bill needs to be further strengthened as at attempt to regulate the damage already done. We need to learn from the damage caused by the last 20 years of social media to better regulate for the next generation. The government has not yet agreed to the major changes which are still needed though there is still time to do this.

There may yet come a moment when it will be helpful for members of this Synod to write to their MP’s on this matter.

There is much that can be done in local churches and schools to help and support parents and children in responsible approaches to the internet. We will be giving consideration later in this Synod to the magnificent work of our Board of Education and our engagement with children and young people now and into the future. I hope this address sets a context both in outlining some of the challenges the next generations will face, the need to monitor and limit access to social media and the resources of Christian faith to establish and build a vital core of Christian identity rooted in God the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

+Steven
10 June 2023

Photo: Spirit of God awakens a new life, both dead and alive, detail of stained glass window by Sieger Koder in church of Saint John in Piflas, Germany (c) Shutterstock

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Steven Croft

A letter to the Diocese of Oxford

On 9 February 2023, the General Synod approved the motion brought by the House of Bishops as the next step in the Living in Love and Faith process.

As you will have seen the motion laments our failure as a church to welcome LGBTQI+ people; welcomes the decision of the House of Bishops to draw up new pastoral guidance to replace Issues in Human Sexuality and looks forward to the House of Bishops further refining, commending and issuing the Prayers of Love and Faith. You can find the full text of the amended motion here.

The Synod debate was demanding. Many of our Oxford representatives spoke at different points and reflected different points of view. All spoke graciously and clearly. My own contribution to the debate came near the beginning.

I welcome Synod’s decision as will many across the diocese. Some will be disappointed that the proposals were not able to go further than offering Prayers of Love and Faith and new guidance. Others will believe that the Bishops and the Synod have gone too far.

It is clear from the voting in the Houses of Clergy and Laity that whilst a majority are in favour of moving forward in this way, there remains a substantial minority opposed to change for a variety of reasons, and this is reflected in our own diocese.

The debate in the Synod chamber was both passionate and respectful. Synod rose to the occasion. It was also an emotional debate. People laid themselves bare. There were tears afterwards on all sides.

Please hold in love and prayer those from our own diocese who took part and those who led on the debate nationally. You may want to express your appreciation for this task undertaken on behalf of the whole Church to the Synod representatives who are linked to your own deanery.

Most of the Oxford representatives met together two weeks before Synod in person, and we spent four hours together working through the agenda. I know everyone took their responsibilities extremely seriously. We were thankful for your prayers.

The House of Bishops were present in the Synod to listen, especially in the group work. In March we will return to the task of refining and developing the Prayers of Love and Faith and to developing new Pastoral Guidance.

At present we expect both texts to be ready in some form by the July meeting of the General Synod. It’s important to stress, for the moment, that nothing has changed in the Church of England’s pastoral practice, although we do now have a clear direction of travel from the Bishops and affirmed by the General Synod.

Locally and nationally we will continue to listen carefully as this process continues, including of course to LGBTQI+ people and their families. There will be mixed feelings: for many a sense of welcome progress combined with a weariness that the debate will need to continue and disappointment that the Church has not been able to offer the celebration of equal marriage.

As bishops we will also be listening carefully to clergy and churches which are not able in conscience to affirm same sex relationships. We are already in dialogue with a range of individuals and groups across the Diocese of Oxford on this. As I said in my speech to the General Synod:

“My vision for the Diocese of Oxford is that we will be a diocese where all are affirmed and cherished, where same sex relationships can be celebrated and those who hold the traditional view are honoured and respected”.

This will be a demanding vision to realise and each of us has a part to play. I think all of us will need space for some prayer and reflection after the sometimes intense conversation of the last few weeks.

I would encourage taking good time for this in every place locally – but also encourage everyone to wait for the eventual outcomes of the national process before making local decisions which might flow from these debates. The four bishops and all the senior team are very willing to be in dialogue.

Finally, I’ve been drawn more and more over recent weeks into the parable of the two sons in Luke 15. All of us, I am sure, want the whole Church to reflect the radical, inclusive love of the father for the younger son in that powerful moment of welcome caught in Rembrandt’s painting.

The father sees him coming from afar and runs to meet him. He puts his arms around him and kisses him. He calls for the best robe, for a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. There is the most wonderful party.

But my own focus has been on the father at the end of Jesus’ story. The older brother stays outside the celebration. What does the father do? He humbles himself and goes outside to where his other son sits, hurting. He listens to him and urges him to come in.

There is no easy identification here of one group in the debate with the younger son and the other with the older. There are sisters and brothers in each part of this conversation who are bruised and hurt. Each of us might feel at any time as though we have left the party.

But those of us who are called to pastor the Church in this time are called to be like the father at this moment in the story: to go out to them and listen to the pain and, always, to offer the invitation to come and join the celebration. The father’s extraordinary humility and love should be our pattern.

We do not always know how to do this. We do not know the outcome of this part of the story in the gospel. But our calling to love beyond measure is absolutely clear. The Son who tells the story gave his life to draw us and all the world into a single new humanity.

With love in Christ in testing times,

+Steven
10 February, 2023

Image: Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn – Return of the Prodigal Son – Google Art Project

This text was first published as a letter to people in the Diocese of Oxford

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Steven Croft

A prayer for the King

King Charles

The Rt Revd Dr Steven Croft, Bishop of Oxford, issues a message and prayer as King Charles III ascends to the throne.

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Steven Croft

Statement from the Bishop of Oxford

The Rt Revd Dr Steven Croft, Bishop of Oxford, on the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, head of the Church of England.

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Steven Croft

Leadership at a time of chaos

Video still - Bishop Steven in his study looking into camera

We’ve experienced a massive disruption to the world and the life of the Church. Bishop Steven offers a reflection on leadership in chaos.

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Steven Croft

Easter message

The Church needs to take hold to and proclaim the life shaping, earth shaking, glorious, world changing message of Easter. Jesus Christ is risen. Death could not hold him. God raised him from the tomb.

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Steven Croft

Forgive us our sins

Part of the mystery of being human is that we make mistakes – that the darkness in the universe flows through us all.

In hard times, and those times when we’re finding our way, the Lord’s Prayer is a source of strength and courage – a reminder to bring our whole selves to God, good bits and bad.

Revisit the journey so far at oxford.anglican.org/come-and-see

Our thanks to Edith Grindley from St Frideswide’s, Water Eaton, for the Lord’s Prayer in British Sign Language.

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Steven Croft

Give us today our daily bread

We are bombarded 24/7 by adverts with just one aim – to make us unhappy with what we have. Our relationship with stuff has gone badly wrong, and our greed is destroying this fragile planet.

Six words contain the secret to happiness in a world in crisis – a prayer to shape our hearts, to make us content with just enough.

Catch up on the journey so far at oxford.anglican.org/come-and-see

 

Read the transcript.

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Steven Croft

Your kingdom come, Your will be done, On earth as in heaven

Every day the news reminds us of the threads of evil in the world. But the difficult things in life are not the end of the story.

The second line of the Lord’s Prayer is our commitment to being part of the solution – a pledge to play a role, however small, in the mission of God’s kingdom.

Catch up on the journey so far at oxford.anglican.org/come-and-see

 

Read the transcript.

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