Dealing with Social Media

Dealing with social media

Khen Lim | October 27 2019 | 

Source: socialmediaexplorer.com

In a busy local coffee shop, most of the tables were already occupied. At one of them, a family of six were seated, waiting for their orders to arrive but no one seemed interested in talking. You couldn’t see their faces. That’s because all of them had their heads down. Looking and catching up with social media in their smartphones. While their fingers were busy swiping and stroking the phones, not a word was exchanged among them. It was surreal but increasingly, this is the picture we persistently see around the country.

Across the street was an upmarket Chinese restaurant. And inside, there were tables of seated patrons. At one of them was a young couple. At another were friends and family members supposedly celebrating some occasion. Seated at yet another was a simple family – parents with young toddler kids, a grandma and an Indonesian maid. All but the maid were busy with their social media. Seated in their baby chairs, the tots were held hostage to some blaring YouTube cartoon clips while their parents were busy responding to their own social media. Meanwhile the bespectacled grandma was playing online mah-jong on her tablet. All while the poor maid sat glumly with no one talking to her.

In a departmental store, salespeople manning counters at retail outlets were all doing the same instead of cleaning the display shelves. In one instance, a person walked in and patiently waited to be served while the salesperson was busy with his? Social media. In a civil service department, numerous government workers claimed to be on their break but we found them all seated along a stairwell busy doing two things – chain smoking and on social media. In public hospitals, we find nurses stopping – usually sight unseen – responding to their social media in the middle of their jobs. Clinic assistants in private hospitals are just as rampant.

At a McDonald’s joint, I found a uniformed staff hiding in the washroom, engaging in social media on his phone. Drivers on the road prefer to check their social media and not concentrate on driving their cars. Very often, even bikers were doing the same with one hand on their phones and the other on the handlebar. A few times, I even managed to see coach drivers driving along the interstate highway doing the same unbeknownst to the scores of passengers they were responsible for. Workers standing by the roadside who were supposed to direct traffic flow at construction sites prefer to be distracted by social media.

Even in churches while the pastors were busy delivering their messages, some members are busy checking their social media but of course, they put in the effort to hide their activities from view. Still, the optics were as obvious as daylight. It wasn’t just the sermon but throughout worship, smartphones were lighting up with social media intruding into the culture of praise, worship and sharing.

Indeed, nothing is sacred anymore. The new whip is the ubiquitous smartphone. Their god is the irrepressible social media. And it’s death by technology.

Social media and the Christian youth

Source: shepherdshillacademy.org

Much has been made about social media networking and even more have been talked about its worrying impact on society. Within Christian circles, this impact can either be good or otherwise. If we say it’s good, it usually means that social media has helped us in our walk with Christ. Or that it has given us the means to reach unbelievers and share the Gospel message. In either case, social media has given us a shot in the arm when it comes to injecting something exciting in our faith.

If social media can be a fruitful endeavour for our Christian faith, how bad can it be otherwise?

It’s quite easy to find numerous online articles and video clips that talk about the good and bad aspects of social media. When we talk about the good and bad of social media, we’re referencing its effect on various aspects of family integration and society. Just how pervasive has social media been for the past decade or so can be seen from these simple but eye-opening numbers:

-        Apparently, only 2 percent of youths and young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 attend church but on the other hand, as many as 10 million of them can’t seem to survive without Facebook (or other forms of social media) every day.

-        51 percent of churches in America claim that at least one staff member blogs or posts regularly on social media. Presumably these are blogs focused on the faith but that’s not necessarily true.

-        If 1 million websites have their inter-connectivity integrated with Facebook, is it even possible to avoid social media? If it’s not Facebook, it’s Instagram, Pinterest and many others.

-        If 23 percent of Facebook users check their FB account at least five times if not more in the space of a single day, how many of church members do it during Sunday service?

-        For every cycle of 24 hours, Instagram receives uploads of more than 5 million photos. Exactly how edifying these photos are, the statistic doesn’t tell.

-        25 percent of all social media users don’t even bother with their privacy settings. Little wonder so many get into problems eventually.

-        The amount of music that Facebook users listen to via their social media network is equivalent to 210,000 years’ worth. It would be naïve to think that even half of that are praise and worship music.

-        8 in 10 users prefer to engage with brands using Facebook rather than directly with the manufacturers. That’s just half the story of how millennials have grown so dependent on social media.

-        Google tells us that active users spend more than 60 minutes daily across their range of products. In case you’re not aware, Google’s stranglehold on the world’s users of technology is even more powerful than Facebook.

There is a saying that describes the significant chasm today between reality and disreality.* It goes something like this: “You used to be what you had but now you are what you share.” It’s frightening but it’s real.

NOTE: “Disreality” means self-worldbuilding.

The picture that these statistics paint for us is a disturbing one. They tell us that while we used to physically interact and relate to one another in the past, today, we purely share information among ourselves without even needing to know who we really are in reality. It also tells us, quite shockingly, that people can accept facts and figures without verifying if they are true. If someone writes and posts them, they must be right!

Today, people are so overwhelmingly dependent on what they learn from the Internet that they have lost the sense of knowing what is and isn’t right anymore. That is how we have all come to experience the rise of fake information. Fake information wouldn’t have been a reality had it not been for the presence of the Internet and the sheer influence of social media. Without them, fake information couldn’t possibly have existed and even if it did, it wouldn’t have spread so uncontrollably. All that proves to us that our dependence on social media can be our undoing, much more so when it comes to our Christian youth whose lives are firmly intertwined with social media.

The problem with social media networking is that it’s a double-edged sword. In other words, it can cut both ways. Depending on how you use it, it can be a blessing and it can also be a curse. For this article, we take a little time to explore what they may be and what you can do to maintain or protect your spiritual character in Christ.

A blessing and a curse

Source: thestar.com

In the years since the advent of first, the tablet, and then the smartphone, social media networking has exploded beyond recognition. Today, it’s difficult to imagine any young person without one in his pocket. Even someone on a tight budget will still own one, albeit with less bells and whistles but nonetheless, he can still access his social media. And take pictures. Never mind whether call reception is good or not, so long as it can connect to the Internet and allow him to share messages as well as take and send pictures, those are all that matter these days.

Just so we know the impact of social media, consider these statistics:

-         There are some 2.41 billion monthly active users on Facebook as of the Second Quarter of 2019. Even China’s vast population pales by comparison.

-         In India alone, there are over 270 million Facebook users. To put that into context, if these subscribers band together and form their own country, it would easily be the fourth most populous in the world.

-         In Malaysia alone, there were 22 million users in 2017 with a projected increase to 24.2 million by the year 2023. Of the lot, 17.9 million of them use their smartphones to access the Internet. Expect that 2021 will bring in 21.72 million savvy smartphone users.

-         As of March 2017, 67.7 percent of the entire Malaysian population access the Internet. These are all considered active social media users with more than 17 million on the smartphone every month, making the country among the biggest markets for Facebook in the ASEAN region. That’s quite staggering when you consider that Malaysia’s average Internet connection speed is more than four times slower than South Korea’s (at 29 Mbps).

-         On average, 140 million Tweets are posted daily. On Saturday, August 3 2013 in Japan, in a single split-second moment, the Japanese took to Twitter and posted a staggering 143,199 Tweets! To put that into perspective, there are usually a high of 5,700 Tweets on a normal day of around 500 million daily. In other words, on that day alone, the Japanese peaked at 25 times greater than normal.

Of course, social media isn’t just Facebook and Twitter. Don’t forget the other very visible big-hitters like Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and WhatsApp. Look wider and you’ll also find Snapchat, LinkedIn, Google Messenger and Skype. Look even further and there are Quora, Xbox and Yahoo Messenger. And if you think of China, you cannot ignore WeChat, TikTok and Tencent. These are all potentially the biggest mind-numbing influencers of our time and their role in shaping the millennials and beyond has been grossly under-documented and so poorly publicised.

All of them compete for your attention literally every second of the day, 365 days of the year. It’s a full-on battle to take up all your time doing everything you think you want to and can do with your life. These companies are willing to spend big bucks hiring the craftiest application engineers to devise ways and means to get us hook, line and sinker. And that invariably means they will incorporate every possible means that will lead to consumption addiction.

However, millions today tell us that social media has been a blessing to them. I guess if we look at it in a slightly skewed manner, that might actually be the case. Using a broad paintbrush, we could say that Facebook users have brought down dictators and other political autocrats in the same way as they have also announced births, weddings and all sorts of anniversaries.

Source: csmonitor.com

For example, Facebook was at the centre of the revolutionary Arab Spring anti-government movement that gave way to mass protests, uprisings and armed insurrections fanning across North Africa and the Middle East in the early 2010s. In those two years from 2010 to 2012, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen saw their leaders either ousted or killed. In countries like Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Morocco and Jordan, constitutional reforms were carried out.

But let’s not forget that Facebook was also the social media platform that was used to give the world unbridled access to the witnessing of suicides, beheadings and even murders and massacres. In these cases, people looking for sensationalism or just a way to cast fear would do a videocast so that millions could actually tune in to whatever macabre they have in mind of showing. 

Over the last decade or thereabouts, social media has grown subtly but exponentially. In other words, tens of millions have been so engrossed with how it changed their lives that they did not pay much attention to the speed at which it burst at its seams and simply grew and grew into the behemoth that it is today. As to how one responds to such growth is an almost impossible task. At any rate, social media is here to stay and nothing anyone can do will ever eliminate it from society.

In recent times, some have begun to raise concern over a potential pandemic centring on mental health, political subversion as well as brazen theft of millions and millions of users’ personal information to fund their objectives. With IT giants like Facebook and Google controlling the ins and outs of Internet use (despite whatever antitrust laws in place), it hardly ever seems plausible for anyone to force social media into submission.

Even governments find it very difficult to rein in these IT giants let alone criminalise their actions or force class-action lawsuits against them. And if it’s that difficult for them, there isn’t much hope for the ‘little people’ like us to force them to back down and change. Today, all of this have, in fact, not remained the same. That’s because they have worsened to a substantial degree. With the enormous power they wield, companies like Facebook and Google are protected not just by their fawning fans but also by profoundly misguided zealotry.

When it comes to assessing activities on the Internet – by that, we also refer to websites, blogs etc. – we think in terms of how they are ‘good, bad or ugly.’ So how do we define these three words?

‘Good’ Internet activities are safe. Good websites are okay to visit and their links lead you to not just harmless resources but are considered to be useful and edifying. Faith-based websites that are also doctrinally acceptable are not just good but they also provide us with a better understanding of the word of God. That can only be a good thing.

‘Bad’ Internet activities, on the other hand, are worrying because they are sources of bad influence. Websites that are not faith-based aren’t necessarily bad as many can be considered ‘good’ at least in an entertaining sense. For example, we can all enjoy reading and watching sports events. Car fans love websites with information on the latest cars. If you’re into knitting, there are websites that will satiate your interest.

