Toxic Wasteland or Relational Necessity? Let’s Chat About Social Media.

Social media use has increased exponentially. In 2024, we will collectively spent 500 million years’ worth of time scrolling on social media (according to a report from GWI). That’s over 720 billion minutes a day, on a planet of only 8 billion people. It’s also referencing social media alone – not counting our time spent streaming shows, gaming, and other forms of digital entertainment.

Mobile phone usage is up 627% since 2020. Research is increasingly sure that all of this has negative effects on mental health, and with young people the biggest users of social media and portable devices, it is understandable to be worried about what this might be doing to them.

One new scary headline every day

Commentary on social media seems to be at full crescendo right now. There’s at least one new headline every day: “US surgeon general seeks tobacco-like warning labels for social media platforms;” ASIO has issued “warnings social media is contributing to far-right extremism;” Social media finds new ways to fuel body-image anxiety in young women; and the ‘Masculinity’ space for young men is dominated by harmful online influencers. Those headlines are dated to just the four days preceding the release of this article – and all from only one news organisation. Not to mention the TWO new scandals that erupted in Australian schools this week with the way male students are using online tools and social media to degrade and sexualise their female peers.

Add to that: the Australian Government currently testing tech that could ban all social media for those under the age of 16; the books, journal articles and documentaries starting to chart its negative impact on mental health; fake news, deep fakes, and bots designed to spiral online conversations out of control; and the way social media companies collect and weaponise our data. The conversation is swirling all around us – perhaps it’s time the church enters the muck.

Watch this space

Over the next few months, I will be releasing a series of articles alongside the Synod Pulse team, attempting to hold a measured conversation about social media. I’ll interview Pulse, hear from parents, chat with some young people, and engage with mental health professionals in the hopes of hearing from the diversity of opinion that exists and contributing a faithful response to the current conversation. One burning question I’d love to explore, apart from the obvious ones about how we engage with social media, is how does our understanding of God fit in this conversation?

As we get things started, I must declare my bias. I am a self-confessed social media avoider. My Facebook account has been inactive since late 2020, my Instagram since 2022. I lasted all of about 2 weeks each on Snapchat and TikTok before deleting them, don’t think I’ve ever made more than about 5 tweets in my life and various attempts on other platforms have never lasted long. That said, I wasn’t always an avoider. I once had (what I considered to be) a large following on both Facebook and Instagram that I was incredibly proud of. My carefully curated online presence was as big a part of how I presented myself to the world as my avoidance of social media is now. These days I have no social media apps on my devices but still utilise messenger, check my Instagram once a fortnight or so as there are some friends that I have no other way of contacting, and jump on Reddit from time to time usually for hiking gear or location recommendations. LinkedIn seems to be the only one that has lasted the test of time (how boring!). Oh, and I can wax eloquent on ALL of the justifications for leaving social media behind! Not least of all the negative ways it was starting to impact my own life.

So, bias declared, I am also acutely aware of the difference between myself and the current dialogue around whether we ought to blanket ban teenagers from the social media world. I had autonomy to make that choice. I chose, of my own volition, to read multiple books (I highly recommend Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier), countless articles, and watch several documentaries (not least of all The Social Dilemma on Netflix) that informed my ultimate choice to step away. What I didn’t fully consider at the time, is removing something that has been such a large part of how you engage with the world is rough.

Research suggests...

Research suggests that social media is contributing to peoples sense of loneliness and anxiety, but there is also both a loneliness and an anxiety linked to not being on it when everyone else is. This is not a one-sided issue, and to say that it only brought bad things into my life would be lying. Social media created opportunities for me to interact with peers in different ways, stay connected with people I wasn’t seeing everyday, share and celebrate life highlights with my community, and through many of the spiritual accounts I followed - to grow in my faith. It was not as simple as ‘social media bad,’ ‘life without it good.’ I eventually decided that on a balance of things, for me, personally, the best decision was to leave.

What we are potentially requiring of young people today, is to give up the number one way of engaging with their peers and the world that they know. To do that, without a say in the matter, or the opportunity to be meaningfully educated as to why. Besides, do we think that at the age of 16 they will be magically mature enough to have a positive relationship with social media?

I was 27 when I decided enough was enough, and the way many people much older than that engage with social media would suggest that this is a problem whose roots go far beyond its impact on young people. What the policy arena is not addressing is the fact that research points to the way all people engage with social media is leading to a decline in mental health. The manipulation of social media has arguably changed the course of two MAJOR political events (Brexit, and Trumps first election) and only looks set to get worse as time goes on. The effects are not felt by young people in isolation.

What next...

Are specific people, or age groups, or personalities really the problem here? Or do the social media companies themselves need to be fundamentally changed? If so, what do we do in the meantime for the decade or two it takes for research, social policy, and corporate interests to align with what is in our collective best interest?

A much larger conversation is warranted. One that looks across the generations and experiences of how we choose to exist online. One that seeks to emphasise the positive potential of the technology we have at hand, while minimising its downsides. One that allows us to be honest about the phone in our own hand, before or instead of condemning the phone we see in the hands of a young person. Perhaps charting a path forward is work we can do together. I don’t know. Is social media a toxic wasteland or a relational necessity? You tell me!

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We’d love to include your thoughts, reactions, and responses to this topic in the articles to come. Feel free to reach out to davidto@nswact.uca.org.au.

A much larger conversation is warranted... One that allows us to be honest about the phone in our own hand, before or instead of condemning the phone we see in the hands of a young person. Perhaps charting a path forward is work we can do together.