The Entertainment Society

The problem isn’t screen time. It’s formation

Photo by Deyvi Romero

When I look back at my childhood, it was filled less by what would traditionally be called “edifying” pursuits and more by entertainment. Cartoons and anime — Dragon Ball Z was a huge favourite of mine — football, music, wrestling, gaming. In that sense, I was a typical millennial: part of a generation spoilt for choice, coming of age alongside the rise of the internet, boxsets and digital television.

It was no surprise that this period produced a widespread anxiety about video games. The concern was not merely about screen time, but about formation: that interactive media might shape the moral imagination of young people, increasing aggression and dulling sensitivity to violence. In the context of South London during the 2000s (where youth violence was prominent), one could see why some were wary of the effects of shooter video games such as Grand Theft Auto.

Yet something important was different (at least in my context). Despite the volume of entertainment consumed, it did not provide the underlying moral framework of life. That had already been formed elsewhere: through family expectations, Christian teaching, a shared moral language about right and wrong, and an implicit sense that life had meaning and purpose.

The conversation today has shifted from video games to social media and online subcultures. But the deeper issue is not that young people consume entertainment. It is that entertainment is no longer simply content within a framework — it is increasingly becoming the framework itself.

Throughout history, entertainment was not the centre of life. Most societies organised themselves around religion, moral traditions, civic belonging and family life. English life, for example, was historically shaped by the rhythms of parish life (liturgical calendar, life events, social order). These provided a thick sense of belonging, offering structure and purpose.

Entertainment, by contrast, functioned as relief from meaningful life, not a replacement for it. A trip to the theatre or to the football was seen as a treat. Life itself already had a narrative, filled by family, community and nation.

So, what has changed today? The institutions that once formed the moral imagination of the people have weakened, with young people bearing the brunt. I noted earlier how my family formation played a significant role in providing the virtue ethics needed to lead with in life. The language of dignity, responsibility and objective “right and wrong” were constantly articulated throughout my childhood.

As I’ve gotten older, what I greatly appreciate was how my parents spoke about purpose and hope. I was encouraged to work hard and trust in God. If things didn’t work out the way I wanted, it wasn’t the end of the world — “life is a journey and your time will come”. This created breathing space. I didn’t have to shoulder the weight of my every decision. It is only of recent that I’ve grasped how influential this has been on my imagination. It has also revealed how crucial household upbringing is. This is where the individual receives their primary lens through which they view life.

The explicit language of virtue ethics has slowly disintegrated from modern British life, which in turn affects how social matters are discussed and how education is taught in schools. We have shifted to a procedural framework which emphasises the management of behaviour rather than addressing morality directly. In addition, mediating institutions such as the local church, social clubs and neighbourhood culture are slowly disappearing. These were spaces that embodied the moral grammar of virtue ethics in day-to-day reality.

This is not to say that people don’t have moral intuitions. However, it is something we have increasingly left to the individual to figure out. Yet this presumes that the individual is already formed to understand what this looks like. “You do you” alone doesn’t provide an answer to the good life. Humans are a relational species; we experience culture, joy, beauty and truth together. It is through our web of relationships that we come to understand who we are and what we are good at.

Local institutions once helped answer questions such as: What is the good life? What does it mean to be a good person? What responsibilities do we owe others? As they thin out, something important disappears — formation.

Into this vacuum steps entertainment. Entertainment, ordinarily designed as a form of leisure, increasingly provides identity scripts, moral archetypes, visions of success and cultural narratives.

This has been compounded by the development of the smartphone, which now allows one to stream their favourite podcasts, TV shows and music, as well as partake in social media discourse (where over a third of Gen Z spend more than four hours a day). It is not far-fetched to say that young people spend more time in the entertainment world than offline, within their local communities.

Whether we like it or not, what we consume shapes us.

If most of our conversations, thinking and reflections are taking place online, then naturally these platforms will gradually shape our tastes, habits and moral intuitions. Young people today learn how to interpret the world through gaming worlds, online personalities, streaming culture and social media content. Spaces which can’t embody the fullness of human relationships — self-sacrifice, togetherness, vulnerability. Entertainment has moved from the margins of life to its centre.

When institutions stop forming people, and entertainment becomes the primary narrative environment, a deeper cultural condition emerges. Young people increasingly inhabit a world where meaning is unstable, moral language is thin, and identity is aesthetic rather than ethical. This is the soil for urban nihilism.

We are seeing this manifest in real time across several movements. In a world where young people feel powerless, where they are seeking a pathway to agency, the manosphere subculture offers a sense of identity through masculinity and behavioural scripts. Looksmaxxing offers this through aesthetic optimisation. Groypers emerged from an online troll network that believed mainstream conservatism in the US was too moderate, constructing a political identity along the lines of ethnonationalist belonging, while radical progressives have done similarly on the grounds of moral positioning and social justice.

Different directions, but all from the same impulse: “Who am I, and what gives me worth?” They are all attempting to solve the same underlying problem: a loss of shared moral formation, which drives individuals to construct substitute systems of meaning, identity and order. It’s not merely about violence or social disorder, but a deeper loss: the disappearance of shared moral imagination.

Public discussion often asks: are video games addictive? Is social media harmful? But these questions miss the deeper issue. The real question is: who is forming the moral imagination of the next generation?

If the institutions of formation disappear, entertainment will inevitably fill the gap. Algorithms will begin to do what families, churches and communities once did.

Secular liberal society asserts that matters of morality, meaning and purpose should be left to the individual. They are deemed inappropriate for the public square discussion. But this understanding of the human person presumes a formed individual who fully grasps the power and permanency of their choices.

Here is where a distinction needs to be made. The human person certainly has the capacity to rationally make their own choices, but the key word is “capacity”. This capacity needs to be cultivated. That is how true agency is achieved.

We may have moral intuitions, but they do not develop into ethics until they are formed (through application and repetition) over a sustained period. It is also not helped that modern frameworks deny that they are moral systems.

Market logic, for example, doesn’t feel like a belief system. It is simply treated as “just how the world works”. Yet it quietly makes assumptions about how humans operate. Value is equated with what people are prepared to pay, and choice is framed as freedom. People aren’t consciously thinking that they interpret reality through such an economically reductionist lens; they are simply subtly formed by the prevailing culture. The same applies to the moral anthropology of entertainment, where the human person is understood as expressive and self-defining.

If people are not trained to think through the decisions they make, then whatever they consume will influence their ethical framework (even if it presents itself as non-aligned). A civilisation cannot outsource the formation of its young to entertainment industries.

Entertainment can amuse, inspire and even educate, but it cannot replace the institutions that teach people what life is for, what virtue looks like, and how to live with others. If the West wishes to address the deeper crisis it faces, it will have to rediscover something it has gradually forgotten: that moral formation is essential to human flourishing.