Those who enjoy photography would take an interest at websites with beautiful images of landscapes, birds, architecture and so on. None of these are centred on faith but they are also harmless. In fact, they can be enjoyable in many ways so long as they stay within the common boundaries of decency and moral uprightness.

‘Bad’ Internet activities go beyond harmless entertainment but encroach into morality issues where sinful activities and evil behaviour are even proudly personified but evidently normalised. They are therefore bad because they project an incredible disdain for being morally upright in order to drive home the desire to be ‘liberated’ from the strictures of God’s commandments. In other words, disobeying God is fine and acceptable.

Source: saynsumthn.wordpress.com

Examples of ‘bad’ websites are those that promote abortion, political correctness, atheism, cruelty, materialism and anything that is anathema, not to mention socially and politically abhorrent. Moral ignorance is inexcusable but ‘bad’ websites peddle this as if it is socially acceptable. In other words, they don’t see it as anything wrong.

‘Ugly’ takes things to a devastating level. This is horrific beyond the coverage of what ‘bad’ means. These are Internet activities that are so morally repugnant that they even make non-believers cringe. Websites with such ugly contents aren’t the ones anyone decent should even spend a second in. Websites that teach visitors how to make suicide vests or do your own narcotics are no worse than those that openly worship Satan, promote anti-Semitism, racism, pornography and anything that is destructive to humanity.

‘Ugly’ websites even make the usual morally ignorant cringe. At the ultimate level of cringeworthiness, those who indulge in ‘ugly’ Internet content are so off-the-charts that it is difficult to relate to them. If you’re a Christian youth, ‘ugly’ is impossible to relate to but that’s not to say that they are beyond salvation. We have a God who knows no limits, whose grace is boundless and is merciful beyond human understanding. But wisdom suggests it’s best to neither pander nor tolerate for the sake of our own spiritual welfare.

‘Good, bad or ugly,’ these are empirical benchmark references that some use to categorically assess Internet websites and their contents so that we can have a broad-based but better idea of what to embrace and what to avoid. When we apply these references to social media, we can see some disparate differences from one’s experience to another. The difference in experience can help us to better assess where we’re at in terms of our involvement with social media. More importantly, it should also open up awareness as to how threatening some aspects of social media may be although for most parts, many aren’t even aware of or they may not care enough to be concerned with.

Destructive effects of social media are both well documented and at the same time, conveniently ignored. It is well documented because you can actually find much that is written about it that warns us how dangerous it is and how this has been proven over a period of time. On the other hand, powerful factions of society conveniently ignored these effects and seemingly, governments have been finding it too hard – or complicated – to do something about it.

There is no denying that social media does have its good sides. First popularised by Facebook – but now that playing field is far more crowded – social media was able to draw on its interconnectivity that can reach far corners of the world in an unprecedented manner. As a result, it has helped numerous people to reunite for the first time in years.

Long-lost family members have benefitted immensely from this and so do those who have been forcibly separated from their biological families. Old school friends were able to come together and relive memories of years gone by all the way back to their kindergarten days. Even old flames can rekindle their friendships and perhaps even find closure in their broken relationships in order to move on.

Age-old work colleagues have been able to organise reunions that proved the immense value of nostalgia. We can say the same thing about many other types of people in a whole variety of different scenarios. All of them have found social media to be a powerful uniter of people regardless of culture, background and history and certainly non-discriminating of national borders and boundaries. Often the result was the ability for people to reunite in joy but also to once again share their lives in ways they would otherwise not be able to.

Social media has also proved instrumental in breathing life to those who are socially reclusive to the point where these people are incapable of connecting with others. By being able to avoid physical confrontation, social media has opened up opportunities for them to gain their self-confidence because it allows them to speak without worrying about how it may or may not come across to the other person. That way, people can lose their inhibitions and progress to the point of being able to finally overcome their shyness or even their fear of rejection.

But then all of these make it possible for social media to be manipulated and abuse. Like a gun, social media itself is harmless because it is only a tool. It has neither emotions nor intelligence in its own self but it can be misused for selfish purposes. We do know that social media is such a powerful tool that can weaponise political and social advancement in ways that are often not understood by the average person. But to politicians and those who deliberately influence the world through social engineering for their ideological advantage, social media is a dream come true.

One of the most oft-quoted ‘success’ stories for social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) is how tyranny was put in check over the years. And of course, the earlier-mentioned Arab Spring instantly comes to mind. It is this particular event that put social media on notice as a defining tool that people can use to share information and coordinate effort that finally overthrew despotic leaderships and corrupt governments.

But it is also arguable as to whether or not the results of such overthrows were desirable. For that matter, it is also debatable as to who gets to define a good from a bad government. That is because politics are a very subjective matter. Just as one woman is beautiful in someone but not everyone’s eyes, the same can be said of political leaders. A tyrant of one country might be an advantageous leverage to a political leader of another even if many might see him as nothing more than someone to get rid of. As many would note, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’

Other than what I have noted above, there are likely many other instances in which social media shows its strength and blessings. To those touched in the most positive way by social media, they sing praises that others might not be so quick to join in. But then social media’s dark side is hard not to notice. Here, we cannot avoid the ‘bad’ and the ‘ugly’ side of the Internet that has been made so pronounced by the likes of Facebook. For the uninitiated, the naïve, the vulnerable and the innocent, social media can unleash terrible things that can at times destroy.

Here is a look at what some of them are:

Cyberbullying	Sheltered arrogance	Threats and insults	Sexual predating
Break-ins (robberies)	Wanton personal abuse	Battery and violence	Rapes and assaults
Online stalking	Doxing	Trolling	Phishing
Scamming	Faking	Theft of personal data (which is used to facilitate crime or sold without authorisation for profit)

Of course, there’s no way to shoehorn social media into just these instances. By far and large, there are many other effects that I have no included above. Suffice to say, this is only one article; to cover the far fuller extent of social media’s nefariousness would require years of study and volumes of texts beyond my personal capability.

For the purposes of what we have in mind here, we can safely accept that social media’s ugly side is extremely subtle. In other words, many don’t take the time to sit down and honestly reflect because if they do, it’s not too difficult to see how ugly social media really is. In fact, it is far more troubling than we realise.

What we’re up against is public traction. In other words, social media is so popular throughout the world that people just don’t realise how dangerous its effects are. Underestimating social media is one thing but dismissing its danger is today the norm. If we look back at the last hundred or more years, that was what smoking meant to the general public. Just like now with social media, no one believed smoking was bad. Even when medical science began to show evidence of smoking being linked to lung cancer, tobacco companies were making a mint, fleecing the public. It took legislative muscle to finally seal its fate.

Source: knowyourmeme.com

Consider the smoking problem as a reference model and we may begin to understand what it takes to contain social media but even so, most governments are not exactly doing anything substantial or meaty enough to put the likes of Facebook in check. The U.S. government tried this year to do that but nothing big came out of it. It was a wasted opportunity despite evidence pointing to how close they got to forcing its founder Mark Zuckerberg to finally buckle.

Anyway, I have listed five serious problems that social media has raised that are so evident and yet so little has been done to quell its devastating effects:

-         Astonishing waste of time

Addictive websites are aplenty. These websites suck up so much valuable time that people don’t even notice. Or maybe, no one bothers about it. If you’re wondering what websites these are, take a look at those who indulge in online gambling, dating, pornography, movie streaming, photo-video sharing, gossip mongering, lifestyle, celebrity news and reality shows and of course, social media.

YouTube alone can be a ridiculous source of time-wasting with its over-120-billion video clips. In terms of music videos alone, Google claims that people are uploading at a rate of 300 hours’ worth every minute. In our occasionally desperate desire to escape from our daily grind, it’s often a no-brainer to get on the Internet and visit any of these websites. But the irony is that we will then complain of how we just don’t have the time to get anything done.

Addictive websites aren’t just about time-wasting. They can also impact our various relationships. When we spend so much time on unproductive websites, we are depriving ourselves of social interaction with our loved ones. At the same time, we also end up telling our churches that ‘our hands are full’ and we have no time to contribute to ministry work.

-         World of fakery

Source: demilked.com

It’s never in doubt that the chief culprit and most veritable source of fake information is social media. To be more specific, Facebook is the one that started it all but of course today, Twitter and a few others run feverishly close.

The use of the word ‘fake’ is just a more polite way of saying they’re nothing more than lies and deceptions. And we don’t need reminding who the father of lies and deceptions are, do we? On the Internet, real facts – truths in other words – are easy to distort for different reasons.

Firstly, people aren’t so wise these days. They don’t appear to want to know if they are true. When they get any sliver of interesting information, all they do is to forward the articles to as many people as possible that is, without verifying. Secondly, people are getting increasingly lazy, meaning they are too indifferent or uncaring to bother anymore.

Thirdly, people are naturally sensitised to sensationalism. In other words, the more ‘amazing’ the news is, the more they believe it and the likelier they are in spreading the fake information. Fourthly, deceivers deploy written language that make them appear as if they are disseminating facts when they aren’t.

Fifthly, fact-check websites themselves are not really verifying checks. Instead almost all of them are politically funded and motivated to advance their ideology even if that means fortifying lies and deceptions. Lastly, because fake information is peddled by very credible names in the business of mass media, people are likelier to believe them. In communism, we call that propaganda. In Western societies, we refer to it as fake information. Both are one and the same.

Fake information can come in different flavours but the easiest ones to pick at are the ones that appear most obvious to us. Some men lie because they are hiding their illicit affairs. Some others lie because their sexual immoralities drive them to. Certain other men lie so that young girls would pander to them. Some women lie to appear younger than they are. Some other women lie about who they really are.

Politicians lie to please their supporters and win votes. Some cops lie because they obviously did something unlawful. Big businesses lie because they want to make even more money. Restaurants lie in order that they sell the most expensive dishes on the menu. Second-hand car yards lie so that they can get rid of the worst lemons on their blocks.

What this means is that fake information is literally everywhere. And they’ve been around since time immemorial. However, the advent of social media has simply made things far worse than it has to be. Although many people lie, lying using social media allows the deception to spread like wildfire.

To put it simply, lies may not get very far during the pre-Internet era unless they are propagated by newspapers and television news. This is because people have to resort to lip service be it manually or via the telephone. And because of that, the spreading of lies is too slow to be properly effective. Therefore, the effects are limited.

Social media, on the other hand, expedites lies, fanning flames that can reach the farthest corners of the world within the blink of an eye. In literally less than a few minutes, just one piece of lie can snowball beyond comprehension because of the sheer speed of broadband Internet.

Closer to home, social media opens up dangerous platforms of opportunity for personal delusional ambitions as well. If you have a base desire to deceive your online friends, it’s really not that difficult. All you need to do is to ‘create’ a new personality and ‘adopt’ someone else’s looks and then ‘give’ yourself a whole new different set of personal information including name, occupation and age and so on. By creating your own persona, you are spreading fake information to lie about who you are. And you do that because you truly believe you can get away from the law simply because you can conveniently hide behind some firewall.

