“Consumption of technology always leads to dissatisfaction”: Andy Crouch on breaking the spell of the technological empire

Beatrice Wu // July 15, 2025, 12:03 pm

Author Andy Crouch was in Singapore in March to speak on the impact of technology on relationships, family and the self. All photos courtesy of Eagles Leadership Institute.

If empires “essentially are powers that exceed their natural borders”, technology is an empire we cannot escape from.

This was the sobering point made by Andy Crouch, author of The Tech Wise Family and The Life You’re Looking For. Speaking at an event organised by Eagles Leadership Institute, the partner for theology and culture at Praxis and former editor of Christianity Today was in Singapore at the end of March to speak on restoring relationships in a technological age.

Naming current day “empires” like the United States, Russia and China – each of which seek to exert influence over the world – Andy pointed out that all of these countries actually answer to a higher emperor.

“That emperor doesn’t have a name and doesn’t have a capital city, but it’s the force of technology,” he declared. “If any of the leaders of those nations says, ‘We are going to leave the empire of technology’, they would lose their power.”

Personalised technology cannot replace the personal

Although the world used to be a personal one, where “persons related to other persons, dependent on other persons, seeking out other persons; technology is now built on making reality impersonal.”

Andy illustrated this point with how people previously traded food back and forth in villages – communicating face to face – but now, to get food or basic necessities, one simply walks into a 7-Eleven and pays with a credit card.

“There’s a person standing there (in 7-Eleven) as I do that, but I have almost no interaction with that person. They don’t know my name; they certainly don’t know my parents’ names; they don’t know where I live,” said Andy.

“There’s nothing personal about that interaction. Usually, there’s not even the eye contact that we make with people … Through technology, it’s become a very impersonal thing.”

The technological empire has the primary motivation of growing revenue, reminded the speaker.

Modern society has reduced the perspective of the world to impersonal matter, rather than people. As a result, it has led to “depersonalisation of both our conception of the world and of the world of our ordinary life,” said Andy.

Ironically, due to the “unbearable” nature of a depersonalised world, personalisation has been reintroduced to technology.

He used the example of Siri as a digital assistant. “What’s been reintroduced is this level of personalisation that makes you feel like you are being addressed as a person when, in fact, it’s just a technological system addressing you.

“I think the reason our world is getting ever more lonely is that being personalised will never be an adequate substitute for being known as a person,” he pointed out.

A deeper, darker motive resides behind personalisation of tech. The technological empire is partly based on business, with the primary motivation of growing revenue, he noted.

Andy explained: “They personalise it, so they actually feed back to you a picture of you that you want and a picture of your world that you want. Our appetites get harnessed by the technological empire better than almost any government has been able to harness people’s desires and motivations.”

Filtering people that are likely to buy something benefits businesses, of course, but not the person.

“We all want personalised technology, but personalised is not the same thing as personal … Over time, its returns are very much diminishing returns,” said Andy.

Technology offers shortcuts that rob us of true fulfilment

In Albert Borgmann’s book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, the philosopher highlights the fundamental transition as “from us doing things as persons to us having things done for us” by devices.

“If we start with us, we’re persons. One way to think of us is heart, soul, mind and strength. Human beings have always had tools and instruments that we use that extend our capacities,” Andy noted.

With technology’s advancement, the progression of tools to devices has led to a sense of ennui – boredom and jaded weariness from too much ease.

Andy highlighted the big difference between devices and tools – the “consume” versus “create” mindset – and tracked the users’ happiness over time as axes on a reward curve.

He presented this as the “innovation bargain”, where people introduce devices to shortcut the process of formation, and in the process of gaining shallow rewards, lose their capabilities.

“If I were to sum up the innovation bargain, it would be this way: Devices promise you a world in which you don’t have to be formed as a person. You don’t have to become someone different. You don’t have to grow.”

He went on to show how the innovation bargain applies to video games and our lives as Christians.

“Video games are, in a way, the personalised form of human formation or human activity in that they give you this sensation of doing something that you have to learn, but they don’t deliver lasting satisfaction,” he said.

Attendees discussed and debated which was more rewarding: Streaming music on Spotify or learning to play the violin.

