Teens Beware! Gandalf Wants Your Smartphones

In J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Two Towers, the wizard Gandalf describes the palantír as a device that allows people “to see far off and to converse in thought with one another.” As someone who uses video conferencing for a significant portion of each day, the device Gandalf describes is certainly familiar. The idea of magical or technological devices that allow us to see things far away and converse over tremendous distances is no longer fantasy or science fiction, but reality. While the creativity and thoughtfulness of Tolkien’s worldbuilding excited imagination in the 1950s, his thought-provoking speculations feel more like prophecies in the present day. 

Tolkien’s long-time friend C.S. Lewis tells us in The Abolition of Man that human pursuits of magic and science are twins born from the same human desire for power. The difference between them is that “one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve.” Though Tolkien’s fantastic magical devices were far more effective than our own historical attempts at magic, even they have been superseded by modern technology.

But if science is the twin of magic, then the twins of Tolkien’s palantír are the web browsers on our smartphones and laptops. Video and audio communication aside, Google Earth, image searches, live streams, and more all amount to little more than “see[ing] images of things far off.” 

In The Lord of the Rings, one particular magical iPhone ends up in the hands of Gandalf after a clash with Saruman. The wizard admonishes his companion Pippin to stay clear of it, just as parents warn their children about the dangers of the internet. Still, even as children sometimes give into sinful curiosity, Pippin sneaks up to the phone and answers the muted video call ringing on the palantír’s single open tab. Not surprisingly, it’s Sauron—Lord of the Ring’s version of Satan—on the other end of the line. Luckily Pippin, like many guilty children, is not able to hide the effects of his misdeeds for long. He soon recovers, albeit with some of his innocence lost. Tolkien leaves it to us to wonder what might have happened if Pippin had persisted in his lust for forbidden knowledge or what could have become of him if he had not been only, as Gandalf calls him, “an honest fool.” 

With modern technology, though, we don’t have to wonder. We know that Satan is not only lurking at the other end of our devices but that he is effectively attacking the innocence and purity of children through them. According to a survey conducted by Common Sense Media, 78% of teenagers have been exposed to pornography, and of these 54% experienced it before age thirteen and 15% before age eleven. 

Consider something less drastic, the “innocent” distractions that the internet assaults us with daily. Thomas Aquinas would have characterized these impulses as temptations to curiositas, a vice he describes in the Summa Theologica that diverts a mind to “a less profitable study from a study that is an obligation.” These are the rabbit holes we find ourselves falling down when we set out to, say, find the publication date of The Two Towers and end up scrolling through LEGO Lord of the Rings sets on eBay. Online teachers experience this all too often when they realize their students’ nodding and smiling is not in response to the comedic delivery of their lecture but to a meme one of them posted in a chat room. The palantíri persistently badger us with temptation towards curiositas. Anywhere your hand can be, your phone can surely follow. Isn’t there an old saying about that? An iPhone hand is the devil’s plaything? In any case, there are plenty of seemingly innocuous ways the internet nudges us off the path of virtue. Sure, it’s true that you can “learn a lot” from YouTube-binging interesting topics like politics, hand-sewing, and history, but just because there’s learning going on doesn’t automatically make something virtuous or worthwhile. 

Consider Gandalf’s description of Saruman’s seduction to evil: “Very useful, no doubt that [palantír] was to Saruman; yet it seems that he was not content. Further and further abroad he gazed until he cast his gaze on Barad-dur. Then he was caught!” When first faced with the power of the internet, people often react with amazement. To think: there is so much information all in one place! Then, in conformity with human nature, we start to push the limits. We start to use the internet for more than what we need. Seriously, who needs to scroll through hundreds of images of Minecraft builds or theology memes? Humans are naturally covetous of more and more, and the internet is happy to provide it. 

Curiosity is not all innocent and there are such things as stupid questions. At some point, we must either be content to live without knowing or face that which we ought not to know. The deadly fruit in the garden—suspiciously adopted as the logo of a certain prominent tech company—was not pleasure, money, or fame; it was knowledge. 

Why is it then that wherever I go I see children as young as two years old holding these palantíri? Why are they so commonplace among teenagers that it’s almost shameful to have to constantly admit to not having one when the world presumes that you do? The argument that “everyone has one” should be obviously backwards to everyone, even those without a good education in logical fallacies. 

The claim that kids are “smart enough to make good decisions” is at best naive and more likely the result of apathy. Children—and many students and adults—have shown themselves to generally be unworthy of the prodigious task of self-restraint that a palantír burdens them with. This is not news; this is an open secret. 

Tolkien gives us a solution by the example of Gandalf. He admonishes Pippin for his faults and warns him of the danger but also gently forgives him for his wrong. More important than that though, Gandalf takes the temptation away. He does not give Pippin back the palantír under a new set of conditions; he holds fast to his position that the ways of wizards are not for the likes of hobbits.

It is important to remember that, though the palantír was turned into a tool of Satan, that was not its original purpose. Gandalf tells Pippin of how the palantíri were originally intended for innocent or useful purposes and only later perverted. In our time we must remember the same. Technology as a whole, like so many other areas of human accomplishment, is not meant to be done away with simply because at this point in history it is a window for sin. While we must recognize the necessity for caution, we can also hope and pray for a better world where the magical items in our lives are entirely ordered towards the good rather than being so riddled with traps. It is not our Christian duty to flee the battle for technology simply because of recent losses; rather, we must continue to protect ourselves and innocents while working towards the overthrow of Mordor and the restoration of the true king, Christ, in everything.