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Title: Scrolling Ourselves to Death

Author: Brett McCraken and Ivan Mesa

Publisher: Crossway

Year: 2025

Reviewed by Mark Powell

While I was going through Bible College, my ministry supervisor encouraged me to read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Penguin, 1985). It quickly became a personal favourite, and I’ve lost count as to how many people I have recommended it to.

Even before the invention of the internet it was a brilliant analysis as to how media ecologies—to use a phrase coined by Postman—were changing the way we thought through and debated issues. For those who are interested, Postman developed his argument here even further in his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993).

Edited by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa, Scrolling Ourselves to Death takes Postman’s insights and applies them to the twenty-first century. With the advent of social media and the social impact of the smart phone, Postman’s warnings are more pertinent and prescient than ever.

In many ways it functions as a homage to Postman whose insights and warnings have been proven to be largely correct. As McCracken explains in his introduction, the technological revolution the world has gone through over the past 30 years is extraordinary:

We didn’t know what “social media” was twenty-five years ago. The term smartphone was first coined in 1997. The World Wide Web is barely three decades old. Each of these has utterly reshaped the world in the last quarter century. And things continue to move fast—so fast that we rarely pause long enough to ask questions or ponder unintended side effects. An Anton Barba-Kay put it in A Web of Our Own Making, digital technology has so vastly transformed human life over just a few decades that “there is now arguable a greater chasm between someone age twelve and someone age fifty (or forty, or thirty) than there ever was between people separated by a millennium of pharaonic rule in ancient Egypt.

Scrolling Ourselves to Death is helpfully divided into three sections. Part 1 discusses Postman’s insights both then (in the mid 1980’s) and now. Part 2 examines some of the practical challenges facing Christian communicators today. And finally, part 3 explores how the church can maintain its prophetic witness going forward into the future.

I have often reflected on Postman’s work, especially his judgment regarding what pressures believers would face in the future. In particular, would we be influenced more by George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the world as contained in his novel 1984, or that presented in AldousHuxley’s Brave New World? While both perspectives contain some truth,I believe Postman rightly argues that it’s Huxley’s warning which is the more pertinent. As Postman puts it:

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.[1]

Scrolling Ourselves to Death does an excellent job at fleshing out what this means for our world today. Postman had no idea just how fast the world would change, and in ways which I’m sure would have personally terrified him and maybe even left him in despair. For instance, in chapter 12 ‘Embrace Your Mission, Read Mercer Schuchardt gives the fascinating example of the one and only email Postman ever sent. It’s worth reproducing in full:

Subject: Observing the Law, 1997

This is the Ghost of Marshall McLuhan speaking to you. I don’t have to tell you from what world I come. I am using Chris Nystrom’s facility in order to reach you. I will say what I have to say only once. You will not hear from me again unless you persist in your foolishness.

Does the word “books” mean anything to you? Do you have so much time on your hands that you can afford to waste yourselves on this infernal machine? Have you already accumulated so much wisdom that you no longer need to read the best that has been thought and written? Is this the way you honour the work and life of my great friend and disciple, Neil Postman? Do any of you actually know how to spell?

I have not read all of your idiotic messages. Hear, now, The Law: Every medium taken to its furthest extent flips to its opposite. Thus, the written word, which is the source of all the intellect we have, when used in this unholy fashion becomes a medium for the expression of all our stupidities. This, you have demonstrated amply. Enough, I say.

I must now return from whence I came. Remember what happened to the Hebrews when they did not follow the law.

–Ghost

I must say that I found Scrolling Ourselves to Death very easy to read. Each chapter was relatively short and was clearly written. What’s more, each author demonstrates a deep appreciation for Postman’s work while also helpfully showing how it can be applied to us as Christians today. This is all the more significant when one realises that Postman was himself a Jew, and yet his insights are easily transferrable to Christianity owing to our similar theological foundation involving the primacy of God’s Word.

I especially appreciated the practical exhortations to personal godliness through the better use of technology and a deeper awareness of what it is doing to us. Postman was often criticised for glorifying some golden era in the past at the expense of the innovations of the present. Thankfully, none of the authors falls into this trap. They instead provide a timely exhortation to master the innovations we have received while not being mastered by them.

Each chapter comes with discussion questions which is helpful, especially if one was seeking to read Scrolling Ourselves to Death as part of a book club. Speaking personally, I didn’t think it was necessary. That said, I’d highly recommend Scrolling Ourselves of Death even for those already familiar with Postman’s work. And for those who aren’t it’s an excellent introduction to what I believe is one of the most important books published in the past hundred years.

[1] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, (Penguin, 1985), xxi-xxii.