You were built for meaning, not cheap pleasure



For most of human history, scarcity was the enemy. Territory, calories, energy, and land all had to be fought for, hoarded, and rationed. Wars were waged and innovations forged to survive deprivation. But the material hardship that once united societies in common struggle has largely faded in the affluent world.

Now we face a different enemy: artificial abundance.

The future belongs to those who reject the simulacrum and embrace reality.

In the wealthiest nations, human beings are no longer selected for resilience in the face of scarcity. They’re selected for their ability to resist the seductions of abundance — synthetic food, fake relationships, dopamine on demand. The danger isn’t hunger or want, but the numbing comfort of simulated satisfaction.

Loaded with empty calories

Once, entire civilizations rose or fell depending on their ability to produce and preserve food. Famines routinely devastated societies, and most people spent their lives just trying to eat.

Now, calories come cheap and easy. Factory farming, food science, and global logistics mean even the poorest Americans can gorge on processed junk. A trip to McDonald’s or a few bucks at Walmart buys a week’s worth of empty calories.

But artificial flavorings and chemical fillers are no substitute for real food. They simulate nourishment, but slowly poison the body. Calories are now so available that obesity, not hunger, is the largest threat to the well-being of the poor. The need has been met — and subverted.

Sex and glory, sold cheap

The same dynamic has corrupted sexual desire. Historically, sex drove men to build civilizations, conquer enemies, win wealth, and rise in status. Today, that drive is short-circuited. Men can now simulate conquest and fulfillment without risk, pain, or purpose — through pornography and video games.

Why fight for honor or love when you can get the illusion of both from a screen? Instead of greatness, many young men settle for a life of digital masturbation — and that’s how the system likes it. Young men remain trapped in a kind of eternal adolescence: satisfied just enough to avoid rebellion, addicted just enough to stay quiet.

Fake attention, real loneliness

Social media and dating apps have similarly distorted the lives of young women. Women crave connection, validation, and community — roles they once fulfilled in family, faith, and friendship.

Now they chase attention online, deluding themselves into believing that likes and comments are the same as love and loyalty. Social media simulates female community and male desire, but gives neither. Depression rises. Real-life relationships crumble. Women fear male attention in person but crave it online, where they feel in control.

RELATED: Rule by the people? Not anymore in the Western world

  Blaze Media Illustration

What results is a dysfunctional, hypergamous dating market. Men won’t approach. Women hold out for the fantasy of the “perfect man” who never arrives. Both sexes lose.

Lockdowns revealed the lie

COVID-19 lockdowns showed us the true danger of attempting to simulate every aspect of human experience.

During the lockdowns, social interactions from school, church, work, and even bonding with friends over a meal became impossible. School, church, work, friendship — all of it was forcibly digitized.

The results were catastrophic: soaring depression, stalled childhood development, and broken education.

But the worst part? People stayed in their digital cages even after the doors opened. Simulated connection became easier than real interaction. And easier won.

The real thing is harder — and worth it

Reality demands effort. Family, community, faith, and responsibility are hard. They hurt. They risk rejection. But they matter.

Left alone with simulated choices, most people will pick the path of least resistance. That’s why society must rethink what it rewards. Because the simulations aren’t harmless distractions — they’re traps.

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called this phenomenon the “simulacrum” — a copy with no original. A cheeseburger that isn’t food. AI “friends” that aren’t human and virtual “communities” that cannot possibly relieve loneliness. A porn star who looks and behaves nothing like a real woman. Online attention that ruins offline romance. Video game violence that replaces true heroism.

An evolutionary filter

We face an evolutionary bottleneck as serious as any in human history. But instead of favoring the strong, smart, or adaptable, survival now depends on who can say no.

Can you say no to simulated sex? Simulated success? Simulated community? Can you hunger for meaning, not just comfort?

Those who make it through this filter will be the ones who choose austerity over ease — who hunger for the real thing. The future belongs to those who reject the simulacrum and embrace reality.

Artificial intelligence will only make these temptations worse. But those who refuse to be pacified will also be the ones who endure.

Choose meaning. Teach your children to do the same. The future depends on it.

Putting Political Litmus Tests In Your Dating App Bio Is A Red Flag

When people only want political 'discussions' that confirm their biases, they make the vulnerability that relationships require impossible.

New Texas Law Targets Mass Screen Addiction Among Kids

Unless parents make a concerted effort to deal with the smartphone, the great majority of kids will never come close to reaching their full potential.

Boredom: A spiritual weapon to fight the machine



Charles Dickens popularized the term in his 1853 novel “Bleak House”; 17th-century French mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal argued that much of human activity is an effort to avoid it; and long before that, medieval monks called it the noonday demon.

