Happy Memorial Day.

I have been blogging now for a little over 13 years at Veracity.  My interests for Veracity have been (and basically remain) in Christian apologetics and church history. That will probably continue for some time to come. In fact, I have one more blog post coming up chronicling the trip my wife and I took to Europe last year, where I got to visit a lot of sites along (or not that far way from) the Rhine River.

But as we are heading into the summer of 2026, I wanted to write a fairly short blog post on a topic that is really important when it comes to the world of long-form blogging… and much, much more.  Much of what I write here on Veracity deals with book reviews, with some occasional diversions, like the “Christianity Along the Rhine” blog series.

What I have learned along the way is that social media has really disrupted the way people interact with one another. Thankfully, it has taken awhile, but it seems like within the past few years, people are finally starting to wisen up about the dangers of social media. Schools are starting to implement common sense controls of access to technological devices, particularly for young people, as we are learning the hard way about the fallout of introducing hi-tech devices to kids at too early an age, which has given us an unbelievably severe epidemic of anxiety and depression among children, and even young adults.

Social media cuts into attention spans, part of the reason why long-form blogging, for most part, has been in decline since blogging’s hey-day 10-15 years ago. The meme “TL;DR”, standing for “Too Long, Didn’t Read” has pretty much shown people that we have a culture which has made attention deficit disorder a pretty much normal thing now. Plus, the exposure to ideas, impersonal contact with supposed “friends” we “meet” on the Internet, make interaction with people on the Internet a fairly treacherous endeavor. Take the social media site NextDoor for example, where I am astounded by the number of posts saying “I am looking for a friend,” etc. The Internet is ripe with opportunities for scams and deceptions.

The late Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world in 2007. The world has never been the same since. However, there is something emerging now which will probably eclipse the influence of the SmartPhone….. that is AI (Artificial Intelligence)

In some sense, things have not changed that much since 2019, when I wrote “Reflections on Seven Years on Internet Blogging.” We still get amazingly overwhelmed by Internet content.  The hardest part (still) comes in discernment, trying to sort the good from the bad. The most extreme voices seem to garner the most attention, whereas measured, thoughtful content gets buried underneath the digital overload.

I read mostly via listening to audiobooks, mainly on my commute too and from work, as an act of rebellion to the noise people mostly suffer with Facebook and Instagram. I still do not have a Facebook or Instagram account, so I wear that with a badge of honor.

Nevertheless,  I do consume a good amount of YouTube.  There is a lot of garbage on YouTube, but there is also a lot of good content. There is a wealth of knowledge to be learned about church history and apologetics, which is both good and bad. Again, the problem is in trying to figure out how to parse through everything you could ever listen to, or view, and sort out the beneficial from the stuff that leads you down the wrong path. For every few good YouTube channels which interview accomplished scholars, etc., there are many more popular Christian channels which are simply a waste of time.

The vast amount of content on YouTube, as well as the world of audio-only podcasts, has given our current generation access to really good Bible teaching…. better than most Christians have had since the beginning of the Christian movement…..if we know where to find it. This puts local church pastors/bible-teachers in a tough spot. As Christians can easily reach for an iPhone to listen to a good online sermon, that sermon/podcast presenter stands a good chance of being a better public speaker than your local pastor/elder. The main difference is that you can develop some kind of friendship, or even accountability relationship with your pastor/elders, which is essential to a healthy Christian community, which you simply can not get from someone miles away with a computer, a microphone, and an Internet connection.

However, I think things are shaking up in the Internet world,  a world I helped to create as an Information Technology specialist, working at a college…. and that game changer is AI (Artificial Intelligence).

AI is really the talk of the digital ecosystem. And there is a good reason for it.

When I first started to look into AI, it was kind of so-so. I even used ChatBot AI to help to create a blog post about two and half years ago. But I was not really impressed. AI made a LOT of mistakes.

Over the past few months, I have started to take AI more seriously. It really is a game changer.

AI gives us the ability to sort through the immense amount of information available on the Internet, making it reasonably digestible… and it does so…. fast. I mean…. AI is really fast….We still need good content out there, as any user of AI should know that indeed AI absolutely still makes mistakes.  “Garbage in, garbage out,” as they say.

The biggest need over the next few years will be people learning skills to help to debug AI. Even at the college I work at, AI is all the buzz. Everyday, someone is talking about AI. I mean, even just a few days ago, Google has changed its classic search box, a feature that has been around for 25 years….. and it was AI that inspired the change.

However, the situation for young people with AI has just become super-scary…. and I mean…. super-scary.  A recent survey indicates that 72% of American teenagers have already turned to AI for companionship.

Did you catch that? Most kids…. that means, if you are a parent…. probably your kid, if you give them an iPhone, is already doing this: 72% of American teenagers have already turned to AI for companionship.

If you thought social media was dangerous for kids, you have not seen anything yet.

But here is the thing: AI has come a long way in just the last few years. There is no way to fully predict how AI will ultimately evolve and change our world…. but one thing is for sure, it will change things. It is already changing things: Just ask the people who are threatened by these huge, monster data centers being built in their backyard. If something is digital, it is only a matter of time before AI takes it all over. But the amount of energy resources required to run AI are just overwhelming. We already have a crisis regarding the production of energy, and now AI want orders of magnitude more to power itself. Where are we going to get all of those resources to run AI????

If I was to encourage a young person in high school today, I would try to steer them to either pursue a classically-oriented liberal arts education; where the goal is character formation, whether that be through a college or some other similar method, but that also has practical skills in mind (there are many PhDs out there who know their stuff, but who are flipping burgers at McDonalds)….. OR to skip college altogether and get into some kind of apprentice program; as an electrician, plumber or a carpenter, and learn a valuable hands-on skill. It will take a while before robotics will eliminate a lot of those skills.

In the meantime, do not be surprised if the up-and-coming generation today is getting most of their knowledge about Christianity…. not through the Bible… and not even from Christians around them…. they are getting it through AI.

Try it yourself: Go on over to ChatGPT, or the Google AI search on your phone, and type or speak into your app: “How do know if Christianity is true?”

Does any of that get your attention???

And that is just the start of the AI revolution. Some even look at AI as an apocalyptic event.

I will still be doing long-form blogging for the foreseeable future. Why? Because that is how AI learns things. As I said earlier, “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” when it comes to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude AI, or just doing a Google search in AI mode. Do not get mad with AI when it tells you certain things about your Christian faith that you do not like, if you are not supporting efforts to get good evangelical scholarship out there that Christians can use everyday.

There is still a lot of ground-breaking scholarship happening that most Christians know little about, but which will help us to better appreciate both the history of Christianity as well as learning better apologetic tools to help us to better defend our faith, and share the Gospel with our neighbor. I still want to try to get that good content out there. Hopefully, AI will pick up some of it.

However, I do not know how AI will impact our day-to-day lives. But mark my word, it will.

Christians need to be prepared for AI, as it will present new spiritual challenges, along with providing helpful tools to enable Christians to be better and more informed witnesses for Jesus.

In the meantime, enjoy your summer.