People are motivated to do that for a few reasons. The worst reason is that men look to be sexual predators looking for easy victims on the Internet. With social media so rife and popular with young girls, older deviants do their hunting by parading different – and younger – and more attractive personalities.

Some others do it just so that they can feel better about themselves. They want to be better looking and so they resort to using Photoshop to make themselves look physically less blemished. They want to be wealthier than they are and so they photograph themselves next to material wealth and upload the pictures, telling the world they own them. They want to be desirable and so they fake their background information including where they studied, what qualifications they have and where they used to work including whatever awards they won. It’s all in a day’s work for them.

To fuel their obsession, people go to the extent of stealing pictures from others and then use them for impersonation purposes. That is why it is absolutely dangerous to post photos that are high enough in resolution for people to steal and use as their own.

The big pathological problem with that is eventually, these people end up deceiving themselves into believing their own lies. In other words, the more you tell a lie, the more you will believe that lie. And eventually that lie becomes truth to you. That’s when you really begin to live out the lie.

That is, unfortunately, the worst possible result arising from being a fake.

-         Sheer abandonment

The most amazing feature that social media boasts of is also what compels so many millions to fully embrace it and that is, the freedom it offers. Not just the Internet per se but in the strict guise of social media, people feel the exuberance of being complete free to be whoever they want to be.

Free from being chained up by reality’s terms and conditions. Free to be anyone you want to be. Free to say anything you want to say. Free to express yourself without any shackles. Free to post whatever messages, videos and photos you feel like. Free to respond to what others post. Free to take on anyone else’s identity. Free to even use anything that is posted to the Interne that doesn’t even belong to you.

Of the many age groups that are involved in social media, the youths occupy the most vibrant of its users. To them, social media is a welcome diversion with the feeling of driving a powerful sports car on a road with no speed limits and no one to govern you. It’s a long straight stretch where you have absolutely no concern of crashing yourself. And even if you do, you can reinvent your car again and go racing once more to your heart’s content.

Social media promises all of the above and it delivers time and again. The no-holds-barred feeling that social media is so infamous for encourages people to be reckless with wild abandonment. It allows people to reveal far more about themselves than they really ought to and in the process, they unwittingly expose their vulnerabilities in the most alarming way. It’s a level of foolishness that social media bares in so many people that none of us would have thought even possible.

With wild abandon, many people have been using social media for all the wrong reasons. Desperate ones seek attention in the worst possible way and thus become easy prey for predators, robbers and all sorts of criminals. Immature users who flaunt their recklessness with the way they conduct themselves in text, photos, videos and what not go from hero to zero in no time. What’s worse is they don’t even know it.

Young kids who desperately want to unshackle themselves from their parents’ grip not only welcomes social media with open arms but relish that idea of being able to do anything they like. Some of them become monsters on the Internet, pretending to be adults but fail miserably. Those who are lonely act weird or reveal all the wrong things about themselves. Many have found refuge in the wrong people and by trusting them, they disclose their personal problems that inevitably place themselves in foolish life-threatening situations. Some others behave so outrageously on social media that they are unrecognisable to their real friends and families.

The thing is social media, more often than not, bring out the worst in people. Normally restrained adults find themselves in opportunities to do terribly immoral things behind the backs of their loved ones be it illicit activities, sexual immoralities, extramarital affairs or even become terrorists bent on mass murder.

Christian youths who expose themselves to the openness of social media can find themselves at the mercy of amorality in ways they are ill-prepared to handle. Unless they are properly equipped in their hearts and minds, social media is one playground that can lure and bait. And its success rate is too disturbing to underestimate.

-         Life in a bubble

Source: reddit.com

As many enjoy life in social media because of the unbridled freedom it offers, that simply creates a bubble world that does nothing but isolate them from reality. It’s the perfect way to escape the realities of a world they don’t want to deal with (for whatever reason).

Bubble worlds are dangerous because they give people a false notion of what life is (or isn’t). By shunning reality, there are plenty of social media users who actually think that it’s a charmed life worth embracing in place of the real one they prefer to leave behind. It’s this sort of disreality that can be worrying because they are convinced that it’s less complicated.

Unlike the real world, these people don’t have to meet others face to face and that in itself helps ease control. Already insecure in nature, social media simply lets them dig deeper holes for themselves. Replacing reality with virtual relationships is like a sex-obsessed person satiating his carnal desires by using an inflatable doll. These people believe life is worth walking away from because they believe social media’s bubble world offers them the kind of security and buffer that they can live with and enjoy.

-         Dubious quality

Relationships born of online introductions are, in general, never going to be as meaningful – or even real – as physical ones where you actually meet the person in person. Other than the usual pitfalls, virtual relationships are fraught with all sorts of risks and dangers. Chief amongst them is whether or not their online identities are real. It’s easy enough to hide behind some computer, pretending to be the sort of ideal dream person you want to meet so anxiously all your life.

Instead of watching real words come out from real mouths, you come off second-best with two-dimensional texts that you tersely read off your screen. Rather than being able to visually feel the actual expresses articulated through physical gestures and all sorts of body languages, your virtual paramour resorts to emoticons and memes to make his/her point. And again, you come off a distant second in terms of accuracy and authenticity. What is worse is you don’t even know if these graphic expressions are that person’s truthful response.

What about tonal responses? Or a facial snigger that you can detect even at a moment’s notice? How about the person rolling his eyes or lifting his eyebrows in mockery? Ever figured how you can tell if your virtual friend is nervously biting his nails or constantly looking at the clock? Good luck with that.

The wealth of experience in the real world doesn’t map successfully into the virtual world of social media networking. You’re never going to enjoy the vast range of synapsoidal reactions because it’s simply not set up to do so. And if you don’t have all these at your fingertips the way you normally do in reality, then you have to work out how you’re going to tell if that virtual friend is putting you through the grinder or hanging you up to dry or just faking it all the way.

The short answer is you can’t. And if you persistently going to remain gullible, then you’re only setting yourself up for a big fall. And that’s going to hurt big time.

If all that isn’t bad enough, the really ‘ugly’ side of social media is:

-         No legal restraint

For almost twenty years since the world’s first blogging sites appeared – and hence, the humble beginning of social media – there is still no valid internationally-ratifiable legal framework drawn to protect individuals from harm arising from his involvement in social media networks. That is alarming but it’s also proof that the world is either disinterested or it’s too weak to do anything.

Without such a legal framework in place, cyberbullies and online harassers who drive people to commit suicide via social media are likelier to escape punishment. Whatever sliver of law that we think exists appears too weak or too arbitrary to pose a serious challenge against these people.

In the United States, the efficacy of law enforcement against cyberbullies and those who indirectly drive victims to suicide is sketchy because 50 states don’t all provide the same effective legal protection. Some are, as a result, stricter than the others. Some have quite serious punishment while others don’t. And so if the suicide occurs in a lenient state, you just don’t have much hope of justice being done.

The same also applies to personal data stolen online or used without the owner’s permission. There is yet to be effective legislation to offer the kind of peace of mind people are looking for. Let’s not even bring in online scams, spam mail and any such rubbish that come our way that we never asked let alone allow in our Inbox. Today, powerful IT giants continue to brazenly abuse their privileges and getting away with it. There is yet to be any law powerful enough to force them to rethink their behaviour. And until that happens, we cannot hold them legally or criminally accountable.

In the Book of John, Jesus says:

“…you are My friends since I have told you everything the Father told Me. You didn’t choose Me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using My Name.” (Jn 15:15b-16, NLT, m.e.)

Jesus’ use of the word ‘friends’ is certainly not one that is shared by Facebook that uses the same (word) to define a click action process to invite anyone to have access to your personal social media page. Needless to say, the original meaning doesn’t apply in social media. And if it doesn’t (apply), it’s hard to figure if its legal meaning makes equally no sense or not.

The three views of social media

Source: latrobe.edu.au

After two decades of virtually uncontrolled exponential growth, social media networks have gone farther, wider and deeper than even the wildest optimist could imagine. It’s now so expansive that it is nigh impossible to think of putting the brakes on. In other words, applying restraint, whether voluntarily or otherwise, looks completely out of the question.

And so long as no one can stop the likes of Facebook, addiction to social media will continue unabatedly into the tens of billions throughout the world. Once upon a time, a long time ago, smoking was an addiction that seemed impossible to quell and that was largely because tobacco companies had governments throughout the world in their deep pockets. But just as we thought it was going to be a losing battle all the way, the tide changed and finally, we could savour victory (although in truth, its replacement, legalised marijuana, is far worse).

Just like smoking, we have many other troubling addictions to deal with such as obesity owing to over-consumption of junk food, kleptomania, legalised and illegal use of opioids, alcoholism and so on and so forth. All of these are certainly bad but if I were to line them up with the ill-effects of social media, they pale by comparison because the latter is significantly worse. The scope and nature of the damage caused by social media is magnitudes more alarming in a longer term mainly because its effects are not as visible in the immediate sense.

To have said that does not mean that I dismiss the seriousness of the other addictions. I merely want to address the critical risks that the overt use of social media brings about. These risks inflict a far wider damage to the fabric of society. They wreak havoc on the family, bringing about disunity, fragmentation and ultimately destruction. From the family unit, damaging impact arising from social media will progressively fan out radially to encompass communities and then societies at large.

So, how should we respond? Let’s identify the three basic ways we view the problem:

The optimistic approach

Not surprisingly, this is the popular view. Many throughout the world actually believe that there are no problems associated with the use of social media and further added that conservatives are having an unjustified kneejerk overreaction. No guessing needed that these are the same people who are not only fascinated by social media but cannot live without it. They don’t see any need to shackle them either.

In case you’re wondering, this group of people is large enough, influential enough and undergirded by powerful lobby groups that have so far been successful at muzzling political resolve. That is why we have yet to see class-action legal suits against landmark companies like Facebook and Google. It’s a worry whether there will even be a time in the future where they will face due justice.

Of course, social media itself is the irony. There is so much good in what it can do but the evilness of man ensures that sin irretrievably corrupts it. In the end, social media is transformed into the monster that we now struggling to cope with. No doubt that some of us still use social media to good effect but the underlying power to addict remains just as strong. And that’s because we don’t seem to understand how persistently addictive it is.

Consider the following, see if any of them is part of your routine of reading messages in your phone:

-         The first thing when you wake up

-         While you’re brushing your teeth in the morning

-         Before you enter church and join in the Sunday service

-         When you’re supposed to be listening to the sermon

-         In front of your guests at the dinner table

-         Whenever you have spare time

-         While waiting for a friend to arrive

-         Before you head to bed at night

-         While walking in the street

-         While driving (or riding your motorbike)

If all that surprises you, don’t be. That is how social media has affected hundreds of millions around the world. It is endemic. And it will wreak havoc on the world.

