The Church and Social Media

Imagine the following scenario: It comes to your church’s attention that it’s possible to post little texts, photos or videos, which appear on gambling slot machines in betting shops, casinos, amusement arcades and other leisure venues all around the world, with the potential to reach millions worldwide. As people place their bets, your little video, written text or photo message appears. They can be placed there with no financial cost, and with relatively little technical equipment. 

How would your church respond? I’m pretty sure there would be a lengthy discussion about this, some folk – the hardliners – saying that this is something we should have absolutely nothing to do with, and not support gambling in any way. Even with the most positive message in the world we’d be supporting the downfall and ruin of many individual lives, plus that of their families.

Others would take a more nuanced line. Yes, they would say, of course, gambling is a really dangerous thing for people to get involved with, but here is an opportunity to get a gospel message across – and we could also encourage folk to leave the gambling too, if it’s become a problem. 

What would the final decision be? Would your church go ahead and use this platform and potentially “reach” a lot of people with a gospel message and information about the church, or no, it’s just too destructive, and something we don’t want to have anything to do with.

If you noticed the title of this post you are possibly thinking through all of the possible flaws in the analogy between social media and gambling slot machines and yes, all analogies have their weaknesses and shouldn’t be pushed too far or depended on too heavily. My point with the analogy however, is that – no matter what your church finally decided about the slot machine content posting – there would at least be a serious discussion about the ethics of it all before you went ahead and used it as a platform.

The analogy between social media and gambling slot machines is not as far fetched as you might imagine. In his excellent book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, author Cal Newport quotes Tristan Harris, former start-up founder and Google engineer, from an appearance on Bill Maher’s 60 Minutes show, with the title Brain Hacking. In the interview, Harris holds up a smart phone and says: This thing is a slot machine… every time I check my phone I’m paying the slot machine to see “What did I get?” There’s a whole playbook of techniques that get used by (the technology companies) to get you using the product for as long as possible” Bill Maher concludes the segment with the memorable lines Philip Morris just wanted your lungs. The App store wants your soul” 

It would take too long to enumerate all of the very skilful tricks and shiny bells and whistles, that tech and social media companies use to fight for our commercially valuable attention minutes but I thoroughly recommend the book (Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, by Cal Newport, published by Portfolio – Penguin Random House – on February 5th, 2019) 

Of course, it could be argued that if there really is such a thing as social media addiction, it’s relatively benign – your teeth don’t start falling out, it doesn’t usually lead to loss of income and livelihood, and those people who decide to leave social media overuse generally find it much easier than escaping alcohol or substance abuse. That doesn’t mean though, that the compelling nature of likes, approvals, comments, affirming responses, doesn’t cause actual harm in terms of fragmented concentration, an eroded attention span, and weakening of actual “real life” relationships. It seems also as though God didn’t design us to be in constant touch with all of the bad and destructive things going on all over the world, in a constant stream, from when we get up to the moment we go to bed – and beyond bedtime even, in many cases! 

Even more worryingly, in his previously mentioned book, Cal Newport posits a very good case for the remarkable and dramatic rise in anxiety and depression amongst young people born between 1995 and 2012 to be largely down to this generation being the first generation to grow up from a young age with smartphones. A quote from the book, from journalist Benoit Denizet Lewis, from an article in the New York Times Magazine: “… anxious kids certainly existed before Instagram, but many of the parents I spoke to worried that their round-the-clock responding to texts, posting to social media, obsessively following the filtered exploits of peers, were partly to blame for their children’s struggles” 

If you google the question Should your church be on social media you’ll find many articles, youtube videos, blog posts etc.. from various churches and ministries worldwide, all pointing out completely valid and good reasons why it’s good for churches to be posting quality content on facebook, Youtube and other platforms. I am definitely not saying that this is a black and white issue and that Mark Zuckerberg is the anti-christ etc…. But what I am missing – and missing very much – is at least an acknowledgment – in these various articles, that for many many people, the destructive, fragmenting and yes, addictive nature of social media is something that churches have a serious responsibility to be aware of and offer practical help and guidance with. The cumulative effect of reading one article after another, all pointing out the absolutely critical necessity (as it is usually described) of your church having a social media presence, without at least acknowledging that for many people it causes unhappiness, constant distraction and harm to real life well being and relationships seems naive at best – and uncaring at worst.

For decades now I’ve accepted that in most of the free churches and fellowships that I have attended, we drink a strange syrupy red liquid at communion, instead of actual wine, and I’ve also accepted the reason given, that there could well be someone present for whom alcohol is a problem. Well, the smartphone has become ubiquitous now in our Western (and other) societies, especially among the younger folk but by no means restricted to them. Many people have a healthy and normal relationship with their phone and any social media platforms they are on, using them intentionally, with clear purpose and to great benefit to themselves and others. I think it’s also true that a significant number of people have a serious smart phone problem though and really are addicted to notifications, comments, news flashes, email and text message pings in a constant attention demanding stream throughout the day. Just as we concede that some folk have a problem with alcohol during our communion services, so has – amongst all of the excitement about the endless possibilities of outreach and posting high quality teaching material to potentially global audiences online – the time come for us to also acknowledge that for many of us, the permanently connected mobile internet world is having serious harmful effects on us. Put simply, there are significant numbers of people who own smartphones and engage with social media platforms, who really shouldn’t and would discover – after an initial withdrawal – a great sense of release and freedom. As a recovering social media addict myself, this is something I can testify to.

In summary – yes, social media is an incredible tool that a church can use to potentially engage with a global audience, with well put together and presented Christian content, in the form of written postings, pithy quotes and comments and video content. However, in all of the excitement about these new possibilities, it can’t be ignored that the stratospheric rise of google, facebook and co has come at a very high price in terms of its negative and damaging effects on many many people, especially our young. We owe it, to our congregations, our young people, and potential followers wherever they may be, to at least suggest that they review the way they use their phones and engage in social media. Are they using it intentionally, in a controlled manner? Are the much spoken of benefits of “connectedness” through social media perhaps coming with a big price tag, despite it being “free” to use? And maybe we shouldn’t feel intimidated by the claims of absolute necessity of using these platforms, but use them only if we can see clear benefits and that those benefits don’t come at such a high cost to our lives and our ability to engage with one another and with God, so as to be – in the final analysis – prohibitively expensive…