In Which I Ponder Social Media

I know I am not alone when I say I have a love/hate relationship with social media.  I love reading other people's stories, I love seeing pictures of friends who are near and far, and I love that twitter allows you to legally stalk  follow famous people you wouldn't otherwise get to meet.  There is a lot of great stuff that goes on in social media from fund-raisers to prayer chains to amazing perspectives on blogs.

But I have been more aware as of late that people also use all of these outlets to judge, criticize, and compare.  Social media has made relationships so one-dimensional, that sometimes if we aren't careful it could cause us to struggle with our real life relationships.  Because in a world where we can "unfriend" or "unfollow" with click of a button, how do we navigate real problems and real conflict?  I've never been good at conflict.  Like ever.  So this idea that I can avoid it by simply clicking a button does not serve me well because it feeds into my flight response to perceived danger (i.e. any conflict whatsoever).  I'm afraid that I can already see a shift in society - in the way we leave jobs, the way we leave spouses, the way we leave churches...and it really saddens me.  In the real world, where relationships are two-sided, it is rarely the loving choice for either party to just "unfriend" a person or job or... 

Then there is the other side of it, the space that is opened up for conflict to become judgment and criticism.  Instead of the flight response, people take up with the fight response, and I have been left with my jaw agape at the comments that people write...to strangers.  Not that ugly words are any better when typed to someone you know, but I can't wrap my mind around the brashness of the way people unload anger, bitterness, and hatred all over the internet.  It's as though they forget that there is a real person behind that profile picture or avatar.  Or maybe they don't.  But there is a real person, with a story. And their story is sacred, just like ours.

Maybe the one that I feel the most burdened over is the comparison.  Why are we wasting away our God-given uniqueness by constantly measuring ourselves against others?  Social media is a great, one-dimensional highlight reel, and if we spend too long lingering there the tendency to compare our multi-dimensional lives to those highlight reels will overcome.  And our real life will lose every time.  Ann Voskamp just spoke at a conference recently, and in her talk she said that any mother knows that a measuring stick picked up will always be used as a weapon - in a 5 year-old boys' hand, it becomes a sword.  In the hands of a woman, when used to measure herself against another woman, it is no less a weapon.  Used as a weapon, it cuts both parties and no one ever really wins.  We were never made to be compared to one another, but to complement one another.

A few months ago, I was reading in Ephesians out of The Message.  There is a lot of good stuff in chapter 4, but the following verse is what caught my attention:

29 Watch the way you talk.  Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth.  Say only what helps, each word is a gift.

Say only what helps.  Each word is a gift.  I already love words, but to think of each word as a gift has taken my reverence for words to an entirely different level.  To think that the words we speak can either help or hurt, give life or destroy, give or steal hope, to encourage or dampen dreams... I've been praying to become a better steward of what I say and type.  Because words are like breaths, we only have so many before our time here is done.  I want to invest mine wisely.  I've been asking for words that breathe life, and not destruction.  I have determined to compliment instead of criticize, complement instead of compare, and love instead of judge to the best of my ability.  And when my best has been done, I pray God gives me strength to persevere.  I'd love for some company, care to join me?