But the real problem is people are incapable of seeing this. They simply see the good side of it and conveniently ignore everything else. Here are some of the responses you’re likely to hear from those who are blinded by social media:

-         It affects others but ‘not them’

-         They’re not ‘big-time’ users

-         They ‘only’ check their messages once in a while

-         They are ‘occasional’ users

-         They ‘only’ use it to connect with friends

-         Others have it far worse than them

These are nothing more than examples of delusional thinking.

The pessimistic approach

Those in this category don’t necessarily think that social media is all-evil. But although they recognise its usefulness, benefits and advantages, they have a better sense of reality because they can see not only the dark nefarious side but also its underlying longer-term effects. While it’s not difficult to see the wrong from right with the obvious aspects but subtle addiction is where the debate is at. However, people in this group are likelier than others to recognise the dangers that lurk within social media.

Unfortunately, this is a minority group. The sphere of their influence is simply not big enough to change things. Yet they are sufficiently aware not to be bought in by social media. They are wise enough to avoid social media’s pitfalls because they tend to be more conservative in the way they interact with people. And furthermore, their choice of lifestyle probably reflects it.

Although not all Christians fall into this category, it may be more probable to say the reverse is truer. In other words, you could see a larger proportion of evangelical Christians in this group. Whether or not this is true doesn’t matter in the end because even the best of all Christians are still vulnerable to the understated ill-effects of social media addiction. In other words, people in this category do use social media except that they have a better control over how they use it.

Because they practise restraint far more prevalently than the optimists will ever do, those in this group shield themselves better from the longer-term effects of social media. If you belong to this group, at least some of the following practices are familiar to you:

-         You set strict time limits on how often you access your phone

-         Your exposure to social media does not include Facebook and its common ilk

-         You do not share or upload personal photos and videos

-         You restrict content that talks about your family members

-         You do not willingly reveal personal information unless you really have to

-         You do not participate in social media content at all

-         Your only means of online communication is emailing

-         You do not show any pictures of yourself on the Internet

People in this group recognise the darkness of the Internet although that doesn’t mean they do not use it at all. But it does suggest that they are careful of where they go on the Internet and they read enough to safeguard their actions so that they do as much as possible to avoid its effects.

However that doesn’t mean they do not fall or get unwittingly drawn into them. Those who are not as Internet savvy but belong in this group are susceptible enough to encounter things they do not like and then get affected. The Internet – including social media – is rife with immorality that it doesn’t take much effort to bump into them. Even an innocent Internet search can bring up all sorts of obscenities when you least expect. A science student who types the word ‘breast’ will surely find images that he/she is appalled by even though his/her intention is academic. A little kid who wants to look at images of ‘pussy’ (as in cat) could find herself in a similar morally-challenged quandary.

Treading the middle

Social media is like a seesaw – there’s good and there’s evil and the trouble is how one may or may not counteract the other. People in this group view social media through the same optic. They believe that it’s not easy – nor is it practical – to think that social media is necessarily all-bad or for that matter, purely good.

Those who belong to this group consider social media as a necessity in life and they view its facilities as useful and productive all because they are able to keep in touch with their friends and loved ones from distant lands. The convenience that social media offers cuts across vast geographies in a way incomparable to any conventional means and that alone is likely the influencing inertia behind this group.

But they do recognise social media’s darker side and they admit that its nastiness clouds its potential to do good. However like tens of millions of others in the world, addiction holds them back from advocating change. Unwilling to accept that social media needs to be corralled and yet acknowledging its culpability, those in this group find it just as difficult to incriminate as it is in defending.

On the other hand, to tread the middle path is to use social media to greater advantage but giving in to its propensity to addict. That takes work but people in this group probably believe this can be done. Or at least they will put in the effort and try.

Christian youths can use social media to spread the Word and share the Gospel far more effectively than if they resort to conventional means. With the speed of light, messaging through social media is lightning quick, enabling outreach to be quicker, more spontaneous and effective. All of this can still go on. Knowing evil is still around doesn’t mean we stop progressing. It only means that we put things into proper perspective and remain cagey about the sinister aspects of social media.

The point is even if Facebook were to collapse in a heap and disappear, social media will continue. There are hundreds to thousands of other social media platforms ready to absorb those who no longer can use Facebook. This means sin will remain predominantly a feature of social media. In a fantasy world of no Facebook, evil will still exist.

Six-point Christian response to social media

Source: cypresslakeslodge.com

Like I said, social media is here to stay. It’s a little too late to stop it now that the juggernaut is everywhere around the world. So, to say that you will outright reject social media is not very practical especially if you are already involved. Unless you’re someone with exceptional presence in the world – think of Denzel Washington – you will find it quite impossible to walk away from it.

In other words, where reality is concerned, having a Quaker attitude to social media doesn’t work. Given that you are in a society where most people stay in touch using social media, tuning yourself out and practising social media celibacy is too difficult to do.

Even in Communist China where Facebook and Google – and all their affiliate online apps – are banned, social media is engaged by 647 million users as of 2018, rising to 800 million by 2023. This is because China has their own copycat versions including Weibo, WeChat, Tencent QQ, Baidu and TikTok among many others. They may not like the freedom of speech peddled by these companies but they sure like the idea of social media because it’s a nice way for the government to monitor its populace.

So what can a Christian do in a world encumbered by the endless presence of social media? Are there anything one can do to protect oneself from harm and still use these apps? Is it even possible to come out unscathed while we come to grips with social media?

Yes, it is possible but it requires you to consider at least these six guiding principles:

Deference (Respect) | Decisiveness | Defensiveness | Discernment | Discipline | Distancing

Deference

Source: gadgets.ndtv.com

In a world determined to free itself from God, the one thing they persistent want to do is to remove as much of His presence and impact as possible. Anything to do with God is anathema to those who hate and reject Him. Even the sound of His name drives them nuts. That is why we’re seeing a proliferation of anti-theistic activities throughout the world but none more apparent than in the United States where even symbols that remind them of His presence are to be permanently removed.

Other than dismantling crosses from signs and even crests and emblems, the modern world’s main preoccupation in rejecting God is to abandon the idea of sin. In other words, sin doesn’t exist in their lifestyle. And if sin doesn’t exist, that means everyone is free to do whatever seizes their imagination. By abandoning the notion of sin, man can practise evil and not be concerned about its repercussions. With God out of the world, even these repercussions don’t exist. It’s freedom that man has been coveting but never quite attained in the past but today, with the advent of social media, ideologies that reject God and everything about Him can be freely embraced with no price to pay in modern society.

Source: nydailynews.com

Without sin, there is also no need for hell. Everyone gets to heaven no matter what. No one has to worry about facing God’s wrath and being thrown into the lake of fire. That’s because people like to live in a world where their vocabulary does not include words like sin, evil and hell. In modern language, such a belief is called Universalism and it embraces the idea that you don’t have to accept Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God to be able to receive His salvation and hence, eternal life.

For Universalists, claiming heaven is effortless because of the promise of God’s grace. Living under His grace, we are perpetually forgiven for our transgressions. We can repeatedly do wrong things and God’s love is abundant enough to have us forgiven. In other words, we can pillage, murder, embezzle and do all the most hideous and immoral acts in the world and still find our way to heaven unhindered. What Universalists are therefore telling us is that when we ourselves reach heaven’s gates, we shouldn’t be surprised to find jihadists, terrorists, murderers, rapists, hideously corrupt politicians and royalties and the wicked.

Like the Universalists, the modernist has no time for God’s dichotomous principle of good and evil, right and wrong. Unlike God who teaches us that there is a heaven in as much as there is also a hell, the modernist abhors it. Some don’t exactly care if there is indeed even a heaven but those who do, embrace the belief without having to accept that there is spiritual warfare happening above our heads. 

We live in a world where we are increasingly seeing how sin is normalised in society. In a leftist world, sin profits at the expense of the everyday person who bears all the suffering no matter how unjust. The Internet merely amplifies all this to an incomprehensible extent.

Modern society simply has no time to deal with sin but since they have rejected the very notion of it, no one needs to care anymore. Sin has long decided that killing an unborn baby is as acceptable as a young woman finds her pregnancy unacceptable because it hinders her lifestyle. Since 1973, the legalisation of this ideology has seen over 57 million babies violently destroyed. And because it is now legalised in so many parts of the world, many people don’t see the killing of babies as a sin anymore.

Just as abortions are normalised, so it is with many other immoralities. Sleeping with someone else’s spouse was once a criminal offence but not anymore. Smoking dope was also once illegal but in an increasing number of places in the world other than in the United States, the consumption of marijuana in more than one form is now legally acceptable. Euthanasia – or the act of ending one’s life – is now an everyday part of life in various forms worldwide and if the country of residence does not allow it, nothing stops the person from going to Switzerland where it’s welcome.

These are just three examples but there are many others.

To have deference means to know that sin not only exists but to acknowledge that Satan will try and try to continually undermine us until we give in to him. As Christians, spiritual warfare is real and the battle is for the devil to claim our soul. This warfare is non-stop. Even while we are asleep, the battle continues relentlessly. That is why we cannot afford to be blasé about it when we’re engaged in social media.

In the guise of social media, sin finds many veneers to hide behind, which is why it’s never an easy subject to venture into with unbelievers. We overlook or dismiss its effect via social media at our peril. Even as we are concerned over unbelievers not understanding the power of sin to usurp us, Christians too are falling off Internet’s slippery slope.

Often, when we think we can handle it, in truth we are too ill-prepared. Disrespecting the power of sin is a dangerous thing. The problem with this is that inexperienced young Christians can find themselves victimised on social media without even realising. Sin is so well covered up in social media that it is just about invisible to most people. And it gets more frustrating when people mistake evil for outreach and the sharing of information. Because people treasure the benefits of both, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get them to see evil for what it is.

There is nothing encouraging about all this. To see evil prosper under the guise of social media is disconcerting and frustrating but that’s what it looks like. To know that all this is happening right under our nose is even harder to take but without a doubt, this is precisely what we have to deal with. As we Christians acknowledge the danger of encroaching sin, we also feel helpless because there is too little effort in the works to remedy the situation though we’re not holding our breath.

With social media powered by IT giants devoid of Christian love, it’s also hard not to complain. It’s hard to look at social media for what it is and turn a blind eye to what takes place under the skin. Personal information shared or even sold without our permission is just the tip of the iceberg. What is even more problematic is how social media is playing a central role in breaking families apart. Knowing this and seeing it before our eyes is hard when we also realise that our hands are tied.

We are constantly reminded that of the principle religions of the world, Christians are held to the highest standard. The bar is set very high for us because of the principled stand we take against immorality (among other reasons). The world expects us to walk the talk. Since we are the children of God given stewardship of the world including the holy observance of the 10 Commandments, morality is ours to uphold steadfast to.

