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In the past few weeks, lawyers have argued that social media companies knowingly addicted people to their platforms to keep them compulsively engaged. On the other side of the country, I discussed with some friends their misgivings about heaven and hell. A few days later, I realized both of these were, at the root, the same conversation. The question is what sort of life we are being trained to imagine.
The cases against social media companies such as Meta are about the harms minors can face on these platforms, but they’re also about what plaintiffs argue are features engineered to keep developing brains addicted to digital feeds through autoplay, push notifications, and engagement-maximizing algorithms.
One of the more dangerous aspects of the platforms’ design, some of these cases allege, is “infinite scroll.” That is, the app constantly presents viewers another option that merges frictionlessly with the one before. Over time, the brain is wired to think, One more video … One more reel … One more message … and on and on. The question is not whether this happens (who among us has not gotten stuck online?) but whose fault it is.
I had infinite scrolling on my mind when a group of my friends discussed eternity. An unbeliever in the group said his biggest objection to Christianity was the doctrine of hell, but a close second was the doctrine of heaven. He could not conceive of living forever in a world without grief, suffering, death, or struggle. That would evacuate life of its meaning and preciousness, he thought, and would reduce human lives to those of well-fed farm animals.
In one sense, my friend is right—and the Bible agrees with him. The Psalms tell us, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (90:12, ESV throughout).
Thinking about eternity, though, requires a completely different framework from what we have, limited as we are in space and time but also in a fallen universe, which is all we’ve ever known. To talk in the terms we know—except by self-conscious analogy—is akin to what it might feel like to be a physicist answering the question “What was before the Big Bang?” One physicist I heard recently complained it’s hard to communicate that it’s impossible for him—and everybody—to get a picture of something without the sequence of “before” and “after,” because we are enveloped in this world of time and space. We cannot think our way outside it except in the most indirect ways.
The Christian vision of the new creation to come is beyond “all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20). And the apostle Paul described his vision of heaven as “things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor. 12:4). He said the differences between the bodily life we know now and the one in the new creation are akin to the differences of star systems from one another, of seeds from mature growth, or of dust from heaven (1 Cor. 15:35–49).
A 10th-century person peering into our era, upon learning it is almost impossible to find scribes in monasteries trained to copy manuscripts by hand, might well conclude with sadness that the 21st century is a time of universal illiteracy. Imagine, then, trying to explain Wi-Fi signals to that time traveler in a way that wouldn’t seem like sorcery. Even that analogy fails, because the distance in technology between the 10th century and today is nothing compared to our boundedness now in light of the world to come (Isa. 55:8–9).
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The life to come is not a frictionless existence. It is creation freed from bondage to decay (Rom. 8:20–26). The Bible pictures the universe becoming more alive. Creation groans because it wants to be free. Scripture describes our momentary existence in terms of birth pangs—leading to something that is indescribably new yet is where our deepest longings have been pointing all along.
Part of our problem is the way we think about rest. We often think of it as inactivity and lack of struggle, and thus, while we see it’s necessary, we only find it meaningful because it gives us energy. This is not how the Bible describes rest. Israel receives rest on the other side of the Jordan, and it’s not sedation but triumph over those who would destroy them (Deut. 12:9–10). Rest is used in the same way for the high points of the reigns of David (2 Sam. 7:1) and Solomon (1 Kings 5:4). Rest is not when the story ends but—in the most important ways—when it begins.
And that brings us back to the infinite scroll. Those seeking damages from social media companies claim not that bad people use their products badly but that the algorithms work to trap us. The companies would say, We are just giving people what they want. Both are true. The algorithms figure out what we want and then give us more and more of it. If you like videos of raccoons washing grapes, you will get lots of them. If you like conspiracy theorists questioning the moon landing, you get more and more of that. Our feeds are initiated by human wanting, but they also form it.
In at least one important way, we could say hell is algorithmic. More and more, a person is narrowed away from connection to God and others and confined by what he or she wants until that’s all that’s left. Infinite scroll is what happens when our immediate desires, which we think we can curate and control, are cut off from transcendent longings. Yes, there’s struggle and friction, but it’s the wrong kind. It’s the kind that keeps us trapped in ourselves, not the kind that breaks us free. That’s why Jesus speaks of giving each person “a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it” in his promised kingdom (Rev. 2:17).
The “infinite scroll” trap promises us freedom from boredom, with seemingly endless novelty, but leaves us bored. The algorithms of this world close us off to the kind of wonder we get from encountering desires we never even knew we had.
Transcendent longings, on the other hand, are harder to read. We know we are missing something, we know we want to give gratitude, we know we are in awe, but we cannot define all the ways that could be fulfilled—or figure out what comes next. Our deepest longings scare us sometimes, because they can point us somewhere off the map of what we know how to imagine.
The feed gives us more and more “me”—or really, more and more of the mask the machine has learned to recognize as me. Eternal life, by contrast, gives us the life we never knew we wanted. That is why Paul says our “light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17). Eternity is beyond comparison because the categories by which we compare anything will themselves be transfigured.
In some ways, our current way of living is “infinite scroll.” Sooner or later we realize that when we receive more and more of what we expect and think we want, we forget how to ask for something else. What then is tomorrow? Basically, even more of today. If someone spends enough time in a war zone, he or she might well start to think of constant alarm at stepping into minefields as the only way to live. For that person, the idea of falling in love or starting a career or listening to music could be unthinkably boring.
That person might say, “Who would want to live a life without drama and stuff happening?” You might respond, “You’re actually kept from the drama, from stuff happening—stuff you no longer no how to imagine.”
Perhaps we are all in the same place. Whether we are social media addicted or just living in a world where the algorithms go even deeper than digital settings, we get used to our low view of eternity. We start to think it’s normal. We hope for something better but don’t know what to hope for, because our appetites have been trained in this. But that’s the point, isn’t it? “Hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?” (Rom. 8:24).
The infinite scroll is a counterfeit heaven. It offers endlessness without glory, desire without longing, novelty without newness, and rest without resurrection. Our feeds promise us a world without endings, but only what we cannot yet comprehend can give us a whole new world altogether.
Russell Moore is editor at large and columnist at Christianity Today as well as host of the weekly podcast The Russell Moore Show from CT Media.
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