Of what abomination do I speak?

I speak of boredom — though labeling it an abomination is a gross misunderstanding of it. This year, as part of my “2025 resolutions,” I’ve allowed myself to be riddled with boredom more often, white-knuckling myself into stillness when my brain itches for stimulation.

And no, this is not some kind of psychological masochism, although admittedly it can feel that way. On the contrary, my hope of becoming reacquainted with the boredom I lost touch with in adolescence is a response to this bustling, exhausting third millennium we’re inhabiting — a place where the doldrums, once a hallmark of the human experience, have been exiled by the monarch of the 21st century: technology, the strange paradox that gave us back so much of our time and then savagely stole it all back (plus some).

My bones ache for something different, something gentler and more nourishing than the brutality of this digital age. I’m convinced that welcoming boredom home is a map to greener pastures.

Before supercomputers found a home in our pockets, before social media escorted us into a digital dimension, before entertainment was a tap on an app away, ennui was a quiet companion known to all. Not so long ago, he stood with us in long lines at coffee shops, sat silently in our passenger seats, and sighed next to us in lobbies as we waited for our names to be called.

Though we might have greeted him with sighs and furious finger-drumming, boredom’s offer was life-giving, even though, ironically, his company can feel like a slow death.

Too many of us answer boredom’s inquiry without even realizing it.

Often mistaken for depression, apathy, or its evil twin, idleness, boredom is as necessary to human flourishing as sunlight, community, and sleep. That’s not conjecture, either. There are numerous scientific books published on this subject. I’ll refer to one of the most cited among them.

In “Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom,” cognitive neuroscientist Dr. James Danckert and clinical psychologist John D. Eastwood define boredom like this: “A call to action, a signal to become more engaged.”

Boredom, they argue, is what happens when human agency — our desire and capacity for engagement — experiences a temporary lull. Not to be conflated with what German philosopher Martin Heidegger called profound boredom (i.e., a lingering emptiness), acute boredom occurs when humdrum hits and we don’t know what we want, only that we want something. “A desire for desires,” Russian writer Leo Tolstoy called it in his literary masterpiece “Anna Karenina.”

This desire for desires is good, Danckert and Eastwood say — it “protects us from the ruin of stagnation precisely because it motivates action.” In this way, it is a biological necessity.

However advantageous boredom may be, it’s still maddening to experience. When it shows up like an unwanted visitor, our prefrontal cortexes beg us to do something — and pronto.

Although the time it takes for our modern brains to start sending signals for engagement, please! has decreased thanks to our attention span-obliterating screens, boredom has always asked the same question: What’s next?

While it may seem arbitrary, how we answer this question every day will add up exponentially over time.

Regrettably, too many of us answer boredom’s inquiry without even realizing it. Before our brains can process that we’ve encountered a lackluster moment, we’ve already grabbed our phones (or some other device) and banished boredom with a digital dopamine hit.

Long before smartphones became the equivalent of human limbs, Aldous Huxley — a clairvoyant we don’t talk about nearly enough — predicted this would happen. “Brave New World” was a bleak and harrowing warning about “man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

Forty-seven years after the publication of "Brave New World," media theorist and critic Neil Postman wrote “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” in which he argued that Las Vegas, “a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment,” was the best metaphor to capture the zeitgeist of the age. Everything from education and news to church and commerce was delivered to us via entertaining avenues, causing public discourse to rot into mere drivel.

“We are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death,” he chided. And that was in 1985 — 22 years before the launch of the iPhone. How much more his words ring true today.

In “Out of My Skull,” Danckert and Eastwood reveal that digital stimulation won’t solve our boredom woes anyway. “Such attention-grabbing devices work all too well in the short term; so well, in fact, that they are irresistible when we are desperate to be rid of boredom. In the long run, the more we allow things external to us to solve the problem of boredom, the more our agency atrophies.”

So if external stimulation isn’t the antidote to a bout of boredom, what is?

The answer Danckert and Eastwood ultimately arrive at is that boredom isn’t something to be solved but something to be listened to. If we lend it our ear, we will hear a profound message: “The solution must come from within us.”

If we are successful at wrestling our appetite for external stimuli into submission, mindfulness, presence, and introspection await us on the other side.

In other words, we are the answer to our problem.

But as a Christian, I don’t think we are ever the answer to our problems. I’m not averse to mindfulness, presence, or introspection. These are all beneficial practices. But when I hold this advice up to biblical wisdom, here’s what seems apparent to me: As complex emotional beings, we have a very real need to “engage” with ourselves by processing our thoughts and feelings. Yet we have a supreme need to engage with our Creator. The best way to understand ourselves is to sit before the one who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves.

