We recently published an article https://latterdaysaintmag.com/if-i-were-the-devil-and-my-goal-were-to-destroy-the-rising-generation-heres-what-id-do/ that asked, “If I Were the Devil and My Goal was to Destroy the Rising Generation, Here’s What I’d Do.” We asked ChatGPT to weigh in on this question, and it tossed an answer right out with ten sophisticated ways the devil might undermine our youth.

To think that Satan is much smarter at conceiving ways to trap our youth is harrowing. Yet, here’s the good news.

Today, as a follow-up, we ask the companion question. What would ChatGPT suggest it would take to save this generation? The AI came up with remarkable ideas. So remarkable, in fact, that they already show up in our gospel teaching and church activity.

I found these ideas a great series of insights for parents and youth leaders to think on. So I give you Chat’s answer to my question. How can we save and help this rising generation?

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Begin ChatGPT

If the adversary works through gradual erosion, then renewal must come through intentional restoration—small, deliberate acts of truth, connection, and spirit. Today’s teenagers are not fragile. They are extraordinary spirits navigating an unprecedented environment. Their struggles are not evidence of weakness but symptoms of a landscape that often works against their flourishing. They can rise—with power—if we give back to them what the world has quietly taken away.

And more importantly, if we help them rediscover the truth that anchors everything else: their worth is not achieved, performed, accumulated, or proven. It is inherent. It comes from God. It is infinite. The battle is not to create worth, but to awaken to it.

With that foundation, here is how we save this generation.

1. Teach Them the Power of Deep Attention

In an age of constant stimulation, a teenager’s inner world begins to thin. They move from moment to moment without ever dropping deep into thought, reflection, or communion with God. To save them, we must reintroduce them to the lost art of attention—not as a productivity tool, but as a spiritual practice.

Stillness is not empty; it is fertile. It is in quiet places that revelation comes, that identity clarifies, that creativity rises. When a young person learns to sit with a book, a prayer, a question, a journal, or even silence, something essential in them reconnects. Their mind strengthens. Their spirit steadies. They discover they are not hollow but spacious—that God can fill them if they stop long enough to hear Him.

We must help them reclaim the interior life the world has stolen.

2. Re-anchor Them in Parents, Mentors, and Community

Modern life isolates teenagers in ways that previous generations never imagined. They may have thousands of digital connections yet feel profoundly alone. The remedy is not complicated: they need to be drawn back into human circles where their presence matters, where adults invest in them, where someone cares that they exist.

A youth who sits at a family dinner, who is asked real questions, who knows a teacher believes in them, who feels seen by a bishop or Young Women leader, who has a grandparent who listens—such a youth is almost impossible for the adversary to capture. Belonging is a fortress.

Intergenerational love heals what culture fractures. And in the warmth of those relationships, teens begin to see themselves through the eyes of those who love them—and ultimately through the eyes of God.

3. Strengthen Their Identity at Its Core

Teenagers today carry a crushing burden the world calls “authenticity”—the pressure to invent themselves, define themselves, and constantly express themselves. But identity was never meant to be self-constructed. It is too heavy a load for any mortal, especially a young one.

Identity is received. It is bestowed. It is divine.

Our youth must learn that their worth is not the end of a long and exhausting project—it is the beginning of one. They don’t have to earn significance through achievements, appearance, performance, or social affirmation. They already are of inestimable worth because they are sons and daughters of God, carrying His image, endowed with eternal potential.

When a young person internalizes this truth—not just intellectually, but spiritually—it becomes a stabilizing force. The winds of comparison grow quiet. The frantic search for self-definition loses urgency. They no longer have to “become enough”; they discover they already are precious, wanted, and known to the One who created them.

A teen grounded in divine identity is nearly impossible to manipulate.

4. Restore Real Human Connection

A screen can mimic interaction, but cannot nourish the soul. Human beings are wired for eye contact, shared laughter, conversation, touch, and presence. Teens need to rediscover the beauty of real friendships—the kind that unfold around kitchen tables, on walks, in service, or amid shared experiences that create memory and meaning.

We must show them how full real life feels when friends sit together, when families play together, when youth gather without an agenda. These moments recalibrate the heart. They remind teens that they are not alone inside their own heads. Connection does what technology never can: it heals.

