If we realize how gravely sick is our civilization...

A vast body of publications praises the advantages and benefits of these new media. The object of this book is not to pile on yet more fruitless praise, but to invite the reader to reflect critically on the use of these new means of communication. For such an unusual approach will reveal how they have become ever more invasive, producing many negative effects of which their users are not fully aware, although they may notice them to some extent in their own lives, in their children, and in those close to them.* Although the modern drift of society, with its dark portents for the future, might make us wish for it to change, our aim, at this critical time, is pragmatic. It is to appreciate better the directions in which the new media are leading us and the real and possible pathologies that they may provoke, to learn to master them, and to limit their use where they have regrettable effects.

The aim of this book is first to diagnose the pathologies that the media can produce and how they may develop in every sphere of society—political, economic, and cultural—and in all facets of personal life—bodily, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual. For they may cause great harm to the lives of men and can go so far as to change man’s nature itself for the worse.

If we realize how gravely sick is our civilization, we may gain strength to resist. We can gradually reduce our use of the media and so lead to a decline of the industry that profits from them. And as we reduce our use of the new media, society will change, so that we can discover once more the authentically human and spiritual communion that we have lost.

*V.C. Strasburger, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of New Mexico notes: “The media represent some of the most under recognized and most potent influences on normal child and adolescent development in modern society. Because media influences are subtle, cumulative, and occur over a long period of time, parents, pediatricians, and educators may not be aware of their impact” (“Children, Adolescents and the Media,” Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care 34, 2004: 54). M. Desmurget observes: “The causal link between the media and the symptoms they produce is often hidden by the time which elapses between exposure and the behavior it causes” (TV Lobotomie. La vérité sciéntifique sur les effets de la télévision, 2nd ed., Paris: J’ai Lu, 2013, 28).

Jean-Claude Larchet
The New Media Epidemic