Phones block access to spiritual depth. That’s what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in his newest bestseller The Anxious Generation. The frenetic, distractible nature of the screen-based existence most of us live in every day is eroding our ability to pursue meaning, transcending values, and empathy for other people.

Haidt was recently joined in conversation by Andy Crouch, a Christian author who has written extensively on technology and culture in books like The Tech-Wise Family and The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World. “My life is full of convenience,” Crouch writes in the latter title mentioned.

It is full of transaction, at its best a mutually beneficial exchange of value, a kind of arm’s-length benign use of one another for our own ends. But it is not of contemplation. It is often efficient. But it is lonely.

The conversation was hosted by The Veritas Forum and focused on being a human person in a highly technological society where things are “easier” than ever but we find ourselves more anxious and depressed than ever at the same time.

How do people develop in the age of the smartphone? When kids are getting them at age ten, how do they mature? “A phone-based self is probably an anxious self,” said Haidt in the video. “Because you don’t have a sense of who I am grounded in this community.”

The fragmentation inherent in the phone-based life is concerning for the growth of children. We’re raising a new generation of kids who don’t know how to play, socialize, or take risks. This is what Haidt calls the “The Great Re-Wiring.”

Crouch also commented on technology as “magic,” a notion he investigates further in his writing. Technology, says Crouch, is most alluring when it’s pitched as a magical power, able to “unlock cheat codes for the universe.” He elaborates, “What we’re after in magic is instant, effortless, and therefore impersonal power.”

The main problem with “magical thinking” is that it is, by nature, impersonal, because personal connection is never instant. Relationship takes time to incubate and form. Haidt also mentions that our sense of self is anything but instant. Ideally, it’s formed within the loving attachments of family and the broader community. We’re losing that process through the invasion of these devices that promise instant results in place of what can only be achieved through time, growth, and investment.

The whole video is well worth watching and is available in full below.