How to Think Better in the Chaos of the Scroll
Outsourced Minds and the Age of Stupidity
No algorithm can replace human wisdom and analysis. But no algorithm will need to if we have abandoned — wholesale — a millennium of critical reading and thinking skills— Joane Westberg
Is technology making us dumber? Nicholas Carr explained in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010) how the internet is actively rewiring our brains, leaving us with dwindling attention spans and preventing us from engaging in deep concentration.
Things have not improved since 2010. And now we have AI, reshaping our brains and ability to think even more. On the one hand, AI can be a highly effective research tool and an assistant that does heavy lifting for us. However, over-reliance on AI is already showing evidence of a loss of critical thinking, and truncating our ability to learn and adapt.
AI relies on scraping the thoughts and ideas of others from the online world and can then summarise, synthesise, and even recommend, based on the biases of the people who programme it. So, what happens when we lose the ability to think? As AI takes over our thinking for us, we will not know or be able to think about what AI produces. We will become locked into a deformational feedback loop of stupidity, unless we take action now.
The more we use technology to aid our thinking, the more we should practice thinking without it.
The good news is that it is not inevitable that we lose the ability to think. Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers, in their article The Extended Mind, explain how our brains develop with a hardwired disposition to use tools and leverage our surroundings. We are genetically coded to be able to explore speaking, but not reading. For most of human history, the majority of people were illiterate. Yet our brains have allowed us to learn how to read and write, and to teach others how to do the same.
As our technology evolves, so does our use of it, both for thinking and for offloading our thinking. I can remember my home phone number from childhood, but not my wife’s mobile phone number, which is stored in my phone and never dialled by hand from my memory. Technology can enhance our thinking, catalysing our processing. I am old enough to remember writing essays by hand. It is much easier now to write with a digital device. I can proofread, correct, and edit in ways I could not previously. I can access an unlimited number of sources without having to visit a physical library. And I can review and grade the work of my leadership students from around the world, without them having to mail their essays as a hard copy to me.
But technology also panders to our inherent laziness. In a world that demands so much from us with numerous inputs, we are so cognitively overloaded that we understandably turn to technology for aid. My email now generates AI responses that sound remarkably like me, which I can edit before sending. I wonder how long it will take until they reply automatically and let me know of a conversation I have had with someone else’s AI auto-replying plenipotentiary? And when a conflict ensues between AI auto-replies, will I be able to say it wasn’t me by my email avatar?
Proximity & Friction
Technology trains us into habits and dispositions. It hardwires our brains and makes avoidance difficult. Apps, games, and social media are engineered to exploit dopamine addiction processes. Importantly, dopamine isn't just released when we enjoy something—it spikes when we anticipate a reward. This creates a loop: do something → feel good (dopamine reward) → want to do it again. And despite not feeling good at the end, we repeat the behaviour.
Too many times, I have been sucked into an extended doom-scrolling loop on my phone, losing track of time and wasting my attention on things that are not the best for me. What starts as checking a message turns into a quick review of other notifications until I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of mindless clicking. And despite my regrets at the end of that, and resolving not to do it again, I do.
Proximity to and ease of access significantly amplify our addiction to technology by making engagement effortless, frequent, and often more unconscious. Technology is always within reach—literally in our pockets, on our wrists, or built into our homes, ready to start up and continue grabbing our attention, with no friction to access. Too many mediocre as well as more appalling things are on permanent autoplay and infinite scroll.
Desire: The Power of Identity-Based Habits
True behaviour change is identity change —James Clear
The good news is that we know the routes to escape from technology addictions, like all addictions. You likely already know about many of the steps. Increase friction to access by deleting apps and placing your phone across the room from you. Track and be accountable for your usage, etc. And yet, like a person on a diet, you likely still end up raiding the metaphorical smartphone cookie jar for a late-night binge.
But help is at hand. Research from behavioural psychology, neuroscience, and habit formation has discovered that the key to building lasting habits of change is focusing on creating a new identity first, i.e identity-based habits.
