Imagine being a young person in your teens or 20s and living a hundred years ago when computers, the internet, social media and smartphones didn’t exist.

And yet, like a character in some wild science fiction story, imagine that you were somehow enabled – via a small, futuristic device with seemingly magical powers – to effortlessly see and communicate not only with friends and family … but also with every deranged, deceitful, demonic and criminally insane individual, group and subculture on the entire planet, who somehow were able to present themselves as righteous, moral and dynamically appealing! They would welcome you to their group as a friend and potential ally – their primary mission, of course, being to convert and recruit you to their cause.

Imagine further that you spent an average of three hours every single day plugged into this strange, seductive, magical world of new “friends” and “allies” who, though no one else around you sees or hears them, are intimately and “virtually” right there with you, day and night, as long as you are carrying your magical device.

Finally, imagine that like many in their teens and 20s, you are immature, hungry for identity and purpose, basically ignorant of history, highly suggestible, and therefore unable to reliably discern genuine good from evil masquerading as good.

Just what sort of delusion and even criminality and terrorism might you be capable of sympathizing with … and even joining forces with?

Some crucial lessons about the unique temptations and corrupting influences targeting today’s young people become readily apparent in the story of Tyler Robinson, charged with assassinating beloved Christian conservative leader Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025.

Online discussions calling for ‘extermination of Christians’

Robinson grew up in an affluent, conservative Republican church-going family in Utah, his father a retired sheriff’s deputy and his mother an advocate for the disabled. During his formative years at home, Robinson, now 22, showed no early signs of far-left inclinations and maintained a 4.0 grade-point average in school. So what went wrong?

Although he briefly attended Utah State University in 2021, Robinson’s radicalization occurred primarily online.

Indeed, according to family members, when he moved back home in 2022-2023, Tyler became isolated from the outside world and highly engaged with online communication sites, including Discord – officially a platform for gaming communities, but well known by federal law enforcement as a major recruitment hub for violent far-left political organizations like Antifa and even foreign terrorist groups like ISIS.

During this time, as Robinson’s mother recounts, Tyler had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented” and in fact was having a “relationship” with his roommate, a young man supposedly “transitioning” to female.

As part of his eventual full embrace of radical leftism (evidenced by his accusation, uttered during a family dinner shortly before the shooting, that Charlie Kirk was “full of hate”), Robinson became involved in multiple Antifa Discord groups, reportedly joining in discussions calling for the “extermination of Christians” and other “threats.” In fact, Discord messages from one online account believed to be Robinson’s referenced retrieving a rifle from a “drop point” and hiding it in a bush, along with detailed plans consistent with the assassination, suggesting possible coordination with others. Discord later confirmed that Robinson had indeed sent messages shortly before being taken into custody, in which he admitted he had shot Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University.

“Hey guys,” one of the messages read, “I have bad news for you all … It was me at UVU yesterday. im sorry for all of this.”

Two days after Kirk’s assassination, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox summed everything up: Tyler Robinson shifted from a “normal kid” to someone influenced by “evil freaks” online. President Donald Trump described Robinson’s transformation this way: “It seems like he has wonderful parents, born in a wonderful neighborhood, smart guy, great boards, great marks, great student – and then something happened to him over a very short period of time. Looks like he was radicalized on the internet, and was radicalized on the left.”

The ‘anxious generation’

Generation Z – the name given to those born between 1997 and 2012 – is a uniquely troubled generation. And while the vast majority of Gen Zers are, of course, law-abiding – not outlaws, assassins or terrorists – they are mightily besieged by the same factors transforming many of their peers into political radicals, and in some cases into criminals. Social analysts break down the various influences that have made Gen Z into what author Jonathan Haidt chose as the title of his #1 New York Times bestseller: “The Anxious Generation.”

In fact, an estimated 42% of Gen Zers have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD or other mental health condition, with a staggering 60% reportedly taking medication to manage their mental health, according to a study on the respected Psychiatrist.com website.

Analysts point to a host of difficult, anxiety-producing issues facing Gen Z, including widespread financial worries – with college costs in the stratosphere, food more expensive than ever, home ownership out of reach for most, and two jobs often needed just to pay the rent.

