The devil hates humanity, and wants to drag each of us down to hell, where he and his evil spirits (and countless damned souls) can accuse and torment us even as we share their agony and misery for all eternity. The evil one takes special delight in corrupting the innocence of children and young people, for Jesus’ words, “Let the children come to Me; do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Mk. 10:14), served as a painful reminder of the beauty and glory he once possessed, but lost forever.
Satan hates everything that God loves—and because little ones can be so guileless and innocent, and thus so precious to the Father (Mt. 18:1-5), the devil makes every effort to turn them away from the Lord and prevent them from discovering and following Heaven’s plan for their lives. Our highly prosperous, technological age offers more opportunities, distractions, and potential temptations than any other era in history; music, leisure activities, social media, societal trends, and numerous forms of entertainment unimaginable to previous generations, all serve as potential snares in the devil’s ongoing and intensifying campaign against our young people. Furthermore, growing numbers of teenagers and young adults suffer today from anxiety, insecurity, and uncertainty about their place in the world—and hell is quick to exploit these vulnerabilities. This danger is compounded by the unfortunate fact that a majority of parents, teachers, and other significant adults (perhaps even some religious catechists and priests) seem to be unprepared for battle in the spiritual war now raging.
Adolph Hitler—for many people, the foremost historical personification of evil—once boasted, “When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already.’” The evil one desires to taunt good and loving parents and grandparents, teachers and pastors, with these same words—and so it’s our duty to inform ourselves of the dangers surrounding our young people, and then help prepare them to use God’s grace in facing and overcoming the devil’s attacks.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,
The power of Satan is . . . not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from
the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the
building up of God’s reign. Although Satan may act in the world out of
hatred for God and His kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action
may cause grave injuries—of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a
physical nature—to each man and to society, the action is permitted by
divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and
cosmic history (n. 395).
The Catechism also insists that parents must evangelize their children, teaching them “to pray and to discover their vocation as children of God” (n. 2226). This education in the faith certainly includes warning them of the reality of spiritual warfare, teaching them to recognize and resist the devil’s temptations and snares, and assuring them that, with the help of God’s grace, they can “resist the devil, and he will flee” (Jas. 4:7).
Today’s Spiritual Threats
Satan tries to tempt young people in our modern world in the areas of rebellion, rejection of parental and religious authority, peer pressure, cliques, an obsession with one’s social status, drug and alcohol abuse, greed and materialism, and sexual immorality. However, the devil has many other spiritual snares for unsuspecting youths—some very blatant, but others much more subtle and carefully disguised (and, for that reason, all the more potentially dangerous).
For instance, many children’s TV programs, animated movies, videos, and cartoons are awash in humanism and New Age symbolism. Also, the extremely popular Harry Potter books and movies are a sly way of introducing young people to occult themes and practices. According to the late Father Gabriel Amorth, the chief exorcist at the Vatican, “You start off with Harry Potter, who comes across as a likeable wizard, but you end up with the devil. There is no doubt that the signature of the Prince of Darkness is clearly within these books.”
The popularity of Harry and his friends has led to an increased interest in witchcraft and paganism among young people, along with a growing involvement—especially among young women and girls—in wicca. Wicca means bending nature to one’s own purposes, and is a revival of ancient witchcraft and pagan traditions and practices. Even though Wiccans claim to use only “white” or good magic (involving earth rituals, an appreciation of nature, and the casting of beneficial spells), such spiritual power—granting that it does exist—has only two possible sources. Anything not clearly of God (as judged by the authority of Scripture and the Church) can only come from the devil.
Also, many young people open themselves up to spiritual danger by an involvement in role-playing fantasy games such as Dungeons & Dragons, and various offshoots and similar forms of “entertainment.” The late Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan in southern California, claimed that such games are the best way to indoctrinate youth into the occult (and sometimes players have lost touch with reality, or committed crime, rape, sexual abuse, suicide, and even murder). Furthermore, satanically-themed video games are quite often directed at God and at the Church, allowing players to attack and destroy these supposed enemies of “freedom” and “personal fulfillment.” Not only are such ideas blasphemous and grave sins against the First Commandment; they also condition their victims to despise and reject the One Who truly loves them, and Who seeks to save them through the ministry of His Church.
A still more pervasive threat to young people today is the widespread popularity of rock, punk, grunge, and heavy metal music (and their various offshoots). Music’s power to influence human emotions has long been recognized. The Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin (founder of the Soviet Union) claimed, “One quick way to destroy a society is through its music,” and the late rock musician Jimi Hendrix insisted, “Music is a spiritual thing of its own. You can hypnotize a person with music, and when you get people at the weakest point, you can preach into the subconscious what you want to say.”
The average teen listens to over ten thousand hours of music between 7th and 12th grade (more than twice as much time spent in the classroom during the high school years), and as one author notes, “anything we are exposed to this much has got to have an influence on us.” In fairness, some rock or heavy metal music, though incomprehensible and unattractive to parents, is morally unobjectionable, and there are even Christian heavy metal bands. However, much of the genre is deliberately and explicitly satanist, while often promoting destructive self-behavior—especially suicide. According to Italian psychiatrist Dr. Simone Morabito, “For us psychiatrists [satanic rock music] is like a slow-acting, highly effective poison. Our medical journals inform us that in recent years 5000 young people in the USA have taken their lives. I am convinced that one of the chief causes of these suicides is satanic rock music that promotes the taking of one’s life.”
There are also physical dangers involved in rock and heavy metal music, especially when listened to at concerts or in discos; the extreme volume (110 decibels or more) can damage one’s hearing. Moreover, this excessive stimulation of such music—when combined with stroboscopic lights and the use of alcohol or narcotics—can cause irreversible brain damage. Furthermore, the increase of adrenaline in the bloodstream can make the music physically addictive. As if that weren’t enough, research suggests that music “consecrated” to the devil has a powerful rhythm (which mimics the sexual act), is at least seven decibels higher than the tolerance of our nervous system (ultimately inducing a type of depression, rebellion, and aggressiveness), and uses subliminal signals (transmitted at a pitch too high for human hearing, but capable of being picked up by our subconscious minds).
The priest exorcist and former president of Human Life International, Rev. Thomas J. Euteneur, once wrote, “What I find most alarming, as an exorcist, is the spread of truly occult phenomena in our youth culture. It used to be that vampires had to go back to their coffins with the first streaks of dawn. Now handsome young vampires [e.g., the stars of the Twilight series of movies, and the former TV show Vampire Diaries] are sullying the covers of every gossip magazine and tantalizing prime time audiences with their evil—and teenage girls are just swooning for them. Don’t be fooled: the vampire culture is the spawn of the Harry Potter culture that has washed over our youth for [well over] a decade and still seduces parents into thinking it is all just ‘harmless entertainment.’ Kids dressing up as sorcerers, blogging about vampires, dabbling in Wicca—it’s just plain seductive and evil.”(Information in this section was taken from chapter 8 of my book Spiritual Dangers of the 21st Century, Queenship Publishing, 2009.)
The rest of this article can be found in Signs and Wonders 35#3, Summer/Fall 2025. Become a member today! Fr. Esper also has several books: Your Soul in the Balance, On the Brink,