Why Your Posts Are Part of the Problem

Yesterday, we elected a new President.   It wasn’t the Presidential Candidate I thought would win.  I really thought Clinton had it.  I was not a fan of either so I have no idea exactly how I feel, but I was more saddened (not surprised) when I opened up Facebook this morning.  Why was I saddened?  Because while we all have a right to share our opinion, most of us just shouldn’t!  

Over the past year I have read in a variety of books and articles how our lives online have hurt us.  I have been especially impacted by Craig Groeschel’s book, “#Struggles: Following Jesus in A Selfie-Centered World.” I don’t think social media is bad, I actually love it!  I have lived in 6 states and 2 foreign countries, travelled a lot in my earlier years and I love people, so it is an amazing way for me to be in the lives of so many far and wide.  

But we were never intended to live our lives online.  We were made for relationships.  Real relationships.  That means connecting our soul with others and that rarely happens online.  Online breeds superficial, unfiltered, edited responses to life.  It gives us a false sense of celebrity as we share our every move, thinking the world wants to know.  That may work with a small group of followers or friends but you would NEVER have a good coffee shop conversation with 1,000 people.  It just wouldn’t be productive or beneficial.  

I Corinthians 10:23 says "Everything is permissible," but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible," but not everything is edifying.

We are not famous.  Our platform is faulty if we are assuming it gives us celebrity.  We need to make our voice heard but unfortunately that voice gets lost in over saturated newsfeed.  People cannot take the overwhelming responses good, bad and ugly to the election process and the results we saw unfold into the wee-hours of this morning.  We were not made to effectively process all of that.  The non-stop barrage of in your face responses to the world enforces depressive tendencies and studies are now reflecting this connection with a rise in depression and suicide, I just read a great article in TIME magazine (November 7, 2016) about this very thing.  

When I was living in London for a semester during college, I got to experience the term stimulus overload.  Living by the hospital meant I heard sirens non-stop.  It was hard to sleep or focus as first, but by the time I came back to the States, I didn’t even notice the sound.  My brain couldn’t take it so it made the proper adjustments and filtered out the sound so I could function.  I see this same phenomenon happening online.  The very tool that once gave us a voice is now silencing it because its just too much! 

Face to face communication involves non-verbal communication that get lost in our social media posts, not to mention unscripted conversations include more than 140 characters.  You may drop a controversial bomb in the midst of a two-hour lunch with your bestie, but the take away is tons of other topics and perspectives.  It adds to the dimensions of the conversation and the relationship even if its disagreement, but social media is relational-free opinions and its only creating a divide between us and anyone who disagrees.  

Get offline, get out with friends, or upgrade an acquaintance to a friend by hanging out and having shared experiences.  Share those opinions over coffee and allow the opinion to do more than scroll across someone’s face in between classes, meetings or lines during errands.  Get used to not using the delete button when giving your two cents.  Take the chance to say it wrong and hear how you could have rephrased it.  You maybe be surprised how much better life is offline!