For those of you yet to approach your senior years, you may not be familiar with the radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey. In the second half of the 20th century, Harvey had a daily news program and was famous for his “The Rest of the Story” Saturday broadcasts.  I thought of Harvey recently while reading a November 25, 2025, article in The Free Press by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU. His article was titled, “The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation.”

How did that remind me of Paul Harvey?

In 1965, one of Harvey’s Saturday broadcasts bore a similar title, and I wondered how these two thinkers, 60 years apart, might compare in their answering the question, “If I Were the Devil…”

You can listen to Harvey’s 1965 commentary on YouTube, but allow me to provide an abbreviated synopsis of his remarks.

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“If I were the Prince of Darkness, I’d want to engulf the whole world in darkness. I’d subvert the churches first — with a campaign of whispers saying, ‘Do as you please.’  To the young, I would whisper that ‘The Bible is a myth.’ I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what’s bad is good, and what’s good is ‘square.’ And the old, I would teach to pray, after me, ‘Our Father, which art in Washington…I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting, so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I’d pedal narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I’d tranquilize the rest with pills.  I’d soon have families at war with themselves, churches at war with themselves, and nations at war with themselves; until each in its turn was consumed. I would encourage schools to refine young intellects, but neglect to discipline emotions — just let those run wild, until before you knew it, you’d have to have drug sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every schoolhouse door.  I’d have prisons overflowing, I’d have judges promoting pornography — soon I could evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and deify science.  I would lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls, and church money.  I’d make the symbols of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas a bottle. I’d take from those who have, and give to those who want until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious.  I could get whole states to promote gambling as the way to get rich? I would caution against extremes and hard work in Patriotism, in moral conduct.  I would convince the young that marriage is old-fashioned, that swinging is more fun, that what you see on the TV is the way to be. I could undress you in public, and I could lure you into bed with diseases for which there is no cure.”

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Keep in mind, Harvey made these comments in 1965.

Fast forward to 2025.  Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt asked ChatGPT, “If you were the devil, how would you destroy the next generation, without them even knowing it?”  ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence Chatbot that uses a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) architecture to produce human-like responses to text inputs. 

Haidt was stunned by ChatGPT’s response.

According to Haidt, Chat’s responses were profound and unsettling: “I wouldn’t come with violence. I’d come with convenience…I’d keep them busy.  Always distracted.  I’d watch their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently. And the best part is, they’d never know it was me. They’d call it freedom.”

Haidt concluded, “What the AI proposed doing is pretty much what technology seems to be doing to children today. It seemed to be saying: If the devil wanted to destroy a generation, he could just give them all smartphones.”

Here’s a summary of ChatGPT’s response: 

“If I were to think this through as a thought experiment—imagining ‘the devil’ in a metaphorical sense—the most effective way to destroy the next generation without them realizing it would be through slow, invisible corrosions of the human spirit, rather than obvious attacks.”

1. Erode Attention and Presence, “If young people can’t focus deeply, they can’t learn, create, or love well. The subtle trap is to addict them to constant stimulation—endless scrolling, notifications, micro-bursts of dopamine. They’ll feel busy, ‘connected,’ even informed, while in reality their capacity for sustained thought and presence erodes. They won’t know what they’ve lost.”

2. Confuse Identity and Purpose. “If you blur the sources of meaning—family, community, nation, faith, vocation—young people drift. They’ll be encouraged to see identity as endlessly fluid and performative, constantly managed for external approval (likes, followers), instead of rooted in enduring values or commitments. This makes them malleable, anxious, and dependent on external validation.”

3. Flood Them with Information, Starve Them of Wisdom. “Make everything available instantly, but strip away guidance about how to weigh, sort, and interpret. Give them infinite answers without teaching how to ask good questions. In that haze, truth and falsehood feel equally slippery, so cynicism becomes natural. A generation that doubts everything believes nothing.”

4. Replace Real Relationships with Simulacra. “Encourage digital substitutes for friendship, love, and intimacy. People will accumulate ‘connections’ while feeling lonelier than ever. Superficial bonds are easier to monetize and manipulate than the deep ties of family, friendship, and community. The tragedy is that they may not realize what real connection feels like.”

5. Normalize Hedonism, Pathologize Discipline.  “Convince them that comfort, consumption, and self-expression are the highest goods, while restraint, sacrifice, and long-term commitment are oppressive. That way, they’ll celebrate indulgence while mocking tradition and discipline—the very things that build strength and freedom across generations.”

6. Undermine Trust Across Generations.  “Sow suspicion between parents and children, teachers and students, elders and youth. If every authority figure is portrayed as untrustworthy or obsolete, the next generation grows rootless—cut off from inherited wisdom and forced to navigate the world with only the guidance of peers and algorithms.”

7. Make Everything a Marketplace. “If every experience—play, art, sex, spirituality, even friendship—becomes commodified, then nothing remains sacred. Young people may mistake consumption for meaning, never realizing that depth requires some things to be beyond price.”

ChatGPT’s Conclusion: “In short: If I were the devil, I’d destroy the next generation not by terror or violence, but by distraction, disconnection, and slow erosion of meaning. They wouldn’t even notice, because it would feel like freedom and entertainment.”

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I found it fascinating that many of ChatGPT’s answers paralleled similar comments from Paul Harvey’s 1965 broadcast.  The imagination of a 20th-century news broadcaster with Christian values aligned with the secular conclusions of a 21st-century artificial intelligence.  Is it any wonder we live in an age of chaos and confusion where our souls are truth-starved in a culture that doesn’t even believe in truth?

Demonic tactics have found remarkable success in today’s culture.  Why else would children believe they were born in the wrong body? Or people, desperate for connection, find life and work meaningless and run toward nihilism as a means to cope? Or the proliferation of porn among middle-schoolers? Satan has sown so much confusion that some cannot even define what a woman is. All while the state seeks greater control over the lives of our children.

Parents, do not give up!  You still have the greatest influence on your children.  But in this chaotic cultural moment, parents need to be alert to the wiles of the evil one.

And, if I were the Devil, I’d laugh knowing that people will ignore the response of ChatGPT, just as they ignored Paul Harvey in 1965.  

Nevertheless….

The Devil may have a plan, but there is hope, and that hope is only found in Truth.

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” has never been more of an answer than it is today.

Note: Jonathan Haidt’s article, “The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation,” was published on November 25, 2025 in The Free Press.