..current behaviours are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously).
To change your behaviour for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits — James Clear
In other words, many of the changes we attempt fail because they focus on a goal rather than on who we are. My goal might be to become a runner and run a marathon, and then strive to achieve specific goals and targets. That is different to someone who says, “I am a runner”, starts running and keeps on running no matter what happens to them or the running goals they achieve. This identity issue is a pre-deciding factor; that is, this is who I am now.
We see this in all areas of life and formation. Christians who decide from week to week that they want to try to pray more, attend church more, and read their Bibles more often often don’t. A goals-based change is often a ‘maybe’. This is different from an identity change, where there is no maybe; to say I am someone who prays, reads the Bible, and attends church. There is no maybe.
And even deeper, beneath and around identity-based habits, lies the issue of desire. Ultimately, what we do is a reflection of who we are and who we want to be. If we can tap into our desire, being honest about what we want is the foundation for real and lasting change. Do we have a desire that is bigger than the desire being fuelled by the habit we want to change? If so, our behaviour changes around our strongest new desire, forming us around our new identity, creating a feedback loop for lasting habits.
And then we can find that technology, no matter what changes it brings, is something we can use with habits that work with the grain of our better natures.
Loving Right to Think Right
Christianity has long emphasised identity-based habits and desires, even though it hasn’t always used that exact language. From its earliest teachings, Christianity links who a person is (identity), what they love or desire, and how they live (habits or practices). In modern terms, Christianity can be described as one of the oldest identity-based habit systems, where our practices flow from—and reinforce—our identity in Christ.
Practices like prayer, fasting, worship, and service are not just duties — they are habitual acts that shape the soul. These are often referred to as spiritual disciplines. They form believers into people who desire and reflect God more deeply. Authors like Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, and James K.A. Smith have emphasised that practices are not just ways to express faith — they form faith and identity.
So, how does this help us to think better? In the Augustinian sense, loving rightly — or having rightly ordered loves — is not just about being moral or spiritual.1 It's also foundational to thinking clearly, wisely, and truly. You are what you love. And what you love shapes how you see the world.
In other words, right love leads to right thinking. Our minds don’t operate independently of our hearts and desires.
What we desire pulls our attention, filters our perceptions, and even biases our reasoning. If your loves are disordered (e.g., loving ease, comfort, security, status), your thinking will be bent towards serving those desires. Humans are not brains-on-sticks but desiring creatures, and right thinking flows from rightly formed loves. This Christian insight is now backed and explained by neuroscience, psychology, and behavioural science.
However, there are more factors at play than just a correlation with biology and neurology. For Christian identity is more than just one option among many or a competing choice among other identity choices. It is the ultimate choice to order all our other choices, preferences and desires. Within each person are God-given longings that point toward a life of deeper love and greater service to God and to others. When our deepest desires align with God's purposes, a kind of co-creation takes place: our lives begin to reflect his plans for us (I wrote more about this over at my other site, SpEx).
This is why Christian practices for formation, such as Bible memorisation, contemplation, silence, deep reading, Lectio Divina, and imaginative prayer, etc, are so powerful. They not only tap into our neuroscience and psychology, going with the grain, but also involve the desires and activities of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit within us.
Engaging in practices that foster a desire for God creates its own feedback loop. As our identity in God becomes more established and we desire that more, we are drawn to practices that shape us into people who yearn for God even more deeply.
This means some formation is direct. But it is also indirect.
Our ways of thinking, being, and acting are shaped through practices. Through intentional formation, we become more aware of where our attention lies and what captures it. Over time, our disposition, ability, and capacity are transformed. Then, in moments of chaos, tragedy, or challenge, we become the kind of person who can respond differently and indirectly.
For example, a runner trains and prepares for races in advance. But because they are a runner, they can also respond in the moment—sprinting to catch a bus or to stop a pram with a child rolling away. Their ability to act swiftly isn’t just planned; it’s embedded in who they’ve become. A reflex, capacity and orientation.