That is why when Christians err publicly, people are wont to say things like, “…and he calls himself a Christian!” Whether that’s warranted or not depends on the situation and what really happened but the bottom line is that we can’t be seen to do the wrong things no matter how slight it may be. Because we are Christians, our every move is closely watched. Our every word is carefully monitored. Everything we respond to becomes left, right and centre of attention for haters. In other words, no one cuts us any slack.

Being held to an impossibly high standard is an irony. To Christians, high standard means adhering to God’s will and live a life of obedience and submissiveness to Him. To the secular world, it’s meant to break us. Therefore we are to refrain from following and doing what everyone else does. Insofar as social media is concerned, our Christian standards do not say anything about eschewing the use of it or the smartphone or, as a matter of fact, any communications device. What our standards demand of us is to use it without shaming or disappointing Christ.

While most everyone use social media for all the wrong reasons, we mustn’t follow them, blindly or otherwise.

In his letter to the church of Philippi, the apostle Paul wrote:

“Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticise you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.” (Php 2:14-16, NLT, m.e.)

Here’s a good reminder of why we must set ourselves apart from the world. As others use social media for all the wrong reasons, we must liberate ourselves from being tethered to the ways of the flesh. In Paul’s words, we should “do everything without complaining and arguing.” We must “live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.” How do we achieve all this?

Here’s Jesus’ answer:

“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are My disciples.” (Jn 13:34-35, NLT, m.e.)

In the surest sign of rejecting and mocking God, the world has long since normalised sin but even so, the efforts are getting increasingly more intense and radical. The world today is filled to the brim with atheists, Satanists, and socialists (and pseudo-socialists) and those who think it’s cool to dismiss Him. Some lead in the effort while others blindly follow. Either way, there’s a heavy price to pay that will come their way.

The more sweeping he normalisation of sin becomes, the more greatly threatened our lives are. Consider how much more sin we’re dealing with today compared to, say, fifty years ago. Back during the Sixties, the most prominent sins society dealt with were organised crime and socialism. If you consider smoking as a sin, include that as well. Today, we have an encyclopaedic range of sins. Anyone would run out of breath figuring out the number of sins that plague our everyday lives. Even more disturbing are those sins that don’t appear apparent but lurk just under the surface. Social media is just one example of this.

Source: rt.com

For us to keep a safe distance from evil, we must cling on to our faith as tenaciously as possible. We must learn to love one another as Christ loves us. We must be prayerful even for those who are our enemies. We must be kind in thoughts and deeds. We must be forgiving of those who hurt or harm or say terrible but unfounded things about us. And we must keep equipping ourselves with the word of God.

When we conduct ourselves in Christ righteousness, people sit up and take notice. It’s not just knowing right from wrong or good from evil but it’s also how we react or respond that people will be watching us. But when people see God in our lives, they will also witness His grace that comes from our action and response. In social media, millions can be witness and also be inspired when we become lighthouses for Christ to shine His light into the lives of those who dwell in darkness.

So whether we wake up on the wrong side of bed or have a day to forget at the office or one where nothing goes right, cease behaving like most others would. Let’s not be quick to shoot our mouth off. Let us be mindful of those who use social media to vent their spleen, cuss and swear and curse others without shame. Let us not be influenced by what the world would do but be instructed by God’s commandments instead.

Having said that, be ready nonetheless. There will always be those who will brandish daggers when they realise we are Christians for these are the ones who hate Christ and therefore, they will hate us:

“If the world hates you, remember that it hated Me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted Me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to Me, they would listen to you. They will do all this to you because of Me, for they have rejected the One who sent Me. They would not be guilty if I had not come and spoken to them. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Anyone who hates Me also hates My Father. If I hadn’t done such miraculous signs among them that no one else could do, they would not be guilty. But as it is, they have seen everything I did, yet they still hate Me and My Father. This fulfils what is written in their Scriptures: ‘They hated Me without cause.’” (Jn 15:18-25, NLT)

We can all see this phenomenon throughout the world and it’s not going to get better. In other words, when we face trials and tribulations in our lives, we should neither use social media to air our dirty linen nor confide in a person of worldly wisdom.

The Book of Proverbs does talk about talking and sharing with someone with whom we can speak openly and in person. The writer considers such a person as a trustworthy and devoted friend:

“A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.” (Prov 17:17, NLT, m.e.)

If a brother or a close friend is this loyal and willing, imagine God!

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Php 4:6-7, NLT, m.e.)

Paul is of course correct. What man can do, God can do manifold times better. Better still, God can instil in us His sense of peace that no one else can do, let alone match. It is this tranquillity that can separate us from the raucousness of the world around us. As Paul says, God’s peace “exceeds anything we can understand.”

Decisiveness

Source: telegraph.co.uk

The Internet isn’t the best place to go wandering without a care in the world. It’s certainly not somewhere you expect to always find wonderful things. As far as virtual worlds go, the Internet is almost infinite in breadth and depth and while there are some amazing websites you can visit, you can also stumble across sites that are unsavoury and positively evil.

The trouble is these sites might not appear so from the onset but by the time you dig in and get your hands dirty, it might be too late. Such is the case with the way people are so wrapped up in social media. Millions have taken the plunge into social media and the deeper they went, the more they appear to love the whole idea of it. After all, what’s there not to like? Under one roof, Facebook offered endless features to keep anyone busy for the whole day and beyond. It is so all-encompassing that people don’t even care to get anywhere else on the Internet.

The victims of social media, right from the beginning, have always been those who are misinformed or that they simply lack judgement. Some of them think they know enough to know when to stop. Quite a number of them scoff at those who warn them of the risks because they just don’t see anything wrong with social media.

These victims cut across the full age range. From the young to the old, everyone is vulnerable so long as no one practises proper judgement, care and awareness. Even today, there are plenty of articles written about the risks involved in social media (much like this one) but it doesn’t look like many of them have taken heed.

So what are these pitfalls that the Internet is so filled with?

The most obvious ones are those that came the earliest – spam mail followed by all sorts of other menacing ‘hooks’ such as web links within the email message that don’t do what their titles say. These links, when clicked, will open up a whole can of worms for the user. Today, there are a whole lot more types of dangers that the Internet has that is truly frightening for the uninitiated. Here are some examples:

-         Free installable utility apps with ‘bonus’ features

These are utilities that allow you to convert your video or audio files. There are endless numbers of them available and all of them make the same claim of being free. Sure enough, they are free but after once you begin installing the app, you will receive an onscreen invitation to also download add-on features including even search engines and browsers, all of which are, by and large, dangerous.

When that happens, you can always click ‘No’ and the installation process will apparently not include them but, in some cases, that might not even be true. The real problem begins when you decide to uninstall the utility program either because it doesn’t work as well as you’d like or you finally come to your senses that it’s not that good.

While the app will likely uninstall as a result, the add-ons are likely to stay behind. In other words, standard uninstallation will not remove the nefarious parts. Instead they will likely remain hooked into your Windows operating system for a long time to come.

-         Hidden viral compromise taking place on your hard disk

Up till the days prior to Windows 95, viruses were physically destructive. This means that they would actually damage hard disks. Before that, they did ‘cute’ things like making texts look like they were falling all over the screen or they twirl around in a mock spin cycle. At least back then, your data was, generally speaking, not so much a direct target.

That’s no longer the case today. Viruses have transmuted to become dangerous in a different way. Functioning like burrowing worms, they gain access into your hard disk through the ‘back door’ method. This means either via an email attachment or something you surreptitiously clicked in some website without realising. It might even come from someone else’s USB thumbdrive that you plugged into your computer. Whatever it is, it’s what we call a Trojan virus.

The current trend for these viruses is to steal information from your hard disk and they do this in the background so that you don’t know it’s even happening. These viruses are designed to know precisely where to go in your Windows operating system in which your vital information is contained. Depending on the type of virus, the information in question may be your personal contact list complete with names, email addresses and even phone contact numbers. It can also be your banking details including credit card numbers.

As you can imagine, people make money out of the information they steal from our computers. Such information carries an enormous value on the black market and are sold to an assortment of businesses including criminals. If you ever wonder how you can suddenly receive email or SMS messages from people you don’t know but who seem to know your personal particulars, your answer could lie here.

I have a friend who recently was an unwitting victim of ‘ransomware,’ a kind of virus that breaches your computer’s operating system security before locking up your data files, preventing you from opening them. On discovering that many of his picture and work files in his hard disk were ‘hijacked,’ he then received an email from the perpetrator, informing him that to recover access, he must remit a huge sum of money via some banking procedure outlined to him.

Ransomware is big business to the underworld. Perpetrators can earn millions in the most unthinkable way. In 2016 alone, damages amounting to as much as US$1 billion have been recorded, according to a report by a cybersecurity group. For my friend to regain access to his own files turned out to be such a hefty payout that he had no choice but to sacrifice all of them. Even Microsoft was not in the position to be able to help.

-         Fake information used to bait those who are ignorant

There are websites that you are interested in going to but somewhere you don’t seem to be able to get there. Encrypted auto-diversion is a common ruse that scammers use to bait innocent (gullible) users into visiting.

For example, let’s say you’re looking for an old favourite movie that you’d like to download. And so, you do an Internet search and find possible links to the websites that might offer you the right service. On what you believe is the right link, you click at it but instead of going to the website as advertised in the search, you are taken somewhere else that has nothing to do with the movie download.

In fact, if you’re attentive enough, you can actually see the website address change midway in the URL box to something completely different. And it’s not as if you can do anything about it.

This is, of course, hijacking of a different nature where you never get where you want to go in the first place. Instead, you invariably end up at some gambling, adult dating, gaming or some form of illegal website.

The point of this section is Decisiveness. It is not whether or not you will come across dangerous websites. The fact is you may whether you like it or not. It is not be design or choice but at some point, accidents may lead you to such websites. And if you do, the question is whether or not you are decisive enough to prevent yourself from getting too involved. This is especially true when it comes to social media.

Because of its immense appeal, sites like Facebook can and will draw you in like a magnet and since there are so many things you can do in it, you can really end up spending all your time doing all sorts of things. Apart from finding long-lost friends, you will find a gazillion other trivial things to do; things you normally wouldn’t have time for but like millions of others, you get sucked into it.

Sites like Facebook are so addictive that given the many things you can do there, the likelihood is that you will find something that will draw and rivet your attention be it some games, juicy gossips, aggregated news, dating matches, sharing of photos and so on. In a world of curiosities and busybodies, there are all sorts of stuff that will invariably prove appetising enough to take up all your time.

And that’s where the problem is. How will you be decisive about the time you spend if you are too weak willed to control yourself? How will you overcome the temptations that keep baiting you, vying for your undivided attention when you keep on finding new and exciting things in social media to occupy you?

The key to decisiveness is to pray for God’s wisdom so that the Holy Spirit will nudge you to know what, where and when you should be doing things. Within the context of what we’re dealing with, decisiveness means getting a firm hold on how you manage your time spent on social media. It means not allowing it to undermine our better judgement, not to let it manipulate us into submission when we’re too vulnerable to do anything about it. Decisiveness therefore calls upon us to be alert at all times so that we do not breach our own moral limits.