Then there’s the disconcerting reality that many Gen Zers are not dating or getting married and having families – partly due to economic pressures, high anxiety and insecurity about the future, disillusionment with marriage due to the high level of divorce in their parents’ generation, and widespread reliance on dating apps. But also because they are spending so much time living in a virtual world where they can plug into and commune with every imaginable – and unimaginable – type of individual, cause, “influencer” and community on earth, all recruiting 24/7.

Yet, on a deeper level, there’s a powerful underlying truth about all this spelled out eloquently by writer and podcaster Bethany Mandel in her New York Post article, “How do two privileged New Jersey teens get seduced by ISIS?” which details how and why “two teenagers from one of New Jersey’s wealthiest suburbs were arrested … for allegedly plotting to join ISIS and carry out mass killings of Jews.” The causative factors, Mandel notes, do not start with getting brainwashed and recruited by evil people on the internet.

Co-author of the 2023 book “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation,” Mandel sets the stage for probing the underlying causes in her article by simply questioning why “two affluent American teenagers from a picture-perfect town” would end up “embracing one of the most violent ideologies on earth.” After all, she notes, one of the two boys reportedly claimed he wanted to “execute 500 Jews” and “mow down” pro-Israel marchers in his hometown, while the other boy “posted photos of himself with knives and said he wanted to behead people.” Lots of people.

Yet, explains Mandel, “it’s not as inexplicable as it looks”:

These boys didn’t grow up amid war or deprivation.

They grew up amid nothingness.

They had comfort, but not conviction; connection, but not community; access to everything, but belief in nothing.

They are the hollow products of a culture that dismantled every possible avenue through which they could have found meaning.

In the vacuum left by the disappearance of faith, tradition and moral authority, they went looking for something to believe in – something absolute, something that made them feel powerful and alive and part of something bigger than themselves.

And online, there’s an endless marketplace of extremism eager to sell that illusion.

“These boys,” Mandel points out, “didn’t find ISIS in a mosque. They found it on Discord. … A generation raised without faith or moral grounding is now desperately searching for something to fill the void. And when that search happens in the digital wilderness, without fathers, pastors or teachers to guide them, it leads not to purpose, but to poison.”

These upper-middle-class “jihadis aren’t just a security threat,” concludes Mandel. “They’re a warning: When a society stops offering its young men meaning, something else will. And what steps in to fill that emptiness may be worse than anything we dare to imagine.”

‘America’s poisonous school system’

Of course, out of the approximately 69 million Gen Zers in the U.S., only a relative few become actual monsters and murderers. On the other hand, a large number – especially those attending today’s radicalized far-left colleges and universities – have been jubilantly demonstrating in America’s streets their approval for monsters and murderers, in particular the terror group Hamas. (An August 2025 Harvard/Harris poll found that an astonishing 60% of Gen Z voters aged 18 to 24 supported Hamas over Israel.)

And no wonder. For in addition to their massive involvement with online influencers, the other major institution engaging – and reprogramming – Gen Zers’ minds is America’s poisonous school system.

Fact: America’s entire education establishment, from K-12 public schools to college and graduate school – with precious few exceptions – is entirely dominated by the far left. Not liberals. Radical leftists – the kind that enjoy subjecting preschoolers to “drag queen story hour,” where demonically possessed transgender men dressed up as women (and sometimes dressed up as demons, with horns protruding from their heads) regale innocent toddlers forced to sit at their feet with stories about heroic LGBT characters.

For children just a few years older, it’s every bit as perverse: White children are exhorted to see themselves as “white-privileged” descendants of racist oppressors and slaveholders who should feel guilty over their despicable heritage. Likewise, black school children are indoctrinated to see themselves as oppressed victims – in need of reparations (and perhaps revenge).

Meanwhile, middle school libraries commonly feature hard-core pornography placed in the most visible and accessible locations, while in the classrooms teachers routinely brainwash children with Marxist “critical race theory.” (During the Biden administration, widespread outrage occurred when, after parents stood up at a Loudon County, Va. school board meeting to complain about their children being indoctrinated with critical race theory, the Biden Justice Department likened those parents to “domestic terrorists.” Yes, that actually happened.) And just to top things off, there are the “After School Satan Clubs” being established in public schools throughout the U.S., sponsored by the Salem, Mass.-based Satanic Temple.

Then in college, things get really bad.