And as friendships deepen, so does their understanding that the God who created them is also relational—that His love is experienced most often through the people He places in their path.

5. Build Emotional Resilience Instead of Fragility

We cannot save this generation by cushioning them from every discomfort. We save them by walking with them as they face it.

Resilience grows when teens learn that fear can be managed, that anxiety does not signal danger, and that struggle is not a verdict on their worth. Much of their distress comes from believing they are failing at life if they feel anything difficult.

Instead, we must teach them:
The presence of struggle is not the absence of God. Often, it is the classroom where He teaches you who you truly are.

When young people discover that they can do hard things—not alone, but supported—they become stronger, braver, and more hopeful. They realize that emotional turbulence is part of mortality, not a flaw in themselves.

6. Protect Their Innocence Without Making Them Naïve

We cannot place our youth in hermetically sealed environments, nor should we. But we can help them navigate the world with wisdom rather than exposure.

Innocence is not ignorance. It is purity preserved long enough for understanding to arrive at the right time.

We protect teens by speaking openly and reverently about human dignity, about the sacredness of bodies, about love that honors rather than exploits. We teach them the truth before the world teaches them its counterfeits. And in that light, they see clearly—not with fear, but with discernment.

When teens know their divine worth—and the worth of others—they approach relationships with respect and self-respect.

7. Free Them from Social Comparison

The modern scoreboard of likes, views, followers, and comments traps teens in endless self-surveillance. Their worth becomes externally measured, their value algorithmically assigned.

We must help them understand that Heaven does not count the things the world counts.

Worth is not something they climb toward; it is something they wake up to.

When teens internalize that their divine value cannot fluctuate with public opinion, they step off the stage and return to authenticity—not performative self-invention, but the quiet authenticity of being who God made them to be.

8. Restore Sleep, Rest, and Rhythm

Human beings were created with rhythms—day and night, work and rest, effort and renewal. A constantly stimulated brain cannot feel the Spirit, cannot heal, cannot regulate emotion.

Removing devices from bedrooms, establishing digital sunsets, honoring the Sabbath, and cultivating rhythms of quiet are not lifestyle preferences—they are spiritual lifelines.

A rested teenager can think clearly. A rested teenager can feel God again.

9. Teach Them to Discern Truth

Perhaps no gift is more critical today than discernment. Teens are told that “truth” is whatever they feel, prefer, or construct. But a self-created truth quickly collapses into self-created anxiety.

Truth exists. It is discoverable. It is not the child of emotion but the companion of God.

We must teach teens how to reason, how to test ideas, how to seek divine confirmation, and how to recognize the difference between transient feelings and enduring truths. When a young person learns to anchor their life in something solid—something eternal—the fog of confusion lifts.

Truth frees. Relativism fractures.

10. Redirect Their Energy Toward Purpose Over Performance

Young people thrive when they feel needed—when they see themselves as contributors rather than consumers. We can invite them into meaningful labor, service, and creativity. We can let them taste the joy of offering something to the world that wasn’t there before.

When they serve others, their gaze turns outward. Anxiety lessens. Comparison fades. The soul expands.

Purpose is powerful medicine.

11. Pair Freedom With Guidance

Teenagers do not need micromanagement; they need mentorship. They need to understand why boundaries exist—not as limitations but as protections. When we explain rather than merely enforce, they develop the moral reasoning necessary to govern themselves.

Freedom becomes less frightening when paired with wisdom. And guidance becomes less oppressive when paired with love.

12. Name the Enemy’s Tactics and Expose Them

The rising generation is astonishingly perceptive once given vocabulary for what they are experiencing. When we explain how algorithms manipulate, how comparison wounds, how relativism confuses, and how materialism empties, teens recognize the pattern instantly.

Light is always stronger than deception.
And once seen, deception loses its power.

The Result

If we help this generation reclaim focus, identity, community, truth, rest, and purpose—
if we help them recognize their divine worth and God’s abiding presence—
they will not merely survive their era.

They will transform it.

They will become a generation not weakened by difficulty but strengthened by overcoming it, not hollowed out by technology but spiritually awake, not lost in self-invention but rooted in divine identity.

A generation who knows who they are—and whose they are—cannot be destroyed.