In his book “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry," John Mark Comer says it like this: “All those little moments of boredom [are] potential portals to prayer. Little moments throughout our days to wake up to the reality of God all around us. To wake up to our own souls. To draw our minds’ attention (and, with it, devotion) back to God; to come off the hurry drug and come home to awareness.”

Coming home to awareness of an unwavering, perfect God sounds so much better than coming home to awareness of messy, scattered me. One of those presences offers quiet to calm the chaos; the other is the chaos.

I’m not arguing with Danckert and Eastwood, though. I think they’ve arrived at a truth, just not the truth. Self-attunement is an answer to boredom — and a good one at that — just like a walk in the sunshine can be an effective way to lower anxiety levels. But a walk in the sunshine as we attune ourselves to God’s presence all around us? Now that is the premium package.

“Mindfulness is simply silence and solitude for a secular society. It’s the same thing, just missing the best part — Jesus,” Comer says.

It’s like this: Why meditate on what’s causing my angry outbursts when I can lay them before a God who, knowing the innermost workings of my heart, can show me the hidden resentment and pain that are fueling the anger and then heal me of it?

Danckert and Eastwood contend that embracing boredom as an opportunity for “inward attention” allows us “to be the authors of our own lives” and "identify our desires and goals.”

A life void of boredom is a life that doesn’t resemble that of Jesus.

That sounds nice, except I’ve been the author of my life before. It didn’t go well. But living palms raised and open, ready to surrender my will and receive His — there I have found life abundant. Where psychology offers a solution that might fortify the mind, God offers an opportunity that will strengthen the mind. And the soul, too.

I choose option B.

But I’m going to have to choose it every day, probably multiple times a day, like when I hit the seventh red light on my drive home, when a random bout of insomnia has me wide-eyed at 2:00 a.m., or when I step away from my chattery computer to eat lunch and suddenly the silence is like a gnat that won’t go away.

This is not the easy path. I’ve been at it for only a short while, and I can tell you, that glowing rectangle in my pocket is one of the most formidable foes I’ve ever faced. I have to wrestle it into dark drawers or the black hole that is my purse, out of sight (but rarely out of mind), to even give myself a shot at spiritually capitalizing on boredom.

In a recent Substack article titled “The Gulf and the Silence,” English writer Paul Kingsnorth described his ironically illuminating experience losing power for two days at his home in Ireland: “Maybe when the lights go out, even for a while, and the current withdraws, a certain lightness returns. The gears and cogs are forced to retreat. The grid is the portal through which the machine enters our minds and begins to fray the edges of our souls.”

Do you get chills reading that? I do. It reminds me that to fight for mastery over my hunger for digital stimulation, which is just an appendage of the machine, is to assume guardianship over my mind and, by default, my soul. What a worthy cause to devote myself to.

But it’s also a worthy cause because to succeed is to live a life more like that of our Savior.

If I may be so bold, a life void of boredom is a life that doesn’t resemble that of Jesus. I don’t know if Jesus was ever bored or not; I would wager he wasn’t, but he was certainly not apprehensive about stillness. In fact, he regularly sought it out, eager to escape into the quiet of His father’s presence.

Comer spends a good portion of “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” talking about Jesus’ relationship with the eremos — a deserted, desolate, or quiet place. “‘Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness’ because it was there, and only there, that Jesus was at the height of his spiritual powers,” he says, citing Matthew 4:1.

If anything is the antithesis of the eremos in our modern world, it’s not a metropolis, a swarming airport, or a packed coffee shop. It is the screen sitting on our desk, the bigger one mounted to the wall, and especially the small but fierce one in our back pocket. These digital wastelands of ceaseless noise and information beckon us to consume, consume, consume — staving off our hunger for what is truly nourishing.

In the soul-piercing words of Kingsnorth, “Maybe prayer and electricity are fighting a war.”

Observing just my own life leads me to believe that they are. The fate of that battle is in my hands, though. Welcoming boredom home as an invitation to abide in God’s presence might just be the sword with which I ensure prayer’s victory.

Sweden Warns Parents: Quit Plopping Your Baby In Front Of Brain-Rotting Screens

When screen time is eliminated or reduced, children have more time to be outside, interact in person, and, critically, sleep.

Phones Are Destroying Kids’ Ability To Read Books

'My son used to be a voracious reader — a couple books a week. And then we gave him a phone and the reading stopped.'

Blaze News original: The surprising companies accused of helping sexual exploitation — and how to protect your children online



You might be surprised to learn which digital entities are accused of facilitating, enabling, and even profiting from sexual abuse and exploitation online.