Has the ease of streaming music robbed you of the deeper enjoyment of learning to play a musical instrument?

There is a happiness that comes with the anticipation of streaming new music, but that dissipates quickly and soon, we are clicking on “Suggested for you” artists and songs that Spotify pushes to us to chase that anticipation.

Andy noted: “Jesus said those who seek to save their lives will lose it. (When you stream music), you’re constantly losing the satisfaction and having to go purchase some more.

“It starts well, but the next one only delivers less satisfaction, the next delivers even less, and eventually you’re still making purchases, but you’re below the satisfaction line.

“We live in a world that is basically all the time teaching us to find satisfaction by letting devices do all the work of being human.”

Conversely, “those who lose their lives will find them. When you start something hard, like playing an instrument, you feel like you’re losing your life. I am dying trying to master this instrument, but eventually you gain incredible amounts of satisfaction. You gain real life.”

Consumption of technology always leads to dissatisfaction, said Andy. The most fulfilling way is to follow Jesus.

Protecting our children, our families, ourselves

We cannot afford to let the devices take over, declared the speaker.

Listing three primary formative communities – home, church and school – Andy pointed out that what they have in common is how they “set out to shape you as a person and help you grow.”

Limiting technology is essential to one’s formation, he argued.

He also listed the formative stages of human development that one should safeguard against devices: infancy, childhood and adolescence, which he defined as the ages of 12 to 25, when the prefrontal cortex is fully formed.

“In those stages, to introduce devices is to shortcut formation. To introduce kids to these video games, (you are creating) very shallow reward curves rather than the deep formation they’re meant for and the people around them,” he stated.

“The one that all human beings have in common is home,” said Andy as he went into the importance of how we raise our children.

“We start out life, all of us, one way or another, in a home. Your home is there not just for the children but for the parents and others in the family as well to shape you into a human being who’s able to love other human beings.

“We’re given the basic formative assignment of every human being. It’s to become someone who can love with all their heart, all their soul, all their mind and all their strength.” (Mark 12:30-31)

The dangers of letting technology take over go deep – it is not merely losing skills like listening and thinking, but being destroyed body, soul and spirit.

“Those all interact. Your mind and your heart can’t be fully separated,” said Andy.

Our emotions are the “most powerful way to think”, he said. The innervation of the brain runs down to the gut, hence “gut feeling” because through our vagus nerve we sense if something is good or bad, even before our mind can engage.

Hence, as God has made all our parts interconnected in the most complex way, if we fail to keep our minds in a fit condition, we risk atrophying not only in our minds but our bodies as well.

How to manage the tyranny of technology in our modern lives? Andy has written books like The Tech Wise Family and The Life We’re Looking For to help.

“All of (our selves) is designed for love,” Andy said. “The word ‘all’ is very significant – it suggests that there is a way to live that is short of ‘all of it’. That is, you can live half-heartedly; you can live mindlessly; you can live without being aware you even have a soul, and you can definitely let your body atrophy.”

Giving practical examples to redesign our living spaces, Andy also gave some suggestions on how we can create more than we consume:

Taking inventory of what activities develop your family’s heart, mind, soul or strength in the household
Moving television and other devices out of the way, replacing them with tools and instruments like books, musical instruments, and art supplies in more central areas
Segregating devices to designated zones and making it a point to spend less time there
Reshaping time by practising the Sabbath, turning off all devices to eat, rest and play together

Speaking on the role of family, Andy said: “There is no such thing as a ‘digital native’. No one comes into the world looking for a screen. No baby arrives and is like, ‘Where’s my iPad?’ The question is, ‘Where’s Mum?’ And if Mom for some reason isn’t there, ‘Who’s going to be Mum? Who’s going to play that role? Where’s the person?’”

“Every human being born and ever born in the future is not going to arrive looking for the digital. They’re going to arrive looking for the personal, and either they’ll find the personal and then be able to make use of the digital in ways it’s helpful, or they’ll find the digital, and they’ll never be able to fully become a person.”

“That’s what’s at stake, and I think the next generation will thank us if we move in a really different direction from the path we’ve been on.”