Of course, the six-million dollar question is whether or not you really need to be involved in social media. Or if you are already in social media, maybe the question is how much of it you need to be involved. Some people spend so much time in social media – being involved in as many networks as you can imagine – that they really leave themselves with no time to live a normal life. For them, their reality is in the virtual world. It’s little wonder that some of them don’t know how to make friends in the real world.

For Christians who indulge in social media, here are some questions for you to think about:

-         Do you consider yourself a light, moderate, heavy or very heavy user of social media?

-         On a daily average, how many hours do you normally spend on social media? Do you spend your time online with one or more certain people? And if so, are they Christians as well? Do you know them outside the Internet (as in real life)?

-         If you’re active in social media, what online activities do you get involved in and what contents do you normally pursue? Are they the kinds of stuff that God would approve of?

-         Do you or have you set limits on social media networks for yourself? If so, what are these limits and have you set them too low or too high or just right for yourself? Have you been able to comply with these limits? If you have, is it because you’ve set the bar too low? If you haven’t been able to, is it because the bar is too unrealistically high?

-         Have you ever felt close to divulging your personal information online at any stage on social media in the past? What happened then? Did you feel like you were almost tricked into doing so?

-         Do you think you can go through a week without accessing any social media networks while your phone is turned on? If you think that’s impossible, why? If you think it’s doable, have you tried?

-         Does the amount of attention you give to social media compete with the time you should be spending in church ministry work?

-         Do you consider overindulgence in social media a form of idolatry to God? After all, if your involvement in social media is taking you away from contributing to church work, wouldn’t that be so?

-         Have you used social media to share the Gospel? If so, how often do you do that?  If not, why not? Has your sharing of the Gospel using social media bore any fruit? If not, why? If it has, explain how this has happened for you.

Defensiveness

Source: jpninfo.com

The one precarious thing about the Internet is once you have posted something, you can’t quite take it back. Yes, certain social media platforms do allow you to withdraw and delete but not all offer this feature. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, for example, provide a small window of opportunity because the time period is very short. So, whether you sent a message to the wrong person or you regret sending the message, you don’t have a lot of time to mull over it. Even if you manage to retract the message, you have no idea who might already have seen it by then. Whoever did see it could’ve taken a screenshot of it already.

In some cases, you may only be able to delete the message on your end but not the recipients’. That’s just the same as saying, you can’t erase the message. To put it simply, posting messages on social media is not something to be taken lightly because changing your mind might not be possible.

This risk becomes worrying if the message pertains to your own personal information. Being tricked into uploading such detail is one thing but not being able to retract – once you realise your mistake – is very troubling indeed. The Internet is not a place for you to make such mistakes because once your private information is somewhere floating in virtual space, everyone has a chance to grab at it. When that’s the case, the damage you would have done to yourself can be incalculable.

Quite often, people upload offensive posts that draw flak from readers. When the criticisms mount, the person quickly deletes the post but that might already be too little too late. That’s because others might already have screen captures of the post and fanned it out to others to read. This is such a widespread problem on social media that some of us think that to post and then withdraw later is nothing more than a cynical ploy just to drive home the point. For others, it’s just plain stupidity.

So before you feel like slamming someone online, it’s best to cool off and think beforehand because you might not be able to change your mind. The same goes with giving away private information about yourself or anyone else for that matter.

In today’s world, the English vocabulary has a new word called ‘doxing’ (or ‘doxxing’), which means the broadcasting of private information about an individual or organisation on the Internet for others to take note of. The idea of doxing is to pull the covers off someone so that haters can be unleashed on to him with the intention to either hurt him or his family. Herein the information includes name, age, email address, residential address, contact phone numbers, photographs, spouse and children’s names, workplace (and school) details and so on. It may be scary that people can do this these days but this is the reality we are faced with.

In the most ethical of concerns, private information should stay private. After all, that’s what the word ‘private’ is supposed to mean. Any piece of personal information that can be used against you should not be made public and that includes not just your banking details but also whatever negative or derogatory comments you may have made against others because these might one day come back and haunt you.

In other words, whatever insults you feel like hurling should be kept to yourself. Some people actually enjoy offending others, often without any justifiable reasons. They think it’s cool to be abusive, scathing, vile or cruel. However once these nasty words are let out into the Internet, they will always be accessible no matter how many years ago, they were then said. Anyone looking for dirt on you in order to bring you down or destroy your reputation has it easy. All he has to do is to spend some time and effort sleuthing online. If he’s savvy enough, it won’t take him long to ‘discover’ all those nasty words.

When you fail to exercise defensiveness, a lot of awful things can happen. Here are some examples:

-         Because a 16-year-old child failed to properly set her Facebook privacy setting, 1,500 strangers gate crashed at her birthday party because they all read about it on her social media. No surprise then that she learned a costly lesson here.

-         Families that post pictures that show where they’ve been or where they live but have overlooked the fact that GPS settings are embedded in them learn to regret such a mistake that is, after their homes were broken in and comprehensively robbed on the day they weren’t around.

-         People who post parts of their documentation but didn’t do enough to conceal what should not be shown invariably reveal far too much personal information that can prove costly. Imagine if the person’s savings number was unwittingly revealed in the snapshot.

-         One of the college photos available online that is taken decades ago of a political leader shows him doing racist gestures could bring down his career amidst public uproar.

-         A person’s very private photos posted online reveal enough of her to get her fired from her job by her employer with no chance of appeal.

-         A worker’s insulting online comments about a major customer he served is brought to his boss’ notice resulting in him being dismissed from his job.

-         A student somehow reveals his homosexual tendencies to the wrong crowd that invariably used it to harass and bully him to the point that he commits suicide.

The bottom line is think carefully before you post anything on social media. As Christians, our every action must not shame God. If we are to glorify Him, then make sure that we use social media with responsibility. Always remember that much of the world out there is always looking to fault us. Therefore, as Christians, consider how these questions portray our action on social media:

-         Will people see the goodness of God in the way we conduct ourselves?

-         Will people want to know more about our faith in Christ because of what we post online?

-         Will fellow Christians want to share whatever we post within our faith community?

-         Or will people condemn God because of our online behaviour?

-         Will people use our poor conduct to ‘prove’ that Christians are undesirable?

So, here are two questions to ask before posting anything up on social media for others to see and read:

-         Does your post promote love or hate? Does it sound forgiving or otherwise? Does it prove that God is caring or not?

-         Does what you write online advance or diminish the Gospel? Does it edify or obfuscate people? Does it make people want to seek God out or does it turn them off?

-         Does our behaviour on social media reflect the goodness and love of God? Or does it tell others that we’re no different from anyone else?

Because we Christians are held to a more stringent yardstick, we must be absolutely sure that what we post online does not disgrace God. The most fundamental thing we should do, to begin with, is to proofread what you write before we post it on social media.

Foremost in our proofreading is to check our motive for posting. The question is whether or not we are doing the right thing by texting our message using social media. Or is it something we can do privately? If it’s just one person you’re trying to reach, does it make sense to talk to the person face to face?

In your proofreading, check the language you’re using to write the message. Did you write it in a fit of anger or are you perfectly calm and rational? Maybe you intend to be caustic or sarcastic. Perhaps you’re plotting to expose the person’s foolishness with the sole purpose of shaming him. And in all of this, your choice of words may be suspect.

If your post includes photos, see if they’re lewd or suggestive. Remember, your morality yardstick isn’t from the secular world. If your photos demean the holiness of God, then you’ll need to rethink the whole post and not just the photos. Whatever your intent is with sharing such photos on social media, it can’t be honouring Him. Furthermore there is a real risk that your actions will cause others to stumble.

Source: nytimes.com

When you proofread, does it look like your post is all centred on yourself? Is it all about you? Does it sound like you’re somewhat bragging? Even foodie pictures can, to some people, smack of braggadocio. Many people just don’t realise that such posts (and photos) reflect a low self-esteem because the sender is simply trying too hard to draw attention to himself. Such self-centredness merely elevates yourself and relegates God, which is just the opposite of what we should do (Jn 3:30).

None of this suggests that all your posts must be about God or they must be contextually biblical. Of course not. You don’t have to get theological in everything you post and share on social media. Neither should all of us sound like pastors preaching at a moment’s notice. Or worse, we shouldn’t use social media to behave like a holier-than-thou Pharisee just to make others feel inferior.

While your posts don’t have to be directly of God, they should reflect the love and gentleness that is His unerring trademark. It should, in other words, reflect His character since we are all created in His image (Gen 1:27). What we say must mirror Him. And since we are created in His image, we are thus called to be ourselves and not have to pretend to be someone else. We are given a unique character and personality; so use it.

Therefore what we post online should somehow reveal the hope we have in Christ whether directly or otherwise:

“Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way. Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ.” (1 Pt 3:15-16, NLT, m.e.)

Discernment

Source: couriermail.com.au

In his letter to the church members in Thessaloniki, Paul wrote:

“Do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil.” (1 Thess 5:20-22, NLT, m.e.)

The apostle calls on us to know right from wrong, good from bad. To put it simply, be discerning enough to avoid trouble. Only be seeking and applying God’s wisdom will we then know how best to “stay away from every kind of evil.”

Although Paul’s advice is meant for the real world, it is just as appropriate to apply it to the time we devote to social media. Hence, we can take to heart his exhortation to not leave any stone unturned but to “test everything that is said.” In the virtual world, Paul’s advice would be to be very cautious when using social media and not be thoughtless, dismissive or naïve. Instead of stepping beyond the precipice of damnation, we must therefore “hold on to what is good.”

The problem with discernment is exactly what Paul said. When he wrote, “Do not scoff at prophecies,” he is talking about those who are smug enough to write off the threat of evil. These are the people who flirt with sin because they think they have what it takes to contain evil. Though it is obvious to many of us that this is foolish, some obviously think they know what they’re doing that is, until serious trouble strikes.

Paul’s take-home message is a simple one: Where there is even the tiniest hint of sin or evil, walk away. And don’t look back. Savour everything that is good and discard the rest.

That even includes the ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ that social media entices you to click whenever you come across stuffs that you read or watch online. Always remember that whatever it is that you participate in social media, the decisions you make reveal your attitude and conviction of the works and deeds of others. If you are seen to ‘like’ saucy images and people find out you’re a Christian, the shame that will bring to God and the entire Christian community is incalculable. There cannot be any goodwill that can be done to undo the sheer embarrassment of your action.

There is nothing beautiful about seeing pictures of people dressed scantily. Neither can anyone say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Lewdness or nakedness has no bearing on God’s attitude to beauty. While the world feasts its eyes on the vulgarity of naked flesh, the Lord’s concern is focused on inner beauty:

“Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewellery, or beautiful clothes. You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.” (1 Pt 3:3-4, NLT, m.e.)