A high percentage of professors today are radical far-left ideologues – indoctrinating Gen Zers to hate their own country as an evil, racist “oppressor” nation, promoting “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) at every turn, endorsing the most radical and ever-expanding claims of the LGBT world, characterizing President Trump as another Hitler (one prof even claimed Charlie Kirk was the leader of today’s “Hitler Youth”), demonizing America’s longtime ally Israel and lionizing Islamic terrorists dedicated to annihilating the tiny Jewish state. And so on.

The urgent quest for answers

With all the anxiety, unhappiness, political radicalization, online addiction, widespread depression, dependency on psych meds, financial struggles and other issues plaguing them, it’s no wonder the second leading cause of death for Gen Zers is suicide. (The leading cause of death for Gen Z is “firearm-related injuries,” which includes suicides … as well as homicides and accidental shootings.)

Ironically, artificial intelligence, increasingly being adopted by Gen Zers as therapist, friend, counselor, financial adviser and personal helper with everything from school papers to relationships to mental health issues – almost as though it were a god – is now helping America’s young people to commit suicide. For real. And of course, the many international “sextortion” groups that target U.S. kids are adding to their already stratospheric suicide count.

So, is there hope for Gen Z? And for that matter, what about all those millions of youngsters following in Gen Z’s footsteps – so-called “Generation Alpha” (born between the early 2010s and mid-2020s) and “Generation Beta” (born between 2025 and 2039) – all growing up in the same highly addictive virtual world?

In “The Anxious Generation,” author and psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores how allowing and encouraging immature and vulnerable young people to become immersed in the overwhelming – and often predatory – alien virtual universe of the internet, social media and smart phones has gone a long way toward destroying a generation of Americans. Here are a few key quotes from “The Anxious Generation”:

“In this new phone-based childhood, free play, attunement, and local models for social learning are replaced by screen time, asynchronous interaction, and influencers chosen by algorithms. Children are, in a sense, deprived of childhood.”

“By designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.”

“While the reward-seeking parts of the brain mature earlier, the frontal cortex – essential for self-control, delay of gratification, and resistance to temptation – is not up to full capacity until the mid-20s, and preteens are at a particularly vulnerable point in development.”

“Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and – as I will show – unsuitable for children and adolescents.”

“Over the course of many decades, we found ways to protect children while mostly allowing adults to do what they want. Then quite suddenly, we created a virtual world where adults could indulge any momentary whim, but children were left nearly defenseless. As evidence mounts that phone-based childhood is making our children mentally unhealthy, socially isolated, and deeply unhappy, are we okay with that trade-off? Or will we eventually realize, as we did in the 20th century, that we sometimes need to protect children from harm even when it inconveniences adults?”

Throughout his book, Haidt offers many suggestions. But, as he notes in the introduction, “there are four reforms that are so important, and in which I have such a high degree of confidence, that I’m going to call them foundational. They would provide a foundation for healthier childhood in the digital age.” They are:

1. No smartphones before high school. Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones (phones with limited apps and no internet browser) before ninth grade (roughly age 14).

2. No social media before 16. Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers.

3. Phone-free schools. In all schools from elementary through high school, students should store their phones, smartwatches and any other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone lockers or locked pouches during the school day. That is the only way to free up their attention for each other and for their teachers.

4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.

Some Gen Zers are finding real answers – not from artificial intelligence, but from the Ultimate Intelligence

Fortunately, with so much stacked against them – against their happiness and security, their financial wellbeing, their prospects for marriage and family, their sanity itself – Gen Zers’ suffering is causing many to turn to the one reliable Source of true help.

And it’s not ChatGPT. It’s Almighty God.

As “Christianity Today” recently reported in a story headlined “Gen Z Now Leads in Church Attendance,” “Churchgoers between the ages of 18 and 28 attend church more frequently than their older siblings, parents, or grandparents.” Citing a new “State of the Church” study by the Barna Group, the story reports the good news:

Today, when people born between 1997 and 2007 go to church, they attend, on average, about 23 services per year. Churchgoing Gen Xers, in contrast, make it to about 19 out of 52 Sundays, while Boomer and Elder churchgoers average just under 17, Barna found.

Millennial churchgoers, born between 1981 and 1996, attend 22 services annually, up from a previous high of 19 in 2012.

The Barna study … calls this a “historic” and “generational reversal.”

“The fact that young people are showing up more frequently than before is not a typical trend,” said Daniel Copeland, Barna’s vice president of research. “This data represents good news for church leaders and adds to the picture that spiritual renewal is shaping Gen Z and Millennials today.”

“We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.” – Psalm 78:4