TRUST NO ONE: Internet Behaviors In Real Life, pt. 2
When you can't trust anything you see
Recently I was invited to a youth retreat in which I gave a series of talks on what I called, Internet Behaviors in Real Life. This is the second of those five talks.
I have cleaned up some of the “live audience” language and edited for clarity.
Let’s review a bit from the previous talk: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave begins with prisoners chained to the cave floor who mistake flickering images on the wall for truth. Then one escapes and stumbles into the light. But the story does not end in triumph. When he sees the real world, the man hesitates. He struggles to believe that what he is seeing on the outside of the cave is the real thing. He still believes the shadows are reality.
That hesitation feels familiar to us. We live in a world where doubt has become instinctive. We don’t trust what we see; we second-guess what we hear. News headlines, filtered photos, even the voices of parents or pastors—everything can feel provisional, subject to suspicion. We find ourselves asking, what is real? Who can I trust?
And this is the first internet behavior we see seeping in to real life: deep skepticism and doubt. We have become so consumed with being both influenced by and critical of what we see online and the result is rampant skepticism, cynicism, and doubt IRL.
First, we’ll outline how the internet shapes reality. Then we’ll discuss the impact this has on us and what we can do about it.
It is not simply that the internet contains lies. The deeper issue is that the internet shapes our sense of reality itself. Virtual reality makes this obvious: millions of people already spend hours each week inside simulated environments, whether for gaming, training, or entertainment. VR is everywhere: over 171 million people worldwide use VR technology. In the U.S., 91 million people are projected to use VR by 2028.
Even casual tools—like social media avatars, Google Lens, or “virtual agents” that pop up in customer service—are forms of simulated reality. But even top neurosurgeons, firefighters, pilots, and engineers use virtual reality to simulate training.
And of course, there’s social media—the “unrealest” virtual reality of all. It’s a carefully curated highlight reel. Even godly, sincere people with large followings don’t show the whole truth: the struggles, the boredom, the ordinary. What we see online is never the full picture. It’s an image, not reality. But so many of us believe it and treat it as though it was the real thing.
I was there for the dawning of the internet. I remember it distinctly. When the internet first emerged, it was offered as a new Eden: unprecedented connection, limitless knowledge. But Eden carried a warning. The promise of knowing everything—the knowledge of good and evil—was not liberation but temptation. In reaching for it, Adam and Eve grasped more than they could hold. I sometimes wonder if we are reenacting that scene, chasing after knowledge that will not save us, seeking after false promises of being like gods.
Artificial intelligence only sharpens the dilemma. A recent Pew study found that two-thirds of adults under 35 have interacted with AI companions, and nearly a quarter admit they prefer those relationships to human ones (forms on a cave wall, much?). Teenagers, especially, are turning to AI for emotional support1. Common sense media reported that more than 70% of teens have used AI companions and half of those use them regularly, often for emotional support. Microsoft’s AI chief has even warned of a growing psychological phenomenon called “AI psychosis”: people become detached from reality and begin to confuse chatbots for beings with emotions, intentions, with some even claiming it’s become like God2.
We’re often told not to believe what we see with our own eyes—that objective reality doesn’t exist. We are told not to trust our senses. Cultural debates ask us to deny what we can see plainly before us, to assent to shifting definitions of reality itself.
You see my point - the internet and all of its shifting and false realities trickles into the real world in tangible ways. The consequences of this are most visible in the young. Skepticism has become a generational trait:
Young people don’t take things at face value.
They wrestle with doubt: If I can’t trust what I see online—or even what authority figures say—what can I trust?
They struggle with faith: Is there anyone or anything I can rely on?
Truly, if the internet is unreliable, and authority figures are unreliable, then perhaps nothing is reliable. Trust erodes and doubts invade.
From the perspective of those in faith communities, this skepticism and doubt can be a scary thing to admit to. Yet doubt, if we look closely, is not the enemy of faith. Doubts are normal. Think of the story in Mark 9. The father with the sick child desperate for healling cried, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” He was met with compassion. Thomas the doubter was not shamed by his doubt in the resureection but was invited by Jesus to touch and see. God does not fear our questions; He welcomes them. Certainly, God is not mad at anyone for having normal human questions. SOme of the Christianity stuff is hard to understand! Even Dostoevsky, hardened by suffering, could say: “It was not as a child that I beileved and confessed Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.” For him, doubt was a crucible: painful, but able to mold and shape a stronger faith. Jesus tells us to dedicate our whole selves to loving God: hearts, souls, strenght, and minds. We don’t leave intellect behind to follow God. Our minds are a gift. Use them.
The greater challenge is trust. Faith is not blind commitment—it is trust built on evidence and research. The Greek word for faith, πίστις (pistis) implies reliability and confidence, not wishful thinking. We practice this type of faith all the time without noticing it: confidence based on prior evidence. We trust our car will start because it usually does, or that the weather forecast is worth heeding because it has often proved accurate. Faith in God works the same way. His past faithfulness becomes the foundation of present trust. Being human means acting and believing in spite of incomplete information.
To live this out requires intention. Do you want to know how to trust someone more? You just trust them. Groundbreaking, I know. We learn to trust God intentionally. You can’t trust someone you don’t know, so you get to know Him through reading His word. You can’t trust someone you don’t talk to, so you pray. You can’t trust someone others don’t know, so you find community with others who testify to His reliability. Faith is not a leap into the dark but a relationship based on trust in God’s prior faithfulness.
And so, the way back to what is really real begins in small acts of resistance: setting down the screen, opening Scripture, voicing our doubts honestly before God. The cave wall is crowded with images, but truth waits in the light, ready to meet us.
https://apnews.com/article/ai-companion-generative-teens-mental-health-9ce59a2b250f3bd0187a717ffa2ad21f?utm_
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/microsoft-mustafa-suleyman-ai-psychosis-vfn7wc7c7?