Recently, the middle schoolers and I got into a bit of a debate over social media. I asked them if the various social media platforms were helping people to become more thoughtful. The class immediately responded it was and said there are different accounts that do produce solid intellectual content. But then I asked, “And how much of your time is spent watching that instead of silly videos?” The room fell to silence until one student admitted he only watches silly videos.

Of course, in all fairness, the dynamic described above doesn’t apply to just young people when they go online. Many people of every generation use technology for just such trivial pursuits and mindless entertainment. As Catholics, the Church offers us some sage advice on how to understand the role and purpose of technology in our lives, which is becoming an all the more consuming debate as artificial intelligence arrives on the scene. First and foremost, the Church urges us to see technology as a tool and, as with every other tool, its value is largely dependent upon how it is used. Thus, the Church does not see technology per se as either good or bad. It evaluates various pieces of technology based on whether they serve purposes that both advance the good of the human person and also respect God’s creative prerogatives.

During his pontificate, Pope Francis regularly warned against technology becoming a worldview where technological power is treated as an end unto itself. “It has become countercultural to choose a lifestyle,” Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si, “whose goals are even partly independent of technology.”  Indeed, our late Holy Father correctly understands that as so many people see how hard it is to abstain from something that has become as ubiquitous as smartphones, which didn’t really arrive in the culture until 2007 and yet now are understood by scores of millions of people as being indispensable to living. The Church’s social teaching is calling us not so much to reject smartphones or whatever other technological tool we may imagine, but rather to approach them with converted hearts and minds that relegate them to their proper place. Technology is merely a set of tools and we must evaluate it in terms of how it helps us to grow in sanctity not only as individuals but also as a society.