[00:00:00] You.
[00:00:01] Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m.. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected]. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our sermons podcast, madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you if you're with us for the very first time. We are kind of in the middle of a conversation here on Wednesday nights. The topic or the title of our class is Analog Faith in Digital Babylon. There's two seats right up front, right next to me. Little bit of a splash zone. Sorry about that.
[00:00:56] But we were talking Analog Faith and Digital Babylon, so we've taken a look at several different topics to lead up to tonight. We began our discussion looking at a study of different generations from the Silent Generation Boomers, gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. These are the most prominent generations that are currently alive and currently a part of our culture and society. And we've looked at some of the trends of those generations we moved into, how our devices are shaping us, informing us spiritually. And that is really, I would say, the crux of what this particular study is all about.
[00:01:34] Party of two right here. Got you. Non smoking.
[00:01:39] All right, good. We know the demographics. Half of the class understood that reference. It's exciting.
[00:01:45] One, party of one. Got you. So you're not sitting with her.
[00:01:49] If you need a ride home, which you do now, let me know. Yeah, right over here. Right over here. Party of two. Two, right here. Two. Two right here. Here we go. Perfect.
[00:01:59] Those of you that are online, I'm sorry, there's certain things that you can't quite get the scope of here, but Jim Brody was trying to have his wife sit way over there while he stayed way over there.
[00:02:08] Sorry, I wasn't going to use names. His initials are Jim Brody.
[00:02:12] Tonight we're talking specifically about social media, which is just a real fun phrase that gets used all the time now and used and abused, and everybody typically has some visceral reaction to the idea of social media.
[00:02:27] I got a question to kind of start us out to begin with. Whoops. That's not it. Man had cool animations.
[00:02:34] What is something positive? What kind of a positive connection do you have with social media?
[00:02:42] Not all at once. Connections. Connections. I'm a social media manager, so it pays. Okay. You might be offended tonight. No, I'm just kidding. Social media manager. That's all. It pays the bills. I like it.
[00:02:56] Staying up to date? Yes, ma'am.
[00:03:01] That's exciting. 50th class reunion. Class reunions are things that were held typically in the past when groups would get together. Just kidding. I do feel like they're less common today. They're less common because younger generations keep up with each other, the people they want to keep up with online. Right. So that's kind of an interesting observation I've made over the last few weeks. What else? What's another positive of social media?
[00:03:26] Job searches. You can find jobs much more easily. Right. Online. Very good. Persuading others about politics. Persuading others about politics. You can leave, sir.
[00:03:38] Just kidding. You're feisty. It'll be fun. Stay. That's right. Politics. That's also an option for the use of social media. Election year coming up. It's going to be great.
[00:03:49] There are some other things that also are consequences, maybe collateral damage of social media. How would you define social media?
[00:04:00] What is the definition of social media?
[00:04:05] Necessary evil. All right.
[00:04:09] Devil's playhouse. I'm getting some. Really strong again. This is a safe place for you. All right? We love social media managers. This is not going to be an attack on purpose. Yes, sir.
[00:04:22] Try to control your mind and your actions. Your tinfoil hat is by the door. Tom.
[00:04:29] A communication tool. Okay. These are platforms, digital platforms that connect people and groups. Right. They allow us to post ideas, images, videos, quotes, articles.
[00:04:42] They are a tool. And we've talked specifically about how technology is by definition a tool. One of the things that we made mention of in the very beginning was the idea of the rise of the modern self. And there's a book by a gentleman by the name of Carl Truman who has recently published a book talking about the rise of the modern self. And he's looked at the last 100 years of philosophies and thoughts and different events that have really brought together the place where we are today, that self is the center of really all things. It is the center of government. There's a gentleman that was wrote back in the 1930s, should have written his name down, starts with an R. You can look it up. But he basically took the thoughts of Karl Marx and the thoughts of Sigmund Freud, and he put those together, which is weird, right? Freud said the center of all things is self, specifically the sex side of our humanity, that sex rules all things. Marx says government should be the center of all things. And what this guy did is he kind of put these philosophies together and says that the goal of modern society is specifically for the government to determine self as the center of all things. And as you look over since 1930, roughly over the last 100 years, you see that governments have moved that direction, specifically our country. You see that social platforms are moving in that direction, that sexuality is center to everything. That government's connection to sexuality is also center to society.
[00:06:22] Social media comes on the scene, specifically 2012 ish is when the majority of young people had access to social media from a cell phone.
[00:06:32] The iPhone four, I think, was the first phone to come out that had a rear facing camera. That was the introduction of truly the selfie. Right before then you had the kodak click, and then you had to click, click, rewind it, and click. Just wasn't the same thing. You didn't get real time feedback of what you looked like when you looked into the little rectangular mirror. But that's what happened is our phones became mirrors. About that same time is when young people, the younger emerging generations, have access to social media. Facebook came out to the masses. My experience was in 2006, it was thefacebook.com and you had to have a email address in order to be on it. Refer to that as the good old days. All right? And I watched it as it grew on our campus, and I didn't realize it at the time, but that was a pivotal moment in life. It was a moment that changes things. Gene Twinge wrote the book Generations and specifically introduced this new concept of what divides generations is not just world events like floods, like natural disasters, like world wars, but also, and more directly, technology.
