Digital Discipleship For Your Children (4) – The Sins of Social Media

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Teach your children of the sins and idols lurking within social media.

Narcissism. Narcissism is sinful self-love. Social media offers you the opportunity to build and portray an image of yourself as near-perfect, so as to be fawned over, flattered and validated by a circle of sycophantic “friends”. Many people, when video calling, are looking at themselves far more than the person they’re supposed to be talking to. Many people upload pictures mostly to see the reaction it will get from others. In polite conversation, talking about nothing except your own life would be considered rude. Social media, of course, demands that you do that. Social media allows us to thinly veil our self-promotion under the guise of “good times!” “so thankful!” “feeling so blessed”.

Further, social media allows us to artificially control our ‘circle’. Those who affirm, validate and like our posts are our friends, and those who don’t are haters that we can block. We can style our appearance to solicit likes, comments and praise, believing our flatterers and persuaded by our own hype. Social media can give us the artificial sense of a busy social life with much fellowship when we have 1500 Facebook ‘friends’ or 500 ‘followers’. But these are illusory relationships. Genuine relationships require patience, forbearance, forgiveness, time in one another’s presence, and shared loves. Narcissistic relationships can be controlled by a mouse-click.

Boasting. Much of what goes on on social media is little more than boasting. Parading one’s travels, purchases, children, grandchildren, spouse, all takes place routinely. Staged, and sometimes doctored pictures of oneself are supposed to support the glamour of Me. As the tabloids follow celebrities, so social media provides tabloid news coverage for every person.

The difference between sharing and showing off is something the technology usually flattens out. Certain events are treasured memories to be shared with particular people. But when ‘overheard’ by everyone, the nature of the sharing changes. The line between showing pictures of the children for Granny overseas and showing everyone how wonderful my life is is a fine one.

Let another man praise you and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips. (Proverbs 27:2)

If you have been foolish in exalting yourself . . . put your hand over your mouth. (Proverbs 30:2)

Envy. Social media works like advertising: look at my life – the one you don’t have! Look at the places I have been to, the food I eat, how good I look, how cute my children are. Look at the food I cook, the clothes I wear, the house I live in, the car I drive.  My life is all at once glamorous and homely, exotic and cosy, extravagant and normal, fun and meaningful. Keep clicking through my life, and keep getting angrier.

Social media can feed one of the darkest sins – the sin of comparing. Social media has a powerful temptation to compare another’s life to your own.  Singles comparing boyfriends or girlfriends, mothers comparing their children’s success with others; people comparing their material success with their peers; people comparing how they have aged in comparison to others.

But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. (Jas. 3:14-16)

We cannot control the envy in someone else’s heart. But we can do two things:

1. We can refuse to flaunt God’s good gifts in ways that will tempt others to envy.
2. We can refuse to spend too much time thinking about what others have.

Exhibitionism and Voyeurism. Social media encourages you to share personal, even intimate, details with ‘friends’, who may be little more than acquaintances. The fact that a ‘friend’ becomes a silent witness of your self-broadcasts creates a strange situation of exhibitionism and voyeurism. An exhibitionist is one with a compulsive desire to get other’s attention, and display what should be hidden, while a voyeur is a prying observer, secretly watching what is private for the sordid or the scandalous. Social media creates exhibitionists and invited voyeurs: sharing and viewing personal moments inappropriate for the level of relationship.

Posting a picture of me kissing my wife for everyone to comment on is not that far from setting up a screen outside my wall and live-streaming what goes on in my house. The essence of modesty is to understand that what is not for other’s consumption is to be kept veiled. Shamelessness has taken over when we are comfortable to be gawked at, or to gawk at others.

Social media encourages me to share personal moments with the few who have some right to see, and to forget the many who do not. It likewise encourages me to peer into an acquaintance’s life, and to forget that I have very little reason to do so. The nature of loving relationships is a voluntary, mutual, progressive self-disclosure.

Time Wasting. The nature of Social media is to absorb your interest with continual curiosity, until you have literally lost hours at a time. Catching up with a long lost friend, leads you to another friend, going through all his posts and photos, till you come back and see the links and videos shared by others. If you have hundreds of friends, that may be hundreds of items in your newsfeed everyday, enough to keep you absorbed for hours.

The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.  Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.  So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.  (Ps. 90:10-12)

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,  redeeming the time, because the days are evil. (Eph. 5:15-16)