Equally as foolish are those who would do anything in front of camera so long as it draws attention to themselves. The desire for self-importance is often followed by acts of poor taste where one makes a complete fool of himself simply because of the publicity he craves. This is becoming increasingly evident over the number of years since the advent of YouTube where people post up video shorts of just about anything they like.

Of late, people have been indulging in a video phenomenon called ‘unboxing’ where they proudly display what they have purchased – usually (but not necessarily) a smartphone or a digital camera – by training the camera on the process of removing the box and carefully unwrapping, showing the innards. Exactly how is an ‘unboxing’ video useful to anyone who is interested to know how good the product is especially when that is all it shows?

When we do foolish things to attract attention, we are also deprioritising God at the same time except that in addition, we make ourselves look pretty stupid to the whole world. We keep forgetting that our pleasure on social media is not God’s concern. What He wants us is for us to place Him at the centre of our lives and then to project that impression outwardly so that other people around us may see and feel His holiness.

Discipline

Source: asianlite.com

Another word for Discipline is Self-Control. That’s like saying you must draw a line and know never to cross it. In politics, we call that the ‘red line.’ It’s a boundary between peace and war. To cross the ‘red line’ is to inadvertently or otherwise declare war. Setting a similar boundary for ourselves is to know when our involvement in social media is way past rational limits.

But when it comes to social media, what or when is ‘too much’? It’s fair to say that there are different interpretations of this. Here are just seven of them:

-         When you don’t even know how to socialise in the real world anymore

-         When your parents have to resort to social media to communicate with you while at home

-         When you don’t really have real and physical friends or when most of your social life is actually spent online

-         When all your activities suggest you don’t really care much about what’s happening in the real world

-         When you begin to act ‘abnormally’ enough for your own family to notice and be concerned

-         When you appear so absorbed by social media that your academic grades show signs of failure

-         When you willingly break relationships with real friends just so you can spend more time online

No doubt, some of you will think of more but in these seven, the worrying signs are real enough. When ‘too much’ means we are losing our sense of reality, that means we have begun to lose the ability to tell reality from disreality. When we become so detached from our real earthly life, we also become separated from fellowship with our Christian brothers and sisters. And if nothing is done about this soon enough, this alienation can become permanent.

Slavery to social media is on the rise but even so, very few recognise it as such. It’s not far different from people who are inebriated who then say they aren’t. Within the context of social media, addiction and slavery are the two edges of the same knife. Both cut the same way. Both carry the same message and produce the same devastating result. And in the end, both inherently talk about the same thing.

To be enslaved to social media doesn’t appear to be all too difficult. In the world we live, there are tens of millions of such people with an incredible addiction that they just can’t put down their phones. But worse, the addiction has caused rifts in families and in other social circles.

Slavery begins the moment you step past that boundary we spoke of. And as you deepen your involvement past that point, slavery tightens its grip on your life. You eventually start to lose control over your real physical life as you withdraw from one and indulge more intensely in the other. Virtuality takes over and soon, your entire sense of reality will be fragmented. If you don’t get treatment soon enough, that fragmented reality could become irreversible.

I don’t say any of this with any medical expertise. I’m not a physician or a psychoanalyst. But from what we all have been noticing around, the above is not something out of a B-grade science fiction movie. It is very real and it’s happening rampantly wherever you are. In my semi-retired profession as an English Communications coach, I have had students who were bordering on that phenomenon and was safely hauled back into reality. They can tell us a thing or two about their own experiences too.

Today, there are plenty of social media platforms to become slaves to. Other than the ubiquitous Facebook, there are a shocking number of them for the Western world and equally as many of them for mainland China. Altogether, they command an enslaved population probably larger than the whole of communist China itself.

How has it come this far? How on earth did social media become such a shocking source of addiction? The answer may not be as obvious as you may think.

Aze Raskin (source: ghanaguardian.com)

In a BBC article, the writer identified Aze Raskin, a former Mozilla and Jawbone employee said, “Behind every screen on your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting.”

Raskin should know what he’s talking about. It was he who invented the Infinite Scroll, a feature that enables a pageless view, meaning the web page just doesn’t end but instead continues without a limit. This and other similar innovations compel users to keep looking at their phones for a far longer period than necessary. The idea is to get as many people as possible to be hooked.

Leah Perlman (source: acento.com.do)

The inventor of Facebook’s notorious ‘Like’ button, Leah Perlman, said she herself became addicted on social media once she allowed the number of ‘likes’ to establish her sense of self-worth.

“When I needed validation, I go to check Facebook. I’m feeling lonely, ‘Let me check my phone.’ I’m feeling insecure, ‘Let me check my phone,” Perlman said.

In fact, she tried so hard to stop using Facebook after she left the company but found it very hard going. From the company’s founding president, Sean Parker, there was easily explained by the fact that Facebook had set out to compel users to spend as much time as possible on their social media network. And of course, it worked.

Parker said it was “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

“The inventors understood this consciously and we did it anyway,” he added.

Sean Parker (source: businessinsider.com)

If all that sounds disturbing to you, it gets far worse. In its quest to see if they could actually control the mood of the user (without his knowledge, that is), the company conducted experiments involving the adjustments to the news feed. Not surprisingly, we’re seeing the horror of its results today. Experiments that have gone completely wrong have now given us an insane train wreck of political correctness and a social media that is dominated by only one set of opinions. If you fall outside these opinions, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.

Parker has since confessed his regrets in helping to shape Facebook into the beast that it is today.

“I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because of the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Chamath Palihaptiya (source: internethistorypodcast.com)

Days after Parker said that in November 2017, Facebook’s former vice-president of user growth from 20o5 to 2011, Chamath Palihaptiya, told an audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business something very unsettling. He said, “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works.”

“No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth,” he continued, “and it’s not an American problem. This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem.”

How big a problem is this? The best way to answer this question is to consider that today, there are actually therapy programmes available for those who suffer from social media addiction. Just a cursory check on the Internet will easily unearth a range of similar programmes.

At Lakewood AspenRidge Recovery in Lakewood, Colorado, they is a programme called ‘Social Media Addiction Treatment’ that actually comprise a range of different therapies. One of the world’s leading addiction specialists, Dr Stanton Peele, runs a recovery assistance initiative called ‘Life Process Social Media Programme.’

There is also an online therapy company called Talkspace that offers a 12-week US$400 ‘Social Media Dependency Therapy’ package that is “designed to help you manage your use of, and response to, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more.” The Social Media Addiction Treatment Centre in Foothills at Red Oak Recovery in Ellenboro, North Carolina runs programmes centring on social media and smartphone addictions.

If you’re wondering why there is no mention of similar treatment centres in Malaysia, that’s because searching through the Internet revealed none. Perhaps there are and if so, that might mean that this problem has not received sufficient publicity. In other words, unlike elsewhere, people in Malaysia might not think it’s such a big problem.

Whatever Malaysians in general think of social media addiction, it is real and IT giants like Facebook, Google and the whole lot of them have been deliberately incorporating technologies that subtly entices users to dig deeper and spend more time in social media. The inescapable facts remain irrefutable – IT giants aren’t in the business of being compassionate when it comes to mental health issues. The Internet represents the most powerful cash cow they can milk for decades and if you’re vulnerable enough to be sucked into the vacuum, you’re easy meat. The serious problem is hundreds of millions of users throughout the world are easy meat.

But it isn’t just about money. After all, IT giants have bottomless bank accounts. Just last year alone, Facebook has a market capitalisation and nett worth of US$470 billion. That’s absolutely huge but at US$715 billion, Google’s market capitalisation is more than 1.5 times larger.

Besides the enormous money-making venture that social media is, it’s also the enormous potential to wield influence and sway opinions across hundreds of millions of users worldwide. There is no doubt that in social media, IT giants have found their perfect springboard for not just socio-political discourse but real change. It may not be democratic. It certainly isn’t very legal. But with social media, IT giants are able to mobilise vulnerable users to root for their cause with devastating results as we have been witnessing in the past number of years.

Source: creativecultureint.com

Given their enormous financial power and the ability to influence mindsets, users like you and I are nothing but fodder in their hands. But we do have a choice – we can either let forces beyond our control sweep us along or we can be disciplined with the way we use social media. That means we recognise our limits and apply them. It also means we do not let it control and undermine us. Social media is a wonderful tool but that’s just where we should draw a line. In other words, we do not cross it.

Recall that one of the Ten Commandments talks about keeping the Sabbath:

“Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day He rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.” (Ex 20:8-11, NLT, m.e.)

From the above passage, the lesson is the Sabbath itself. As a principle, Sabbath teaches us that there must be times when we just stop indulging in things that take us away from our spiritual priorities and instead, take a break. At some point, even rush hours must also come to a stop. Life is too important to let it drift away simply because we are led to think that there are things so crucial that they require our undivided attention.

From this lesson, social media becomes the elephant in the room. It is the prime culprit in sucking all the energy from our lives. Social media is so consuming that we unerringly give everything to it, leaving nothing behind for our real friends and families. But it does all these in such a subtle manner at the beginning because it starts with being fun, amazing and entirely pleasurable. Eventually once it crosses the threshold, social media becomes a potential death wish.

That’s when we see people constantly updating their status, liking and sharing posts, messaging even people they don’t know, uploading photos of anything and everything, vlogging or blogging (or both) and commenting on whatever others are (commenting).

Just these alone can take up an entire day and when they do, real friends and families are left behind. We create a bubble of virtual friends with whom we share everything in our lives with complete with photos and videos and everything else. Then our mindset changes. We begin to transform ourselves into whatever news we read and learn from within social media.

A scene from the movie ‘The Circle’ (source: catchnews.com)

In the 2017 movie called ‘The Circle,’ we see Emma Watson’s character, Mae, being told that those who work for the powerful tech company (called the Circle) are all ‘one community’ together, meaning that no one keeps secrets at all – all secrets are ‘bad’ – and that their lives are to be open books. That ultimately means everything is shareable including deeply confidential family matters and confidential government discussions and matters concerning national security.

That’s of course nonsense. If you’re a mature adult, you should know that. As a Christian, you cannot but know none of what social media ‘promises’ is true because ultimately, the hidden agenda is to drive us into addiction and pull us as far as possible from God. Contrary to naïve thinking, that is not difficult to do. When any of us take our faith for granted, it will happen right under our nose.

Keep your discipline in check. Take a break from social media. No, take breaks from social media and do that as often as you can. Shut out social media so that it cannot take over your life. Between your real life and virtual life, choose real life. Walk away the instant you feel that social media is creeping up to consume you. Apply strict control in your life and constantly remind yourself not to slip away from God.

If I’m honest with you, I’d say let’s go back to the pre-social media days because it’s far simpler and less threatening. But we can’t. Social media is now here to stay and it won’t go away any time soon. Social media won’t change. The people who engineer the way social media works won’t have a change of heart and dial out the addictive features. That won’t happen today and I doubt it will ever happen at any time in the near or distant future.

