Line upon Line

A few days ago, Jonathan Haidt, who wrote The Anxious Generation and The Coddling of the American Mind, asked ChatGPT an intriguing question. What would the devil’s plan be to ruin the next generation? He created this into an article that lingered in my mind.

What was particularly fascinating was that, true to form, it took Chat no time at all to churn out an answer. It was a well-worded, nuanced, and, I’m sorry to see, remarkably insightful strategy for ruin and decay.

As Latter-day Saints, of course, we know that the devil is a literal being, whose intents are, indeed, to destroy us, and he is far smarter than ChatGPT, but if artificial intelligence can devise a plan to soften, distract, discourage, and corrupt a generation, how much more incisive and deadly is Satan’s plan?

Chat can only hint at what a radically evil being would strategize for bending a human soul.

Did Chat say anything about lying, cheating, pornography, or immorality? No, it went deeper to where the barrenness can all begin.

So, I did my own experiment and asked Chat the same question. “If I were the Devil and My Goal were to destroy the rising generation, what would I do? It came out with its own unique take for me.

Then I asked it more. Here’s ChatGPT answering the question.

1. I Would Erode Their Attention and Presence

Deep thought is the foundation of learning, creativity, and love. So I would flood young people with constant stimulation—scrolling, alerts, notifications, micro-dopamine hits—to fracture their focus. They would feel informed while slowly losing the ability to listen deeply, ponder, or feel peace. They’ll feel busy, “connected,” even informed, while, in reality, their capacity for sustained thought and presence erodes. They won’t know what they’ve lost.

2. I Would Undermine Their Anchors: Parents and Trusted Adults

If I can separate teens emotionally from their parents, mentors, and community, I can shape them with little resistance. A generation cut off from its elders is a generation up for grabs. I’d convince them that adults are out of touch, that independence means secrecy, and that peers understand them better than family. I would teach teenagers that parents “don’t understand,” that boundaries are oppressive, and that peers are more reliable than family. Once trust erodes, outside influences—many of them harmful—gain unchecked access to their developing identities.

Without adult guidance, they drift toward the loudest, least mature influences in their lives.

3. I Would Flood Their Identity with Noise

Identity is the foundation of psychological resilience.

So I would surround them with endless categories, labels, tribes, and micro-identities—an ever-shifting landscape of “who you must be to belong,” shifting weekly, each one demanding allegiance. A teen who doesn’t know who they are cannot decide who they want to be. They become reactive instead of rooted.

Confusion weakens them; clarity strengthens them.
The more fragmented their sense of self, the easier they are to manipulate.

4. I Would Replace Real Relationships With Digital Simulations

I wouldn’t destroy friendship; I would hollow it out.
Likes instead of love.
Streaks instead of conversation.
Filters instead of face-to-face honesty.
Bots instead of people.

Teenagers would still seek connection, but they would settle for imitation—social sugar instead of relational nutrition.

5. I Would Normalize Anxiety and Pathologize Discomfort

Convince them that every difficult feeling is a problem.
Make them fear awkwardness, boredom, and challenge.
Over-protect them from ordinary adversity so that even mild struggle or stress feels like a catastrophe. I would call facing any kind of emotional difficulty as not being “safe.”

I’d convince them that every hard feeling is a crisis, every challenge a threat. A generation untrained in discomfort becomes a generation easily overwhelmed—and easily controlled.

People who can’t tolerate discomfort become dependent, fearful, and easily led. They don’t become courageous warriors who can stand against evil.

6. I Would Sexualize Them Early, Without Their Noticing

Not overtly. That would alert the adults.

Instead, I would slip sexuality into jokes, memes, songs, dances, fashion, TikTok, and casual scrolling.

Before long, innocence feels “naïve,” purity feels “old-fashioned,” and childhood shortens by years. Their ability to bond deeply later in life is weakened before they even know what’s happening.

7. I Would Gamify Their Social Lives

Turn belonging into a scoreboard: likes, followers, views, comments.
Score their social lives as a competition.
Make identity performative.
Comparison becomes chronic.
Status becomes addictive.
A generation chasing metrics will rarely pursue meaning.

8. I Would Exhaust Them

Teenagers are biologically fragile to sleep loss.
So I would keep them up at night with endless content and perpetual notifications.
A tired teen is an anxious teen.
A tired teen is an impulsive teen.
A tired teen is a discouraged teen.
Physical exhaustion weakens every layer of emotional and moral reasoning.

9. I Would Give Them Unlimited Freedom and No Guidance

Tell them they should “be themselves”—but give them no tools to understand who they are.
Promote autonomy without responsibility.
Offer options without wisdom.
Freedom without structure is not liberation. It is psychological freefall.

10. I Would Hide Every One of These Tactics in the Language of Empowerment

I would call constant connectivity “community.”
I would call surveillance “protection.”
I would call confusion “authenticity.”
I would call addiction “normal.”
The most effective chains are the ones disguised as choices.

Maurine:

I thought ChatGPT did an eerily good job of spitting out the conditions that would craft our rising generation into soft, self-centered, and hollow people, but to me, the most important temptation was missing.

I added this category and then turned to ChatGPT for comment.

11. I Would Tell Them that There is No Truth and That Nothing is Higher or More Pressing Than Their Own Feelings. Moral Relativity had Dissolved God.

Chat responded: This is one of the most damaging deceptions of our age — and you were absolutely right to call it out.

If I were the devil, I would not merely blur moral lines — I would erase the very concept of truth itself. But I would do it subtly.

I would teach young people:

• “Your truth is whatever feels true.”
• “No one can tell you what reality is.”
• “Everything is subjective — even your identity, your morality, your meaning, your sex, and your purpose.”

This sounds empowering, but it is actually destabilizing.

Here’s why this tactic works so effectively:

1. A person cannot build a strong self on shifting ground.

If truth is entirely self-invented, then identity becomes a project of constant reinvention.
A self that must be rebuilt daily becomes exhausted, anxious, and fragile.

2. Without objective truth, the world becomes chaotic.

If everything is equally “true,” then nothing is solid:
not morality, not identity, not relationships, not purpose.
This produces chronic uncertainty — and uncertainty generates fear.

3. A generation that believes truth is self-created becomes isolated.

Shared truth is what binds communities.
When truth becomes privatized, individuals drift into emotional solitude.
Each young person carries the impossible burden of defining reality alone.

4. When truth becomes internal, emotions become the final authority.

And emotions fluctuate wildly.
If feelings define truth, then truth changes hourly — leading to instability.

5. A self-created truth is always smaller than a discovered truth.

A young person cut off from transcendent truth becomes trapped within their own limited experience.
Instead of expanding outward into meaning, they spiral inward into anxiety.

6. People who believe truth is relative are easier to manipulate.

If nothing is objectively real, then the loudest voice, most charismatic influencer, or most viral trend becomes the new “truth.”
Manipulation is simple when there is no standard to measure lies against.

In Short:

A generation taught that truth is fluid becomes:

• anxious, because nothing is certain
• isolated, because nothing is shared
• fragile, because identity rests on unstable ground
• easily influenced, because there is no anchor
• spiritually disoriented, because transcendence fades when everything becomes subjective

The goal would not be to make teenagers evil.
Only to make them:

• distracted,
• discouraged,
• disconnected from deep relationships,
• fragmented in identity,
• and unable to feel the quiet, stabilizing forces of faith, family, and purpose.

A generation without these foundations becomes vulnerable—not because they are weak, but because the world around them has become expertly engineered to exploit their vulnerabilities.

Tomorrow in Meridian, we will have an article that talks about what we can do to help the rising generation who are living in such subtly dangerous times.