It is everywhere. We can’t escape it. Towards the end of 2023 I sat in a restaurant. Only I wasn’t eating. I’d responded to several birthday messages on WhatsApp and Instagram. Across from me was a former university professor who I’d bumped into. After a brief conversation, she said she isn’t interested in AI. On the other table, a middle-aged man peered at his laptop screen, with a text editor open and a gaze reflecting serious work. In front of me, a lady has been looking into her mobile phone seemingly without a break, swiping through content. There is no escape.
From what? Technology, social media, and the digital space are part of our contemporary reality.
Technology and social media are part of our contemporary reality.
Before COVID-19, technology was seen as the behemoth in the wisdom literature. It was a kind of monstrous, mysterious intruder into faith’s calm and serene life. At best, it was only helpful in connecting us with friends far away, and perhaps making online transactions. At worst, pornography. Beyond these extremities, is the interesting middle ground of how we use it in our day-to-day lives; or, rather, how it uses and forms us. In this piece I want to consider that middle-ground, by looking at how social media affects our motivation and memory.
What Motivates You: Now or Eternity?
A student observed to her professor: “People used to do things and then post them, and the approval you gained from whatever you were putting out there was a byproduct of the actual activity. Now the anticipated approval is what’s driving the behaviour or the activity, so there’s just sort of been this reversal.”
We capture moments with the hopes that they will generate likes and shares.
A decade ago, we would enjoy a memorable moment and then capture it on our phone to save it for later. Today, we capture a moment with the hopes that our moment will generate likes, shares, and reposts. Yes, I too am guilty as charged. Underlying this contemporary social media reality is an issue of motivation. We choose to share or not to share based on certain motivations. These include the motivation to be:
- Seen
- Heard
- Known
- Affirmed.
And they aren’t necessarily bad things. They speak to our deeply human nature which is intertwined with meaning and purpose, the ultimate search for all who live under the sun. Ultimately, they point forward to a greater desire to be seen, to be heard, to be known, and to be affirmed, by the God who made us.
Motivations for social media use have to do with the concept of capturing memories. But the question which remains is this: is it about capturing memories or enjoying moments? The issue of memory is therefore also important when it comes to social media.
Capturing Memories or Enjoying Moments?
Linked with the above, in his 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, Tony Reinke asks: “What if the point-and-shoot cameras in our phones make us less capable of retaining discrete memories?”
In our itch to share the well-plated food, or perhaps the glass half-full in front of a fading horizon, don’t we lose an opportunity to take in the beauty of the moment? Reinke continues, “If the cameras in our pockets mute our moments into 2-D memories, perhaps the richest memories in life are better ‘captured’ by our full sensory awareness in the moment.”
At the heart of who we are as humans is that we are embodied.
At the heart of who we are as humans is that we are embodied. Living in this reality means that memories are made as we take in God’s beautifully crafted world. I still recall trips where a sunset, the blue horizon of an ocean, or the whistling trees during an off-road adventure are etched in memory. It is that memory that becomes the seed for remembering and celebrating creation and the gift of life.
However, our contemporary itch lessens our capacity for remembering. In the flurry of swiping and open tabs, we are inundated with information without the necessary by-product of processing that information. This boxes us into shallow consumers rather than creative producers.
Towards a More Rewarding Use of Technology
How should we respond? By redeeming our use of social media. I propose two ways.
1. Enjoy God’s Glory in the Everyday Life
While there may be a need to capture a moment to be enjoyed later, we should enjoy God’s glory through the things that are already there. The meals that we eat remind us of a God who provides. The people we hang out with are God’s hands and feet in our lives. The travel escapades remind us of God’s beautiful world.
Soak in the God who gives many good things.
Enjoying these things as they simply are in the present helps us to keep our motivations in the right place. They help us to not only swipe through future memories but to soak in the moment. To soak in the God who gives many good things (James 1:17). They help us to live by faith that God has given us our present moment for his glory and our joy.
2. Participate in Content That Points to Him
Our search for meaning and significance through social media for its own sake never satisfies. It never will. We never consistently get the likes we wished for. We share only the good side of our smiles, hiding our frowns and tears. Social media tends to shy away from the totality of our human experience. Affirmations on our photographs, bleakly reflect the ultimate affirmations we find in our God. The assurances he gives us in his word:
- No one can snatch you from my hand
- I have loved you with an everlasting love
- You are fearfully and wonderfully made
- You are forgiven
- Behold, you are a new creation.
A Call to Something More
To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, if we find in our lives longings that swipes and shares cannot satisfy, it means we were made for something more. We live in a time where digital reality blends with physical reality.
This is an invitation to be consumers and creators of something more.
This post is not a call to go back to some distant past. This call is to celebrate the fact that social media has changed our lives significantly. Social media means that our worlds seamlessly cross with others who are very different from us—geographically, ethnically, spatially and ultimately, spiritually. This means that for the Christian, how we use social media can mirror the ultimate motivations of the one who has submitted to the lordship of Christ. It means we can do more than merely capture moments without recognising the ultimate glory they point to. We were not just made to be social media consumers, but also creatives mirroring God’s good design for the world.
Beyond being competent users of social media, this is an invitation to be consumers and creators of something more.
