Late last spring, social media pioneer Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook nation (Facebook is now the third most populated country in the world!), started thinking out loud about lowering their age restriction to allow kids under the age of 13 to sign up as long as they had parental permission.
Many people didn’t care. “What harm can it do?” they asked. After all, millions of under-aged children already had circumvented Facebook’s age restrictions, many with the blessing of deceptive parents who saw no problem with lying for their kids or breaking the rules.
Others, including many child advocates, argued that changing the rules would hurt developmentally vulnerable young children.
As I pondered the potential fallout of the change, I couldn’t help recalling media critic Marshall McLuhan wrote back in 1967: “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message.”
In addition to the consequences McLuhan listed, I want us to consider the potential spiritual consequences of greater social media use by younger kids. Facebook and other social media are shaping us in ways we can’t even imagine, including our spiritual lives. That’s why we need to think carefully about how our Christian faith can shape our use of social media instead of allowing social media to shape our faith.
Pastor and blogger Tim Challies shares his own wrestling match with these realities in his book The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion (Zondervan). A lover and embracer of all things technological, Challies took a hard look at how his use of technology and social media were impacting himself and those around him.
He eventually asked himself a question all of us in youth ministry would do well to ponder: “Do I own my technology, or does my technology own me?” We should ask the same question of our students.
Disciplined Discernment
Challies set out on a journey to view his use of technology and social media through a biblical framework. Rather than just embracing and using everything without caution and thought, he decided to step beyond his experience with technology and social media to think more deeply and Christianly—a step he knew could lead to making some changes.
Challies moved beyond his experience (how we use technology and the level we typically function at) to employ theory (how technology operates and the impact it has on our lives) and theology (how God and His Word inform our use of technology and social media). His goal was to wind up at a place of disciplined discernment, where experience, theory and theology overlap…a place where all followers of Jesus need to venture…and a place where we must lead our students.
Social networking is now the number one online activity for teenagers. This shouldn’t surprise us, as emerging technologies allow developing adolescents increased opportunity to connect with friends at a time in life when they are spreading their wings in preparation to launch into the independence of adulthood. Children and teens are social beings who love engaging with social media because it equals engagement with friends.
As youth workers called by God to nurture students into an active and all-encompassing Christian faith, we have the responsibility to guide them proactively into engaging with social media in a manner that brings honor and glory to God. Teaching them now how to move into that sweet spot of disciplined discernment will serve to prepare them for a lifetime of spiritually mature engagement with social media.
How then, can we teach our students to engage with social media to the glory of God? Of course what we say is important. We need to be talking about this stuff with our kids; but in a world where we’re interacting with them through social media, I think it’s how we choose to use social media that speaks loudest to them about how they should use these new technologies and tools.
Guidelines for Godly Social Media
As a result of my own personal wrestling with these issues, I’ve come up with some personal guidelines that I trust you’ll find helpful, too. They’re a work in progress, as is the digital frontier itself. However, I believe that embracing and pursuing these starting point guidelines will not only help you own your technology to the glory of God, but will also serve as a powerful teaching tool to help your students do the same.
1. Realize you are a broken person. As a result of our sinful natures, we’re prone to using everything, including social media, in the wrong way. I find it helpful to remind myself constantly that I’m just one bad decision away from crossing the line into selfishly drawing attention to myself, offending or misguiding others and paying the consequences of my poor habits and judgment. This keeps me on my toes. You always should endeavor to know yourself and your weaknesses, to know God’s will, and then seek to do the right thing.
2. Limit your social media time. Most of us are plugged in way too much. We’re increasingly tethered. At our youth worker gatherings and conventions, it seems everyone walks around with his or her face buried in a handheld device. I’m guilty of that, too. As researcher Sherry Turkle says, we’re “alone together.” Here’s a great way to figure out if you’re spending too much time your tech toys: Ask your spouse or your closest friend, “Do I have a problem?” If the answer is yes, then you have a problem regardless of what you think. When my wife tells me that I’ve been burying myself in a screen too much, then it’s time to put it down. If I struggle to let go or miss it too much, that’s proof of my problem.
