1. Living it: you've got plenty of social profiles and presence and see it as an excellent tool in your ministry.
2. Ambivalence: Not really into it, but you've maybe got a social profile on a platform or two.
3. Opposed to it: Don't have any social profiles and it drives you a little wild to see how often others are always on their phones.
And in this final post it's time to dive into how to rethink what it means to be living it.
Because if you want to do more than preach to the choir, or engage in long protracted debates, you need to stop seeing social as a tool for spreading a message.
The reason for this is that social media is really bad at changing our mindset. We all see the world from different perspectives and as a general rule, social sucks at changing how we see things. Just scroll through a feed and see what your friends are sharing.
You shouldn't be surprised to find that the majority of the stuff that they shared already agrees with how those people see the world. We come across some piece of content. We think, "this is brilliant" - mostly because it has communicated something we agree with succinctly. So we share it. Either that or we've actually LOLed so we want to brighten the days of others.
But as a general rule, we share what we already agree with. And when it comes to Christian's using social it can seem like we see social media as a tool to spread the message. Which is most likely not going to do anything towards what we hope it will achieve.
It's kinda of like this one that circulated a while ago:
Just switch out "political" and replace it with "Christian" or "Jesus" and you get the point. See, it totally agrees with me, so of course I will share it.
But in all seriousness, there's three main ways we respond to posts. We like/comment/share what we agree with. We'll at times comment when we disagree strongly enough with something/someone. Or we'll do nothing. And it's this last one that as Christian leaders we need to be most aware of. (That is right after you've mastered the art of not getting in stupid arguments in comment threads trying to prove you're right).
The reason for this is that doing nothing can actually become what is referred to as the "spiral of silence". People's willingness to get involved with the hot topic issue of Edward Snowden's leaks about American surveillance resulted in the following conclusion, according to a 2014 study:
Despite hopes that social media like Facebook and Twitter might provide new places for the discussion of political issues and the sharing of different opinions, a new survey has found that people were less willing to discuss...in social media than they were in person.
Not only that, but it also contends:
Facebook and Twitter users were less likely than others to be willing to share their opinions in many face-to-face settings and were especially reluctant to speak their minds during in-person gatherings if they thought their social media friends and followers disagreed with them.
What this is saying is that the more we're using social media as a broadcast platform for our viewpoints, the less likely we're going to end up in an honest discussion, either in social or face-to-face settings, with those who feel they are a minority in the crowd. In other words, it's great for preaching to the choir.
Maybe you're happy with doing that. But if you're interested in engaging with others who hold a different viewpoint, then perhaps it's time to recognise that social media is an extension of social un-media. Meaning that you recognise it's not a broadcast medium. But a medium for social connection and relationship. Which are built in very similar ways in the online environment as in the offline one.
Have you ever succumbed to the "spiral of silence"? Particularly have you been reluctant to voice an opinion in public because you knew your friends would disagree because of their social profiles?
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