Religious Communities' Tech Restrictions Were Prescient, Not Backward
Source: "They shunned smartphones. Now America is rediscovering what they knew all along | Fox News." September 3, 2026. www.foxnews.com
The Gist
The author argues that religious communities like the Hasidic Jews and Amish, who were mocked for avoiding smartphones and the internet, actually had the right idea all along. Now that Big Tech companies are being forced to add restrictions similar to what these communities always practiced, it shows these 'backward' groups understood something about technology's dangers that mainstream society is only now catching up to.
Conclusion
Communities like the Amish, Hasidic Jews, and other religious groups that deliberately restricted smartphone and internet access were right to do so, and mainstream society is now belatedly adopting similar restrictions after suffering harms these communities avoided.
Premises
- Meta agreed to a $17 billion settlement over allegations that Facebook and Instagram used addictive design that harmed children, imposing restrictions like daily time limits and overnight blackouts
- The same restrictions mainstream tech companies are now adopting (limiting access, blocking notifications, restricting features) mirror what religious communities have practiced for years through 'kosher' phones and internet filters
- A 2026 Pediatrics study of over 10,000 children found smartphone ownership at age 12 was associated with higher rates of depression, obesity, and insufficient sleep
- The U.S. Surgeon General's office has identified screen use among children as a public-health concern
- Modern secular society approached technology by first asking what it could do for us, only later worrying about what it was doing to us, while these communities asked the harm question first
- Personal experience (author's own weekly 25-hour digital disconnection, and his toddler's distress over iPad removal) illustrates both the freedom of restriction and the addictive pull of devices
Assumptions
- The technology restrictions that mainstream institutions are now adopting are similar in kind and purpose to those long practiced by religious communities
- Correlational research linking smartphone use to negative health outcomes is sufficient to support restricting access, despite acknowledged lack of proven causation
- Communities that appeared 'insular' or 'backward' for rejecting technology were motivated by wisdom about technology's effects rather than other cultural, religious, or historical reasons unrelated to foresight about tech harms
- The right approach to new technology is to ask 'what will this do to us' before widespread adoption, and this approach is generally correct or at least underappreciated
- Documentary portrayals (like Çenet's) reflect a genuine mainstream bias mocking or dismissing these communities, rather than neutral or curious observation