This article is part of a series that came straight from The Social Christian ebook which you can get now at ChurchMagPress. along with the PowerPoint slides and audio presentations Phil actually used.
Nothing costs nothing, and the same is true for social media. You may think you have free access to their networks—assuming you have paid for your home internet or a phone with a data plan—but it costs you something: an email address, your name, your age, etc. This information, as we discussed in the previous section, is the price of admission, but what’s the price per use?
Every time we use social media, we’re paying a price. This could come in the form of time wasted, relationships or responsibilities ignored, or soul pollution. Either way, we are paying, and most often, without realizing it until well after the bill has come due. When this happens, we often push ourselves to make up for lost time or make amends with those we’ve neglected, but how often do we deal with the heavy price paid by our souls?
I was one of the few Christians in my circle of friends/coworkers in college. Because of this, I spent hours with people whose values, actions, and language did not align with my own. I could see this was an issue, but it was not until years later that I realized how much of their influence had seeped into and polluted my soul. Social media is like this but worse because its influence is more subtle and constant. Add to this the fact that we often check social media when we are bored, lonely, needing an escape—in short, when we’re at our weakest—and the situation becomes worse.
We need to seriously begin to look at how we are being polluted by social media, but what if we are, unconsciously polluting the feeds and lives of others? How would we know, and how could we correct it?
What you’ve just read is an excerpt from my new ebook, The Social Christian: A Theological Exploration of Social Media, published by ChurchMag Press. If you’d like read more, you can purchase a copy of your very own for $10. If you’d like to step it up a notch and use this book as the basis for a class or small group, you can purchase a church license for $30.
To find out more about this neat little time, head on over to ChurchMag Press.
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