Last month, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation released its annual “Dirty Dozen” list, a campaign bringing attention to entities and companies it believes are complicit in sexual exploitation.

This year’s list includes the following entities and the NCOSE's reasoning for including them:

  • Apple: "This Big Tech titan refuses to scan for child sex abuse material, hosts dangerous apps with deceptive age ratings and descriptions, and won’t default safety features for teens."
  • Cash App: "This peer-to-peer payment app appeals to pimps, predators, and pedophiles looking for a covert way to conduct criminal activity."
  • Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act: "The Greatest Enabler of Online Sexual Exploitation. Misinterpretations of Communications Decency Act Section 230 grant Big Tech blanket immunity for any and all types of abuses they facilitate."
  • Cloudflare: "Providing a platform for sex buyers and traffickers. Cloudflare says it wants to build a better internet. So why does it provide services to some of the most prolific prostitution forums and deepfake sites?"
  • Discord: "This platform is popular with predators seeking to groom kids and with creeps looking to create, trade, or find sexually abusive content of children and unsuspecting adults."
  • LinkedIn: "LinkedIn legitimizes Pornhub and other exploitative enterprises by giving them a platform, overlooks deepfake tool promotion, and is rampant with sexual harassment against women."
  • Meta: "Meta’s launch of end-to-end encryption, open-sourced AI, and virtual reality are unleashing new worlds of exploitation."
  • Github: "The vast majority of deepfakes, 'nudify' apps, and AI-generated child sex abuse content originate on this platform owned by the world’s richest company."
  • Reddit: "Child sex abuse material, sex trafficking, and image-based sexual abuse hide in plain sight among endless pornography subreddits allowed on this platform."
  • Roblox: "Roblox treats child protection like a game. Among the avatars, blocks, and buildings, kids are exposed to predators, rape-themed games, and age-inappropriate content like sex parties."
  • Spotify: "Sexually explicit images, sadistic content, and networks trading child sex abuse material on its platform prove Spotify is out of tune with basic child safety measures and moderation practices."
  • Telegram: "Messaging app Telegram serves as a safe haven for criminal communities across the globe. Sexual torture rings, sextortion gangs, deepfake bots, and more all thrive on an alarming scale."

What is immediately obvious about the list is that children and teenagers use these applications and programs every day.

Children are, therefore, being exposed to the dangers of sexual exploitation through these entities, according to the NCOSE, an alarming phenomenon that validates the thesis of psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s newest book, “The Anxious Generation.”

His central idea goes like this: “We have overprotected children in the real world and underprotected them in the virtual world.”

That our children face an onslaught of digital dangers in an increasingly technological world raises an important question: How can parents protect their children in our digital world?

If you asked Haidt for his prescription to the problem, he would counsel you not to buy your children a smartphone until they begin high school. And social media? Don’t let them use it before age 16 — at the earliest.

Others believe the dangers that screens and social media pose are too great for any child because, after all, a person's brain won't complete its development until one's mid-20s.

But experts who spoke with Blaze News made it clear: This is not an issue parents can ignore because the well-being of your family and the lives of your children are at stake.

"We have a distorted view of the creepy guy in the van picking up our kids on the way to the playground or the fear of a child climbing too high on the tree," Lina Nealon, vice president and director of corporate advocacy at NCOSE, told Blaze News.

"But then we give them this very dangerous device with very little oversight or even understanding of the dangers that are literally in the palm of their hands," she warned.

Blaze News reached out to each of the companies listed above. None provided a response to NCOSE's allegations.

The problem is vast

Mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, bullying, suicidal ideations, addictions, and exploitation — those are just some of the problems with the digital world.

But the unique challenge with the digital world is that social media and digital technologies are designed to hook users by hijacking their brain chemistry to keep them scrolling without understanding the consequences of such behavior.

"They are dangerous by their very design because their profit is made by facilitating those connections and making people stay online," Nealon said.

This online world is not only dangerous for you, according to Nealon, but your children are particularly vulnerable.

"First of all, there are very little limitations and protections for children online from being accessed by adults in general — adult strangers and certainly predatory adults," she explained.

"Teenagers, they are built to seek connection and meet. They want to meet new people. They want to know where they fit into the world. And so these companies — Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok — create this environment where it is very easy," she said. "It's not only easy for predators to access kids, but they're creating the very environment that makes kids more susceptible to sexual abuse and exploitation."

Through connection, likes, and shares, social media companies tap into the vulnerabilities of children, Nealon explained — and make them even more vulnerable.

"These platforms are actually reducing the self-esteem and self-worth of these children, and then they are allowing predators and adults to access them to see what they're doing, to see those vulnerabilities, to actually interact with them," she said. "So, from that perspective, it's very dangerous."

