Other Gods Before God

We asked children (ages 7-9), preteens (ages 10-12), and teenagers (ages 13-16) from around the world to write for the Review in August. The following article is one they produced. —Editors 

Perhaps you’re familiar with the term, perhaps you’re not: dead internet theory. It’s the belief that artificial interactions—such as AI and chat bots—are flooding the internet we know (and some of us love), creating a space in which only artificial thinking exists. My question is not about AI taking your job or raising prices, but it is instead about love: not what you love, but rather how much you love it, and what it means to love something—or even someone—more than you should. I believe the easiest way to explain this is with a good and totally not silly analogy.

Right this moment, you have to make a choice. What choice? You must choose one food to eat for all three meals of the day, 365 days of the year . . . and every year after that for the rest of your life. (Whatever food you choose won’t matter much when you die early from an unbalanced diet!)

My point is to compare diet to media. But before I go further, I want to mention that I am not an anti-media activist; in fact, I am greatly invested in video gaming and YouTube. At one point I was so invested in it that I began to love it more than I loved God. I am not saying that loving something is bad, or that media itself is bad. But when you love bread so much that it’s the only thing you eat, you have a problem.

Most young adults (myself included) are guilty of filling our lives with social media, TV, and video games. Most of us spend the 12-16 hours a day we are conscious scrolling YouTube shorts, and Instagram or TikTok reels. But if God asks for only 10 percent of our earnings as a tithe, shouldn’t we also be willing to give at least 10 percent of our day to Him? If you’re awake for 12 hours, that’s one hour and 12 minutes of your day. I, for one, was guilty in this area. From sunup to sundown I would spend my day scrolling YouTube, hopping on video games, never thinking of God. I would go to sleep, not from a spiritually nourished worship, but from a doomscrolled mind that just finished a five-hour stream of a new video game release.

If God asks for only 10 percent of our earnings as a tithe, shouldn’t we also be willing to give at least 10 percent of our day to Him?

When the Adventist Review offered me the opportunity to write something for them, I agreed. Little did I know that that same week God would compel me to give up media for a week—not because it’s necessarily bad, but because I was putting it before God. As Exodus 20:3 says: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” This verse does not refer exclusively to worshipping other gods apart from the one and only living God, but directly refers to anything in your life that you put higher than God.

I’m reminded of our parents saying stuff like “In our day we didn’t have the internet—we had libraries. And if you wanted to talk to someone, you talked in person and not in a chat!” While it may seem crazy to think about now, life was much better then, as the stimuli and constant brain rot was not a part of everyday life. As they say: “Garbage in, garbage out!”

But back to dead internet theory. I have a theory of my own, which questions what happens if the internet is becoming overrun with artificial communication and intelligence: What happens when you expose yourself to this? You risk losing your own sanity.

It all reminds me that I serve a loving and gracious God who wrote a commandment that on the surface seems plain and simple, but deep down is expansive and meaningful beyond belief. It’s funny to me that God knew that dead internet would ruin people just as much as cars, money, greed, lust, and violence do. So let’s all remember to put God in the forefront of our minds, and He will keep our hearts and minds!