People love scrolling. If you look around, wherever you might find yourself—in a restaurant, at a park, or on a plane—you will see people scrolling… and scrolling… and scrolling on their phones. I was recently informed this is called “doom scrolling.” And it’s pointless in a very real way. But far from saying this habit of scrolling is unintelligible, or that it is merely the result of boredom, I think it exposes and speaks to something deeper in human nature: that the heart of man yearns for the Eternal.
We yearn for the Eternal, and yet we strive to satisfy that yearning in many ways other than God. This much is evidenced by the consumeristic pleonexia of our culture—the insatiable desire for more and more goods, clothes, food, and more recently, social media and streaming content. That we live in an age of consumption is a topic of frequent conversation, even in the secular sphere, but the idea that we long for something greater than the world is not. Screen time and scrolling addictions are issues of public concern, but there is troublingly little discussion of why we scroll, and still less of why we are left unsatisfied when we do.
To understand the driving force of this age’s pleonexia—this desire for more and more—we must first consider why that desire is insatiable.
Firstly, when compared with the limits of man’s ability to consume, those things which could be consumed are apparently infinite. While the amount of food, clothing, money, and virtual content in the world is finite in actuality, one will never satiate his desire by way of amassing all of it, namely because he cannot. In the confines of time and space, he is incapable of doing so. In this sense, there is a practical infinity on the side of the consumable. Secondly, there is an aspect of infinity on the side of man. Even if man could consume and collect all that was, this would leave him merely contented by consumption. One can content himself by acquiring particular objects of his desire, but to find satisfaction is a different thing entirely.
I think this concept is somewhat obvious to us. One of my favorite childhood books, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, illustrates this principle quite well. In the book, a mouse asks for—and is given—a cookie, which spurs his desire for milk, for which he needs a straw and later a mirror to wipe his face. After his meal, he needs a nap. And upon waking up, his thirst drives him to ask for another glass of milk: a drink that would pair perfectly with another cookie…
While the illustration is silly, it demonstrates to us that desire spurs on desire—that one is never satisfied with any last anything. There is always something else to be obtained, and once one obtains it, he realizes that his heart actually sought something greater than that one thing. This problem of consumption tragically manifests itself in instances of addiction, wherein one tries to fill their mind, body, or heart with a seemingly infinite supply of created goods.
St. John Henry Newman describes this phenomenon well in a sermon on the immortality of the soul: “the unprofitableness and feebleness of the things of this world are forced upon our minds; they promise but cannot perform, they disappoint us. Or, if they do perform what they promise, still (so it is) they do not satisfy us. We still crave something, we do not well know what; but we are sure it is something which the world has not given us.”
This same train of thought drove Augustine to write his most famous lines of The Confessions, speaking to the inability of the created order to provide rest for our hearts, whose proper fulfillment is in God alone.
Even with a more optimistic reading of man’s heart, which yearns to hang onto a sunset for just a few more minutes, to savor the sweetness of an edifying conversation once it has ended, or to hear the resolution of a beautiful piece of music for just a moment longer, it is plain that we are left wanting when faced with attainment to even the purest delights of human experience. That is, we do not like things that end. The finitude of this passing world is what makes transitions difficult. It is what makes finishing a beloved book series difficult. It is what makes death difficult. Our inability to be satisfied by even the most excellent of created goods—and in light of their transitory nature, our sadness when they pass—speaks to our longing for what is eternal and unchanging.
And so many seek to abandon themselves to something that gives the illusory impression of the Eternal: in our age, the infinite scroll. Our generation’s pleonexia for virtual content is especially dangerous in light of this fact; it mimics the Eternal in a much more convincing way than most other created goods. Most other goods have a natural limit and are subject to a depletion in quantity or quality once consumed, whereas the infinite scroll is endless and subject to no such depletion, either in quality or quantity. The infinite scroll poses as an experience of the transcendental, offering an illusorily infinite supply of what appears to be good, true, and beautiful. But it is rather a vain imitation.
Returning to our example of a mouse, let us imagine that he has a feast one evening. If we give him a cookie, he’s going to want some milk… and then more cookies. If we give him an entire tray of cookies and he devours it, he will probably drink an entire quart of milk—quite a lot for a mouse—and consequently collapse into a cookie-induced coma. He will wake up from his groggy stupor and find that while he was once full, he is once again hungry, but the cookies are gone. Supposing this particular mouse has a tinge of rationality, he will realize those cookies he ate did not in fact satisfy him, as evidenced by their depletion and his now returning hunger.
This is common to many material goods. Although our desire for them remains, it is obvious that they cannot wholly satisfy us.
But unlike material goods, which can temporarily satiate some of our desires, we should note that one is not contented whatsoever by the consumption of virtual content. No physical hunger is satiated by it, nor is any thirst quenched, nor is any longing for friendship met, nor is one’s relationship with the Lord deepened. But still somehow, even after realizing this fact, we convince ourselves that scrolling can somehow satisfy our desire for something greater.
This is the twofold deception of the infinite scroll: it offers the impression of being something eternal and unchanging, and it pretends to satisfy the heart’s desire for the Eternal. By consuming virtual content through an infinite scroll which offers this twofold deception, though, we dull our desire for God, the only Eternal.
For most of us, it is difficult to disengage from all virtual communication and content while engaging society in a meaningful way. But the above considerations should drive us to consider whether we have fallen prey to the twofold deception of the infinite scroll, and whether it has—in truth—dulled our desire for God and his hopes for our lives. And if we were to delete our infinite scrolls, would we be scared to see that our hearts are restless?
Ryan P. Both 