What is most alarming, Nealon told Blaze News, is that social media and digital companies do not have an incentive to protect your children.

"It's their very business model to put these kids at risk," she said. "I would say that they themselves are predators in a sense because they are preying on our children and their vulnerabilities for profit."

How to protect your family

Thankfully, all is not lost.

You can protect your family and children from the harms of the digital world — but it requires intentionality and sacrifice.

1. Educate yourself and your children

Melanie Hempe, founder of ScreenStrong, said the most important step to protect your family from the dangers of the digital world is to educate yourself and your family.

"Get educated and understand how kids are different from adults," Hempe told Blaze News. "The way an adult uses a screen is very different from the way a child uses a screen. We tend to think our kids are just little adults — and that's not true. They don't have impulse control. They're high-risk takers, and they're going to be searching for novelty even more than we are."

The sheer power of digital technology is exactly why parents need to be educated, Hempe explained, so that they "know how to harness the power."

"I'm telling you: You pay now or you pay later, but someone will pay. And most of the time, our kids are the ones paying," she warned.

Nealon delivered a similar warning.

"Be educated and keep up with the trends and what's happening," she said. "There's so much research out there ... and I think the less digital, the healthier your kids will be."

2. Cultivate a community of shared values

Engaging in conversations with other adults where your children are — such as school, church, and friends' houses — is critical to protect them from the harms of the digital world.

"Having conversations with adults where your children are going to be — at school, at church, in activities and youth groups — we are constantly shocked at how even leadership, people who are supposed to be caring for children, don't understand even some of the basic risks of the technology they may be using and actually encouraging kids to use," Nealon told Blaze News.

"It's critical to have those conversations when your child is going elsewhere because you can have all of the safety features at home. You can have the conversations, you can be very vigilant," she explained. "But, of course, they're out there in the world, and you hope that your children will make the right decisions — but they're also children."

"So, we need to make sure that the other adults that we put in their care are also paying attention and know and can also be sure that they're doing what they can to minimize the risks to the kids," she said.

Hempe agreed that cultivating community is necessary when seeking the proper relationship with screens and the digital world.

"It's hard to be alone and doing this on your own, especially when you have kids — they want to play with other kids who are not on Fortnite all day," she said. "You want your kids to be around other kids who have the same values and that are shooting for the high bar like you are."

3. Internet filters

If you choose to let your children use digital technology, consider installing software on devices that filter what they will be able to see and access.

"Make use of technology that's out there to protect your kids online," Nealon advised.

Companies like Bark, Canopy, and Covenant Eyes have built solutions for parents looking for filtering software. The benefit of these technologies is that you can limit what your children can access (i.e., harmful content) while still allowing them to use the internet.

4. Be a coach

When it comes to technology and your family, Hempe said parents need to be a coach.

"They need us to be like a coach," she said.

"My daughter was in gymnastics for years, and I learned so much about coaching," she explained. "I learned the coach has to be present when a child is doing something that's kind of dangerous. The coach has to be there. The coach can't be in the other room. And she learned that, 'Hey, I need my coach right here to spot me.' That's how it is with screens: We have to be there to spot our kids."

Hempe said it's not about being "controlling" or "legalistic." But she warned that giving children unfettered access to technology not only exposes them to the harms of the digital world — like screen addictions and sexual exploitation — but it's like letting your children drive a Mack truck on the interstate.

"They're not going to be safe on the highway when they're 10 years old driving the Mack truck," she explained.

Tools, not toys

The truth is that technology is not going anywhere. In less than 20 years' time, we've gone from the iPhone to AI, and Gen Z cannot fathom a life without social media or the digital world.

It is up to parents, then, to take serious the relationship their family will have to technology. Exploitation, digital addictions, and attachment dysfunctions are just some of the ramifications that parents are now facing because of technology, screens, and social media.

When discerning how to move forward with technology, remember this one principle from Hempe: Screens are a "tool — not a toy."

If you can remember that, Hempe promised you will figure out how to raise children in a digital world, all while protecting your family from the built-in harms of the technology.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Stop Scrolling And Use Your Phone To Reach Out To Others

The strength of our community is only as strong as the commitment we make to maintaining it.

Sen. Hawley Humiliates Mark Zuckerberg For Lying About How Big Tech Hurts Kids

Hawley demanded Zuckerberg apologize to the families of children whom Big Tech has helped exploit and harm.

On Weekends, Americans Spend More Time With Screens Than People

An 'introvert economy' has come to define America's post-lockdown culture, according to the Manhattan Institute's Allison Schrager.