The New Dark Ages

Smartphones are partly to blame for the exponential rise of antisemitism across the world.

It’s an unavoidable conclusion to an outstanding thesis I have studied which shows how the ubiquitous use of these devices has robbed people of the ability to think coherently, reducing their already meagre ‘knowledge’ to a hotch-potch of sloppy slogans.

For the change in reading habits from the printed page to the smartphone is taking us back to the Dark Ages.

This is the ominous theme of a stirring new book by journalist James Marriott who demonstrates how it is undermining democracy and dumbing down public debate to monosyllabic drivel.

People are no longer reading books and newspapers and, as a result, have lost the ability to comprehend and communicate ideas.

We are no longer influenced by what we read, but by the latest message on our mobile which serves to distract and even enslave us on an almost permanent basis. And our addiction renders us incapable of grasping what is going on in the world, explaining in part the mass signing up to protests over issues about which we know virtually nothing.

James alludes to this in The New Dark Ages (Bodley Head, 2026), mocking the way screen-based communication excites the viewer “even if you don’t really have much of a clue what is actually going on in the Middle East”.

I thoroughly concur with his overall thesis, that the smartphone is undermining our civilisation as a whole and, as I told him myself at the book’s launch in York, Christians too have tragically stopped reading books and newspapers, and are thus highly vulnerable to social media slop, backed up by news flashes from the broadcasters. They no longer allow themselves to be informed by clear-headed written script on the threats to our country and faith.

In answer to my point, he declared his ‘not religious’ credentials, but I have since spotted references to Christianity, mostly positive, all over the book.

Of course, the part played by the Bible in encouraging people to read since the invention of the printing press is fully acknowledged, and he owns up to being put in his place after challenging a street preacher as a teenager influenced by the ‘new atheism’.

James is obviously still sceptical of the supernatural but betrays a hint of seeking something deeper with his repeated references to the ‘meaning of life’.

Yes, he seems to say this is something attainable, to some degree, through books – in contrast to the meaningless addiction to smartphones. According to one estimate, users check their mobiles on average 144 times a day!

But Christians also need to read more, so that they’re less inclined to be influenced by short, sharp, machine-gun messages from broadcasters with an agenda. They should instead be renewing their minds as the Apostle Paul urges in the context of understanding our responsibility to Israel (Romans 12:2). This of course involves reading the Bible (Old and New Testament) as well as good books that aid our understanding.

James recalls how reading was virtually his family’s religion. “Shakespeare was our Jesus…”, he writes. But he freely admits that literacy “cannot effect a wholesale reformation of human nature”.

He is horrified, as we all should be, by the “nihilistic tornado of content” on TikTok, adding that “the smartphone is to information what fast food is to nutrition” and that, for many, “reality is an increasingly marginal phenomenon that occurs around the edges of screen time”.

As a journalist whose career was steeped in newspapers – and I still write for some – it pains me to record the fact that Britain saw 320 newspapers close between 2009 and 2019.

As a result, growing numbers of citizens are oblivious to current affairs. According to one estimate, there may now be fewer local newspapers in the UK than at any time since the 18^th century – i.e. since before the birth of modern democracy. One ominous result is that citizens vote less!

James adds that “where print can be used as a medium of rational persuasion and for the cultivation of sympathy, screens tend to push us towards conflict”.

As to the meaning of life clearly on Marriott’s mind, the Jesus he substituted for books is the very one who epitomises life itself. For he said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no-one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) And in the words of St Paul, knowing Jesus is to take hold of “the life that is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19).

Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.