Demons Love Our Noisy Lives
- Grady Connolly
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
I’ve spent the last five years managing social media for Catholic priests and apostolates. There is no doubt that the Holy Spirit is using social media to bring Christ and His Church to those who need it most, but there is also a danger. We spend countless hours consuming content, debating strangers online, and filling our minds with a thousand voices, yet rarely making room for God’s.
Although we may consume nuggets of beauty and truth online, the never-ending feed of content served to us by social media companies through addictive algorithms is used by Satan to keep us in a state of inaction, isolation, and noise.
In Verbum Domini, Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “Only in silence can the word of God find a home in us.” What we need are periods of silence when God can whisper into our hearts.
We also must be realistic about the algorithms by which content is served to us. Their incentive is to keep our eyes focused on the screen, and they are able to do that through clickbait, anger, controversy, and unholy entertainment that gives us a hit of dopamine. Social media is the newest continent to evangelize while simultaneously being Satan’s tool for keeping us in a constant state of distraction. When our eyes are fixed on screens, they are not fixed on Christ.
This past weekend, one of my best friends and I drove out to the Shenandoah Valley for a retreat in the woods, where I severely limited my phone use and enjoyed the peacefulness of nature. St. John Paul II was a big advocate for spending time in nature. “We can pray perfectly when we are out in the mountains or on a lake and we feel at one with nature,” he once said.
Today, I believe that digital noise is Satan’s tactic for taking our eyes off Jesus Christ. Our lives are flooded with noise: politics, gossip, Church drama, self-help, and millions of videos of mindless entertainment and humor. The endless scroll puts us into a digital trance, leaving little room for true encounters with God.
Don’t let your life become consumed by never-ending noise. Find opportunities for silence and sit in God’s peace. Consider going on a silent retreat or spending a weekend in the woods like I did. Satan fears this silence because it is he who is silenced in these moments.