However, we can change. Even if social media is here to stay, we can make amends in our lives by choosing to leave it at any time. You may not want to permanently walk away from social media but you should know that you have the right to do it as and when you like, for a few days at your convenience or for no matter how long you feel like it. Don’t let social media dictate your life. Don’t allow it to make you lose touch with reality. Don’t make it the idol that God detests.

If you haven’t tried it before, why not. Turn off your smartphone for the whole of next week and see what happens. Hopefully you won’t go into meltdown but one thing is certain – that social media network will still be there when you choose to return. And if you keep having such breaks every now and then, you’d have done something very positive for yourself – you have acquired the discipline to dictate social media and not the other way ‘round.

(Keep your) distance

Source: rebelcircus.com

In other words, maintain a relevant life. Don’t be drowned by social media to the extent that you unwittingly end up walking away from the real world. The Internet is nothing but a few computers electrically and electronically connected together so that electrons in the form of data are shared. If that sounds clinical, that’s because that is essentially what it is all about.

The problem with the Internet is that we tend to give it a sense of life. Over the decades, we have turned the Internet into a living organism with exponential cellular growth much like a biomass. In 1991, there was only one website. Three years later, in 1994, that had grown to around 3,000 websites. By 2014, that figure has grown to more than 1 billion. That’s a staggering 33 million percent increase in a space of two decades! The site ‘Internet Live Stats’ tells us there are, as of this time of writing, some 935,950,654 websites. And growing.

And yet all of these websites are not physical but completely virtual. The people you meet online to talk and share things with are virtual. They do exist but you don’t really see them in real life unless you make it a point to actually meet them physical. But that might not be all that practical – or realistic – when thousands of your friends are halfway across the world.

To stay relevant means keeping your distance from social media. You can make as many friends as you like on social media but there are two evident things you should be aware of.

Firstly, at least some of these friends might not be who you think they are. It’s easy enough to hide behind the computer 15,000 miles away and pretend to be anything and everything you want him/her to be. For someone who’s looking for the ideal girl in his life, the other person may be a guy in real life but he can feed your fantasy and potentially ruin you before you even know it. People can do and say anything they like but that doesn’t mean they’re telling you the truth. In reverse, you can do the same to some unsuspecting victim across the other end of the Internet.

Secondly, you may notice that you ‘like’ the same things as another particular person with an ‘interesting’ name but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee you that you will hit it off with him/her as a friend. In social media, people treat one another simply as ‘likes’ but ‘likes’ don’t automatically translate into usable statistics. However, everyone will tell you that the more ‘likes’ you have, the more important they feel about themselves. That might sound like hogwash but it’s pretty true to many millions of social media users. But the truth behind the ‘likes’ is that you’re nothing more than a number in the vast pool called social media.

Where social media accords you a specific number – an IP address, if you like – the real world is so dramatically different. Unlike the virtual bubble of make-believe companionships, the real world comes with real physical friends, flesh and all. You meet and chat with them. You sit down and have a cup of coffee with them. You shake their hands and feel their warmth. You listen to every word they say complete with all the insinuations and overtones. You see the reactions and facial expressions. You may eye contact with them. You hear with your ears and you feel with all your senses that the person you’re conversing with is just as real as you are.

Source: long-distance-lover.com

Because we see people in reality, we can like them as much as we may or may not. We can make informed choices based on everything we see in the person. Our judgements are worth standing up to because they are entirely based on an actual visual and aural experience. But the same cannot ever be said of the virtual friends we make on social media and for that reason, there is simply no contest at all.

Just as we keep a distance to those who fake their presence on social media, be mindful that we can also do the same, which means others can also keep their distance from us. Without a doubt, fakery is rampant throughout the Internet. It’s not just social media but there are plenty of websites that are built on false information meant to deceive all of us. It’s the same as email messages that contain fake links that when clicked will spell enormous problems for us. Some of these problems can mean the end to all our hard-earned savings.

As an example of a notorious social media platform, Facebook is no exception. Although it offers us great opportunities to connect with friends and families regardless of geographic distance. Unfortunately, it is also a hotbed for those looking to satiate their fantasies, those who use it to lie and cheat others as well as attention-seekers who desire the world to fete them. Some of us are so desperate to fit into that part of society where the pursuit of fake visages eclipse honesty in importance.

Christians are often told to be friendly to others but at the same time, many of us hanker for attention one way or another. We also upload photos and post articles that others may like them. And we like the fact that they like them too. Not all of us like to see our names in billboards or like the idea of signing autographs but that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy a bit of attention every now and then. It is a human weakness that also afflicts us Christians but it is also this personality trait that social media is very good at exploiting.

The very notion that one can find himself hugely popular on social media rings a lot of bells for youths; Christians included. And with that Facebook is an important vehicle for doing that although in recent times, there are other social media platforms that one can do the same. Many Christians do use social media to do ‘good works’ because they too understand that visibility is high using such networks. Your ‘good works’ do get noticed more easily than using conventional non-Internet means. But that in itself can also be potentially problematic.

What we may not understand or occasionally forget is that we are not saved by our good works but by the grace of God. For that, we are all called to glorify Him with all that we are, not all that we do or say. While we are called to transform ourselves from the inside out, God has no interest whatsoever in whether or not we look cool on the outside. So even if friends on social media think we’re hip with the way we talk or the way we look in the uploaded photos, God is simply not bothered:

“So we keep on praying for you, asking our God to enable you to live a life worthy of His call. May He give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do. Then the Name of our Lord Jesus will be honoured because of the way you live, and you will be honoured along with Him. This is all made possible because of the grace of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ.” (2 Thess 1:11-12, NLT, m.e.)

Take notice in the above verse that we are to “live a life worthy of His call” and by doing so, we honour Christ “because of the way you live.” In other words, to be “worthy of His call” means we are to live according to what God has called us to. And that has nothing to do with the ‘wonderful’ things we say and do on social media.

Respond to our calling

Source: adelaidenow.com.au

The thing about social media is that whatever it purports to do, it does it very well. In reaching out to long-lost friends, social media is peerless. In finding all sorts of things to do and finding amazing things to enjoy are both hallmarks of social media too. And even as a news aggregator, social media offers incredible convenience, all under a single roof (provided you like the news it ‘selects’ for you).

In Christian communities worldwide, social media is commonly seen as a very effective outreach tool. Many of us use it to advance the Kingdom of God by sharing the Gospel and witnessing to unbelievers. Enthusiastic Christians use it with fervour and often, they are savvy enough to maximise social media’s potential to great effect. And we’re finding newer ways to do an even better job just as social media is constantly ‘improving’ by way of more advanced technologies.

For so many of us, social media has been a boon. Its popularity is literally blown the roof off. That is why we see millions of people so engrossed in social media regardless of where we see them, be it in coffee shops, restaurants, hospitals, banks, department stores, taxi ranks and bus stops and even while they’re supposed to be watching movies in cinemas. People simply can’t put down their phones. Even while walking in streets, they’re looking at their phones. As they cross busy roads and intersections, they’re still scrolling through stuff on social media.

Surely social media must be doing a lot of things right and ticking a lot of boxes for so many millions of people. But its strongest suits are also its weakest ones. The so-called positive aspects of social media also happen to carry dark sides. In other words, what appears to be remarkable capabilities are also social media’s more nefarious powers of influence. For example, you may love the fact that you can keep scrolling and scrolling because it means you don’t have to click to open the next page and so on but this feature is one of many reasons for keeping you hooked to social media.

There is nothing in this article that can offer you solutions to overcoming social media addiction. What the reader finds here are just things to be aware of and how we should view social media from the Christian perspective. With the six principles highlighted here, it is my hope that you find them worth understanding and practising. By no means they are the only ones for Christians to live by but perhaps, they may offer you a launch pad to move in the right direction in countering (or at least, containing) social media.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians offers us a good reminder that we are all called to live for God in every area of our lives:

“…whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Don’t give offence to Jews or Gentiles or the church of God. I, too, try to please everyone in everything I do. I don’t just do what is best for me; I do what is best for others so that many may be saved.” (1 Cor 10:31-33, NLT, m.e.)

Sources for further reading

Abdul Razak, Dzulkifli (May 2019) Curb social media addiction (New Straits Times) accessible at https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2019/05/491186/curb-social-media-addiction

Andersson, Hilary (Jul 2018) Social media apps are ‘deliberately’ addictive to users (BBC Technology) accessible at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959

Author unknown (no date) 37 Church Statistics You Need to Know for 2019 (Reach Right Studios) accessible at https://reachrightstudios.com/church-statistics-2019/

Bernama (Jan 2019) Malaysia ranks top 5 globally in mobile social media penetration, highest in region (New Straits Times) accessible at https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/bots/2019/01/456119/malaysia-ranks-top-5-globally-mobile-social-media-penetration-highest

Brown, Jennings (Nov 2017) Former Facebook Exec: ‘You Don’t Realise It But You Are Being Programmed (Gizmodo) accessible at https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-exec-you-don-t-realize-it-but-you-are-1821181133  

Conrad, Andrew (Mar 2018) 10 Powerful Church Statistics on Social Media Use (Capterra) accessible at https://blog.capterra.com/church-statistics-social-media/

Elgan, Mike (Dec 2015) Social media addiction is a bigger problem than you think (Computerworld) accessible at https://www.computerworld.com/article/3014439/social-media-addiction-is-a-bigger-problem-than-you-think.html

Kapahi, Ashish and Siow-Ling, Choo and Ramadass, Sureswaran and Abdullah, Nibras (Jun 2013) Internet Addiction in Malaysia Causes and Effects (Universiti Sains Malaysia) accessible at https://file.scirp.org/pdf/IB_2013062717052986.pdf

Lafrance, Adrienne (Sept 2015) How Many Websites Are There? (The Atlantic) accessible at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/how-many-websites-are-there/408151/

Lewis, Bex (May 2016) How social media is changing the church (The Conversation) accessible at https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-is-changing-the-church-57405

Luther, Daisy (May 2018) Is Social Media Destroying Humanity on Purpose? (The Organic Prepper) accessible at https://www.theorganicprepper.com/is-social-media-destroying-humanity-on-purpose/  

Palmer, Danny (Sept 2016) The cost of ransomware attacks: $1 billion this year (ZDNet) accessible at https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-cost-of-ransomware-attacks-1-billion-this-year/

Smith, Rick (Jan 2013) Social Media Facts and Statistics Every Church Needs to Pay Attention to (Ministry Tips) accessible at http://www.ministrytips.com/social-media-facts-and-statistics-for-2012/

Trey (Jan 2017) 10 Statistics on Social Media Use in Church’s Today (Wakefield Central Baptist Church) accessible at https://www.wakefieldcentralbaptist.org/10-statistics-on-social-media-use-in-churchs-today/