The Mind of Christ & The Desire to Think Well
So, back to thinking, how does this help us think better? We saw above that technology is not inherently bad; however, if we prioritise attention, speed, or novelty over truth, depth, or God, our inner life becomes chaotic. The problem isn’t AI replacing our thinking — it’s desire disordering how you use AI. Just like with technology addiction, this is ultimately about what we love, how we attend, and who we want to become.
AI is a powerful tool — but it can lead to intellectual laziness if you treat it as a substitute for curiosity, struggle, and discernment. The deeper issue isn't "using AI" — it's a problem of not desiring to become a person who thinks, reflects, and grows.
The beginning of thinking better and well is wanting to be someone who thinks well. To know that struggle is part of learning, that God gave me a mind to cultivate, not just outsource. That growth occurs in tension; hard questions require effort to consider, and truth demands patience. And to then desire to be someone who knows this reality about thinking and wants to be that kind of thinker.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2 NIV
Instead of ‘I am a reactive, lazy, offended, outraged thinker', I choose a different identity: ‘I am a careful, deep, inquisitive thinker’.
This is more than setting goals about thinking, that we might or might not practice. But to pre-decide the kind of thing we are, in advance. If I don’t mind becoming stupid, then I will outsource my thinking to AI and let it and any tech that comes next take the lead.
But if I want the mind of Christ, I will want something very different. Having the mind of Christ does not mean a simplistic, non-thinking faith. But to engage in thinking as profoundly as any matters of the heart and body.
Having the mind of Christ means we don't treat knowledge as something we possess, but as something that possesses us, transforms us. The intellectual life isn’t just about acquiring information or refining arguments; it’s about becoming the kind of person who thinks, speaks, and acts in ways that reflect Christ. Having the mind of Christ doesn’t diminish the intellectual life—it deepens and purifies it. It turns critical thinking into a tool of love and transforms study into a sacred act of formation.
Is that the thinking you want? If so, it will alter your attachments and usage of all technology, including social media and AI.
PostScript: A different kind of triggering
Much of modern media is designed to capture our attention—and to pull it back whenever it drifts from the desires of the merchants who shape it. Social media feeds are algorithmically optimised to display emotionally charged content—fear, outrage, grief—that boosts engagement but also repeatedly activates emotional stress responses.
This creates a feedback loop: stress → scrolling → more stress → more scrolling. Seeing multiple triggering posts in quick succession (violence, abuse, political anger, body image issues, etc.) can overwhelm the brain’s emotional regulation systems. Our brains may not fully process one trigger before the next one occurs, compounding the emotional overload—this is known as trigger stacking. Even when content is upsetting, the novelty keeps us hooked (just writing this makes me want to come off social media).
Social media can act as a trigger minefield, especially when doomscrolling hijacks your attention and emotional regulation. The brain gets flooded with stress signals, often without time to process or recover. But by building awareness, setting boundaries, and grounding yourself, you can break the cycle and take control of your mental space.
But, and I mean a big but, there is hope. Thinking formed in the mind of Christ can give us different responses and triggers. It can develop a mind that can notice, at a subconscious level, the flow of stress signals, dopamine, and deregulation, and come to awareness and attention. Our deepest identity can recognise the incursion, intrusion, and toxicity and say no. Stop. This is not for me.
We see a different triggering from Christians in history, who had engaged their whole selves so deeply in scripture, prayer and meditation, that their neuro-psychology became distraction-prone. For the Church Fathers and the Monastics, just
…the mere fact of hearing certain words, which happen to be similar in sound to certain other words, sets up a kind of chain reaction of associations which will bring together words that have no more than a chance connection, purely external, with one another.
And this would trigger a recollection of a verse of a bible passage that they would then insert into anything they were writing about. Augustine, one of the greatest thinkers in the history of the Church, was so prone to this that it was said of him, ‘He composes 'poorly’.2
I’ll end with a reminder from C.S. Lewis about what is at stake with learning to think well.
God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you that you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
See You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, by James K.A. Smith
H. I. Marrou, S. Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris, 1949), pp. 59-76