Is Social Media a Fad?
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11 responses to “Is Social Media a Fad?”
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Michael,
I cannot tell you the many, many ways this post and the previous one scare me. You know me well enough to know I’ll try, though.
+ We’re an addictive species, and social media are demonstrating how powerfully addictive they are.
+ The church is going to hear this and try to head social media off at the pass – to get there first.
+ The real value of the church – warm-blooded, three dimensional love – is steadily being buried more deeply under shovels full of media, message, and method.
Yahweh told His people not to build steps leading up to His altar, because they might expose their nakedness to Him as they ascended them. We’re light-years, light-generations, away from understanding that God. The very idea of a holy community is dying a slow death by starvation.
The church is not the church if she’s not holy and she’s nothing if she’s not community. If she’s not a community, she’s a vapor for Social Media to waft away without a notice. How do you think the PCUSA will wrestle for the hearts and minds of people when they already find the best teaching on podcasts and fully satisfying community on Facebook?
Do you think your neighbor drives by your church and imagines for one second it’s a place they could join and be welcomed into lifelong, caring, unconditional relationship? Not a chance! The average church member doesn’t even see their own church that way! Church is where they go to “get fed,” and they simply don’t have ANY community. They’ve friended all the interesting people on Facebook, and their hunger for community is satiated by entertainment.
Is Social Media Revolutionary? Yes. Just like Babel.
The church is intrinsically counter-culture, and we have something with Social Media cannot compete – Reality. We have real touch, real love, real frustration, and a real Lord Who really moves by His Spirit in the assembly of the redeemed.
Have you ever spoken with a seriously high person on a religious trip? They are having a mind expanding experience of something spiritual, but it ain’t Christ and it cannot be. They talk a mind-blowingly convincing and spiritual game, but it’s all a lie. Social Media is going to sound Christian, but it’s just the dopamine speaking.
Two years ago I was in doubt, but that was before I witnessed the power of addiction. This thing is not good. -
What’s fascinating in the video is how fast the text shots came and went. I couldn’t keep up with it all. So do the “new gen y’ers” (What a bad term and mixed up metaphor!) have an entirely new “generation” of attention span that’s faster than ever yet shallower than anyone else?
Hmmm… interesting. Will have to h/t and link this one. -
Codepoke
The video didn’t disturb me as much as the previous article you mentioned …the lack of people committing to things except for the immediate experience it provides them.
There are many aspects about the media I find more helpful, particularly as I relate to those who are two or three tiers removed from my daily face-to-face interactions. That has enhanced community. That doesn’t have to have detrimental impact on face-to-face community. I think there are other issues driving the failure to commit besides facebook and SM. -
RPS
I found the pause button and essential in this one. 🙂
The borrowed this music from the “Did You Know” video and I suspect they were trying to cram a little to much in to fit with the music. -
Hmmm. Should I be scared? I had no trouble following the text in that video. I watched it halfway through again, and I’d not missed a single word the first time through.
Anyway, I understand and respect your point, Michael. It honestly does not escape me that the church is going to consider this a tool. The world has certainly seen other tools grow exponentially in use. Electricity is ubiquitous, and I’m not against it.
I’m against addiction, though, and Social Media is incontestably addictive. I believe the church would be in a better place 20 years from now if Social Media were excluded than if it were embraced. Perhaps it’s best to use it as not abusing it, but I’m a pessimist.
It’s not Social Media that’s killing what I call “engagement,” whether in volunteerism or the church or even in our own families. Engagement is dying, though, due to a mindset for which Social Media provides a dark, warm, moist breeding ground. -
We have been through similar transitions in the past. The automobile made people mobile to the point that we drive by 100 churches on our way to the one of our choice, rather than being in community with neighbors. Yet I don’t think we want to role back the invention of the car.
“Engagement is dying, though, due to a mindset for which Social Media provides a dark, warm, moist breeding ground.”
Sometimes the church is to adopt cultural creations, redeem them, and use them to be counter-cultural. -
“I believe the church would be in a better place 20 years from now if Social Media were excluded than if it were embraced.”
Codepoke, you spell out some legitimate concerns. But this kind of thinking (besides never working at all) will lead not just to irrelevance, but can lead to a kind of smug fundamentalism. See the Onion articles about the guy who always makes sure to mention that he doesn’t own a television.
Would you have avoided the shift to written language? I’m not trying to use some kind of reductio ad absurdum argument. The move from an oral to a written culture did not come without some costs. Should we have avoided it?
Rather than simply excluding certain media, why not pursue the idea of a social media Sabbath? -
Or maybe Paul’s admonition of all things in moderation.
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Michael and codepoke, thanks for your dialog. I’m probably more in Michael’s camp on this one but like codepoke I know the potency of social media and its addictiveness. I think there is a longer-term trajectory in which the obsessive stage passes and people gravitate toward a few primary tools. The biggest conflict is where IRL and social media collide and prevent us from living fully in our community. At best social media can strengthen community bonds but it does have a tendency to pull people out of the moment through checking in via iPhone or whatever or just by thinking, “This real live moment is wonderful. I’m going to tweet about it right now.”
There is a social stigma against talking on the phone during church (although not here in Mozambique) and I think there needs to be some way to stigmatize social media use during sacred gatherings.
P.S. I also had trouble keeping up with the video. It was well done but poorly edited and that music from 1999 was awful. -
A Salon interview pertinent to this discussion:
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2009/09/19/better_pencil/index.html -
Thanks Travis. I’m travelling today. I’ll take a look.
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