Pope: Technology should serve friendships, not replace them
Pope Leo XIV visited the Vatican's summer camp for employees' children, encouraging responsible use of technology. He emphasized that real human interaction should not be replaced by devices, urging children to build friendships and spend time together. The Pope warned against digital dependence, advising practical limits on screen time and fostering conversation and family activities. He shared personal travel anecdotes about GPS misdirections to illustrate the value of independent thinking and self-reliance.
3 months ago
Pope Leo XIV used his visit to the Vatican’s “Estate Ragazzi” summer camp on 22 June 2026 to urge children and teenagers to let technology serve genuine friendship, family life and personal growth rather than replace them, emphasizing the gift of the human mind and the need for prayer and critical thinking. 1 2
The Holy Father met participants aged 3‑13 at the Vatican employees’ summer camp, answering questions and being named “Chief Explorer.” He linked the camp’s theme, Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, to the importance of navigating life with one’s own judgment. 1
Leo XIV acknowledged that devices are useful but warned against constant use when people are together. He urged children to put phones aside and “play, study and talk together as persons, not as techno‑robots.” The same message was repeated in a separate report, stressing that real human contact is essential. 1 2
The Pope highlighted that many apps are deliberately designed to create dependence. He advised practical limits, such as setting specific times when phones are put away, to protect freedom and family conversation. Both articles note his call to “be free from these things.” 1 2
Recalling personal experiences of GPS misdirection in Italy, Peru, the United States and elsewhere, Leo XIV stressed the value of learning to think for oneself. He declared, “I do not need my phone if my brain is working,” affirming that God gave humans an “extraordinary gift” in their brains. 2
The Pope reminded the youth that even when the Bible or prayers are on a phone, God looks at the heart, not the screen. He called for prayer together as families and friends, integrating faith with responsible digital habits. 1 2
Pope Leo XIV urges technology to enhance, not replace, human friendship
Pope Leo XIV’s message can be summarized as a warning and a hope: technology is meant to serve authentic human friendship, not to replace it—because friendship is not merely “information exchange,” but a personal good rooted in human dignity, truth, and the face-to-face recognition of other persons.
In Pope Leo XIV’s framing, the decisive issue is not first of all technological capacity but what technology does to the human person—whether it helps people remain fully human. He explicitly calls the current challenge “not technological, but anthropological,” connected to a loss of clarity about what it means to be human.
This matters for friendship because genuine friendship depends on what is uniquely personal: knowing a person’s face and voice, not just receiving outputs. Pope Leo XIV ties the preservation of “face and voice” to the necessity of encountering Christ, the “image of the invisible God.”
Pope Leo XIV directly addresses a young-person experience: people can feel “connected to so many people” yet still experience “different forms of loneliness,” because relationships become “fleeting and often illusory.”
He also notes how platforms shaped by commercial interests and algorithms distort relationship:
“these tools are misleading when they are controlled by commercialism and interests that fragment our relationships”
and “there are algorithms that tell us what we should watch, what we should think, and who our friends should. And so our relationships become confusing, sometimes anxious.”
The deeper diagnosis is that when a tool controls a person, the person is treated like a commodity—reducing friendship from communion to market logic.
Pope Leo XIV teaches that in the abstract technology can be good, but in practice it is not neutral, because it reflects the intentions and interests of those who design, finance, regulate, and use it.
So even when technology “connects,” it may still fail friendship if it treats persons as functions, data, or instruments. He warns that if technology becomes the ultimate criterion, the human person risks being “reduced to data, a cog in a machine or a commodity.”
Pope Leo XIV emphasizes that AI may simulate reasoning or perform tasks with speed and efficiency, but it cannot replicate moral discernment or the ability to form genuine relationships—meaning it cannot fully stand in for friendship, which requires conscience, truth, and personal commitment.
That is why “enhancement” is different from “replacement”: enhancement means technology can support communication, information, and coordination; replacement would mean outsourcing what only persons can do—judgment, fidelity, mercy, and love.
Pope Leo XIV hopes for “a restored trust in technology” as a gift of human genius in harmony with God’s creative design.
But this trust is disciplined. He insists that young people “should learn moderation and discipline in their use” of digital technology and AI, guided by parents and educators, citing Inter Mirifica.
He also insists that digital literacy must include education in the truth about God and about humanity, so that young people learn how to integrate technology into a “holistic Christian lifestyle,” not a fragmented one.
In his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, he gives a key criterion for civilization:
“The quality of a civilization is measured not by the power of its means, but by the care it is able to offer, by its ability to recognize the other as a face not merely as a function.”
Within that framework, technology can support mutual care—for example by helping people anticipate and organize—without undermining human freedom and judgment.
So the Pope’s principle is: technology is legitimate insofar as it protects the personal structure of freedom and responsibility that friendship requires.
Pope Leo XIV’s “disarm” language targets a cultural tendency: the belief that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology,” but preventing it from dominating humanity, including by freeing it from monopolistic control and opening it to plural human ways of life.
This is directly relevant to friendship because domination by systems (rather than persuasion by conscience and truth) is how relationships become anxious, controlled, and commodified—exactly what he describes in the Jubilee dialogue.
Pope Leo XIV warns that the digital culture may multiply connections, but the human heart still “retains an irrevocable need for genuine closeness.”
He therefore invites everyone to cherish places and times where physical presence is crucial—such as shared meals, Christian community gatherings, time with the lonely, and service to the poor—as signs of a humanity that believes each person’s body is a dwelling place of God.
That is a concrete application of “enhance, not replace”: technology may help coordinate schedules and reach people, but friendship is sustained by embodied attentiveness and charitable presence.
Pope Leo XIV makes a further point about the limits of information:
access to vast amounts of data and information should not be confused with the ability to derive meaning and value from it.
Friendship is not data; it is meaning, shared life, and moral trust. Therefore education must help young people use tools with “their own intelligence,” opening themselves to truth.
Pope Leo XIV’s underlying claim is clear: friendship is a specifically human good that depends on face-to-face recognition, truth, moral discernment, and care—all of which cannot be automated or replaced by technology.
Technology can and should enhance friendship—by supporting care, coordination, and education—but only when it is used with moderation, guided by truth about God and humanity, and prevented from dominating persons as data or commodities.