3. Seek accountability. It’s good to have friends who check in on you, tell you if you need to slow it down a little, help you set and hold to parameters, and will call you out if you’ve been posting without discipline and discernment. Also, make sure your spouse or a trusted friend has all your passwords.
4. Realize the whole world is watching. Anything you put out there is there for anyone and everyone to see…forever! You are creating a digital footprint.
5. Stop and think before posting, replying, sending or commenting. We let our words roll off our fingers and thumbs as fast as we think them. We seldom proofread to evaluate our intent and content.
Before you post, tweet or otherwise opine, ask yourself these questions:
• Does this matter? Is this useful to others?
• Does this promote and reflect kingdom living; or does this promote and reflect service to the kingdom of the world, the flesh and the devil?
• Does this glorify God, or does this glorify me?
• Come on…why am I doing this…really??? Take, for example, our growing obsession with Twitter. Your students don’t need to know the minute details of your routine activities. What they need to know is who you are, because who you are is who models life for them. If you are obsessed with tweeting your every move and activity, then you may be modeling self-centered narcissism. Is that really what we want to model for our kids?
6. Be yourself. The online world is a place where we easily can present ourselves as we want to be seen, not as we really are. The Internet lets us alter photos and curate our personalities and identities. We carefully create, construct and tweak photos and profiles in order to come off looking a certain way. Instead of manufacturing an online personality, be yourself, be vulnerable, be real and be authentic. Again, take a little time to ponder what you’re doing and why you’re doing it before you put yourself (or your digitally enhanced self) out there for your students and the rest of the world to see.
7. Realize you are not a brand. Don’t market and promote yourself as if you are a new smart phone or fast-food meal. You are a human being made in the image of God. If we see ourselves as brands, we’re more prone to edit ourselves while becoming enslaved to maintaining and promoting an edited self.
8. Don’t put your spouse and kids out there. I was a ministry kid. I have ministry kids. Don’t assume they’ll like or embrace the limelight or that the limelight is good for them. There are folks in the youth ministry world who are forcing their families into the public spotlight, most notoriously, my former neighbors Jon and Kate. Let’s be discerning, fair and mature. We are posting too many pictures, videos, etc. of our families; and I always wonder why. The fallout won’t be good. When they get older, we can ask their permission and include them if they’d like; but when they are young, don’t force that on them.
9. Don’t post or communicate anything you wouldn’t be willing to say from the front of your church or organization. Enough said.
10. Watch your private one-on-one communication with members of the opposite sex. This includes your interactions with students, leaders and parents. One-time communication is fine, but avoid extended and ongoing conversations. It’s similar to being alone with someone you shouldn’t be alone with in person. I’ve seen and heard far too many stories about innocent communication that turned into an emotional or physical affair.
11. Turn it off on a regular basis. Shut it down. Use the time to focus on others. Use the time to think deeply without distraction. Use the time to live deeply without having to be tethered.
I recently read Richard Mouw’s amazing little book about one of my heroes of the faith, Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper is the man responsible for introducing me to the concept of a worldview. I love Mouw’s chapter on Kuyper and World-Viewing. Mouw reminds readers that Kuyper’s understanding and development of the concept of worldview is all about how we as Christians are called to see things in new ways. We need to care about what God cares about, to rejoice in what makes God’s heart glad, and to grieve about what saddens Him. It’s all about discernment.
Many people say we have to have a Christian worldview. Mouw says we need to go beyond that understanding. We tend to talk and live as if a worldview is something we possess rather than something we engage in and do. It’s a subtle yet significant distinction, and it’s a good one! Mouw says that instead of thinking about having a worldview we should be about the business of “engaging in worldviewing.” Mouw writes, “It is something we do on a journey…being a Christian worldviewer means allowing the Bible to shed light on the paths we walk.”
Our task is clear: We are called to walk the path of life under the illumination of God’s Word, shining the light of God’s Word on every old and new reality we encounter along the way, which includes the new and developing reality of social media.
