The Sandpaper of the Mind - Part 7

Scrolling to Senility… or… Why the Digital Mind is Dying Young

Imagine giving your grandfather a jigsaw puzzle, but you switch out a few pieces every time he looks away. By the end of the afternoon, he's not confused because he’s old but rather because the image never stays still.

That’s your brain on social media.

We are flooding our minds with constant novelty, passive consumption, and shallow interactions. The result? Mental decline not in the twilight of life, but in the prime. The modern mind isn’t aging; it’s atrophying.

Neuroplasticity is real. So is cognitive erosion.

Solomon opined that “the wise of heart will receive commandments, but a babbling fool will come to ruin” (Proverbs 10:8). Much of social media is the platforming of babbling fools, with curated feeds and digital attention spans. Our mental stamina is wrecked. Long-form anything feels like a chore. Real conversation feels like confrontation. Sustained focus feels like oppression.

Thanks be to God, the science is starting to catch up. Studies show that chronic overstimulation rewires our prefrontal cortex. Memory, emotional regulation, and decision-making suffer. Anxiety spikes. Sleep collapses. And when community vanishes, it’s not long before dementia starts knocking early.

Cicero once wrote, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

A mind without roots (relational, intellectual, and spiritual) is like a garage with nothing but Bluetooth tools: sleek, convenient, and completely dead when the battery runs out. But this isn’t just a modern problem. It’s an ancient trajectory. The prophet Isaiah warned of those who “draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes… Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…” (Isaiah 5:18,20). The digital world lets us do just that… daily. And with each mindless microagreement, each unchallenged half-truth, we pull the rope of confusion tighter around our minds.

Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode” mourns the death of wonder: “I see, not feel, how beautiful they are.” That’s the cry of a man disconnected from the very awe that once shaped his soul. He could see beauty; but he could no longer feel it. That’s the modern condition: emotionally dislocated, cognitively scattered, spiritually numb.

But God didn’t wire us for fragmentation. He wired us for fullness: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

All. Not fragments. Not dopamine bursts. Not reactionary outrage or viral trends. All.

So here’s the final warning: scroll long enough without anchor, and you’ll not only lose your convictions… you’ll lose your cognition. Read long books that you might not entirely understand. Go find people and other authors who understand it better than you do… then you, too, will understand. Have deep conversations with people and hope, by God’s grace and mercy, that you find yourself to be the dimmest bulb in the room. Touch real wood with your bare hands. Ride a motorcycle with no podcast in your ears. Listen to silence until your thoughts get loud enough to hear. And above all, commune with the Word… not just words. Let Scripture retrain your brain, renew your mind, and resurrect your imagination. Because your mind was made to build cathedrals—not echo chambers.

If you want to stay sharp at 70, start by putting your phone down at 30.