I remember exactly where it started for me. A friend’s house, a small TV, a place the whole community met to watch the VCR. Contra. Super Mario, playing with joystics – that is what we called them back then and you could pug them on your DVD player. That was entertainment. It was simple. It felt harmless.
That’s the story most of us tell about entertainment – it’s just for fun. It’s just to pass time. It’s not that deep.
But is that actually true? Or is that the one lie we’ve never bothered to question, because questioning it would mean questioning almost everything we consume every single day?
From one TV in the house to a screen in every hand
Think about how fast the landscape changed. There used to be one house on the street with a television, and everyone piled in to watch together – supervised, communal, limited. Then it became a TV in every home. Then a phone in every pocket. Then a phone that never leaves your hand. Now we are in the age of Ai Agents and Chatbots.
Each shift didn’t just change how we watch. It changed how much, how often, and how alone we are when we do it. Nobody is piling into a neighbour’s lounge anymore to watch something together and talk about it afterward. Now it’s one person, one screen, an algorithm quietly deciding what comes next – and nobody in the room to ask, “should we really be watching this?”. Even our kids, the new generation is being given unsupervised, unlimited access to devices these days.
We were never just watching
Here’s the part we don’t like to admit: entertainment was never neutral. It was always teaching us something – how to see people, what to laugh at, what to fear, what’s normal, what’s acceptable, what’s worth our attention.
And somewhere along the way, without a single announcement, things that used to make us pause stopped making us pause at all. Content that would have shocked a room ten years ago barely gets a reaction now. It’s not that we made a decision to accept it. It’s that we saw it enough times that our resistance quietly wore down. That’s not an accident, that’s exactly how desensitization works.
Look at what’s considered normal now: pop-up ads for things that used to be hidden in the back of a magazine. “Dodgy” links promising something is “five minutes away.” Explicit content one click away from a football stream. None of that used to be normal. Now it’s just… there. Background noise. And we’ve stopped asking why it’s allowed to be background noise at all.
We even turned tragedy into a genre
Then there’s the harder one. We’ve made entertainment out of other people’s worst moments. True crime series, dramatized kidnappings, documentaries about killers – some genuinely made for awareness, but a lot of it built for views, for profit, for the next season. We give serial killers nicknames. We debate their psychology like it’s a character study. We watch trafficking storylines unfold across an evening and then close the laptop and go make dinner.
Ask yourself honestly – when you watch something like that, are you being made more aware, more moved to act? Or are you just being entertained by someone else’s suffering, and calling it awareness so it feels okay?
That’s not a guilt trip. It’s a genuinely hard question, and I don’t think most of us have sat with it long enough to answer it.
What entertainment is quietly connected to
I don’t believe entertainment alone causes trafficking, or mass shootings, or the worst things we see on the news. That would be too simple, and it lets everyone else off the hook. But I do believe entertainment is linked – that what we consume shapes what we’re able to imagine as normal, and what we’re able to imagine as normal shapes what we’re willing to ignore, excuse, or even do.
Scripture doesn’t treat this lightly either:
"I will set nothing wicked before my eyes." — Psalm 101:3
"Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." — Proverbs 4:23
"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." — Romans 12:2
Those aren’t verses about entertainment specifically. They’re verses about what we allow into our eyes, our minds, our hearts — because Scripture has always understood something we’re slow to admit: what you keep looking at eventually becomes what you’re okay with.
The question I want to sit with
This isn’t a takedown of every movie, show, or game – I’m not writing this from outside the culture looking in. I grew up in it too. I’m writing this from inside it, asking the question honestly for the first time.
Is entertainment really as innocent as we’ve always assumed? Or has “it’s just for fun” become the excuse that’s let us stop paying attention to what we’re actually being shaped by?
This post is the start of it. I’m working on a book that goes deeper – into the history, the psychology, and the very real lines connecting what we watch to the world we’re watching it happen in. For now, I just want to leave the question open, sitting there, uncomfortable, the way it should.
John Thole is the voice behind Beyond Salvation, a blog that captures the highs and lows of life through faith, laughter, and honest reflection. With a passion for storytelling, technology, and spiritual growth, he creates content that resonates with seekers, believers, and anyone navigating life’s journey. Whether sharing personal insights, devotionals, or thought-provoking discussions, John aims to inspire, uplift, and spark meaningful conversations.