[00:07:36] We are trying to think deeper on how technology forms and shapes us spiritually.
[00:07:42] Specifically, social media is a huge factor in the spiritual formation of our society, but in particular younger generations, the emerging generations. Gen Z I'll ask for a show of hands, but Gen Z in particular is the first generation that grew up not with internet access all the time, but social media access all the time from the age of development into their emerging adulthood.
[00:08:10] There is a significant difference to a person that grew up with Twitter being their main source. Gen Z doesn't like twitter, with snapchat and TikTok being their main source of information, and someone who grew up with Walter Cronkite being their main source of information.
[00:08:26] We began this study looking at generations so that we can better understand each other, we can better understand what causes each other to tick.
[00:08:36] With the rise of selfie came a graph chart that is impossible to read past the second row. So I'll explain it for you. This shows social media usage by different age brackets.
[00:08:48] The darkest line on the very top is 18 to 29 year olds, significantly higher than the bottom blue, which is 65 and older.
[00:08:58] Since 2005, as social media came on the scene to 2021, there has been a consistent disparity between those two age brackets, and everybody in between falls somewhere in between the 30 to 49 year olds. That's more of your millennial crowd.
[00:09:14] We came along. There was a dip amongst these three categories. So the 30 to 49 year old, 50 to 64 year old and 65. And plus, right around 2007 ish 2008 ish probably no, probably 2006 or seven. But then the projection of the millennials is very similar to more of the Gen Z. There a few more facts. Nearly all teens in 2022 have access to a smartphone, which is up from 73% in 2014 and 2015.
[00:09:47] It's above 95% today.
[00:09:52] And teens in this case refer to 13 to 17 year olds. 95% desktop, laptop. So more children have access to a smartphone than they do a laptop or a gaming console.
[00:10:06] About one in five teens visit or use YouTube almost constantly. Quick show of hands. Before you go to Lowe's or Home Depot to buy something, you go to YouTube first. Quick show of hands.
[00:10:19] All right, so about half of the class is lying because we should all go there, right? But go to YouTube. It is the second largest search engine on the planet, second only to Google, who owns YouTube. So it's the same. 95%. Ever use that app almost constantly? Visit or use this app. 19%. TikTok is 16, 10, 15 Snapchat. So these, again, 13 to 17 year olds are the ages.
[00:10:50] 67%. Ever use TikTok of 13 to 17 year olds. Instagram is down at 62%, snapchat at 59% and Facebook at 32%. If you are a millennial, a Gen Xer or a sorry, not greatest silent quick show of hands. Do you have a Facebook account and actively use it? By actively, I mean once a week or more or on Facebook.
[00:11:16] Raise them high. It's okay, this is a safe place.
[00:11:19] All right, hands down. Do it. All right. If you are Gen Z, quick show of hands. If you have you are on Facebook once or more a week.
[00:11:31] Okay.
[00:11:33] Sorry, that was really loud in the microphone, wasn't it? Was even louder in my head.
[00:11:38] About a quarter of us adults under 30 now regularly get news on TikTok quick. I saw several queers.
[00:11:47] It was like synchronized aghast.
[00:11:51] If you get news on TikTok, or you grew up getting news from Walter Cronkite, how are those two different?
[00:12:03] Trusted source of truth?
[00:12:08] Said the old soul. Yes, sir. It was a trusted source of truth, which implies that TikTok the joke is there is no category seven hurricane. Right?
[00:12:27] The world is different.
[00:12:29] We began the study by saying that we aren't all that different. And I do think that the perceived age gap oftentimes is a tool used by the devil. These kinds of things do separate us and how we receive information, how we process information, and how we relate to the world around us, all of us in this room. And there is a large gathering tonight, and what I love most about it is that we've got as young as single digits and as old as used to be single digits a long time ago.
[00:12:58] We are one in the body of Christ.
[00:13:02] We don't often read Scripture from a generation's point of view, but I would challenge you to do so whenever you read Jew or Greek, slave or Free, think in terms also of boomer, z, millennial silent, because the truth is there, and the truth is the same. As members of the body of Christ, we are in need of each other. This one I just thought was very interesting. It took Google Translate. I don't know why they chose UBS and Yahoo Finance chose Google Translate, but Uber took him 70 months to get to 100 million global monthly active users. Spotify took him 55. Instagram, 30. TikTok, nine months. Chat GBT, two months, 60 days.
[00:13:45] I just thought it was interesting. That's the only reason that's there we are what we perceive. And I know it's kind of difficult to see in this particular one, but up here in the top, there's a dark square, and then down here there's A and B. Quick show of hands. Who thinks that square A is darker than square B?
[00:14:03] I'll give you a chance to look at it again. A is right over there. B is in the shadow.
[00:14:09] All right? A Square A is darker. Hands up a little more than half, maybe. All right? So that means everybody thinks that square B is lighter. No, maybe not.
[00:14:24] Perception is very important because this illustration shows that your brain is trained to think certain ways.
[00:14:34] When you see that image, you can see that there is a shadow being cast, and it looks like it's lighter.
[00:14:43] You can see that that's a dark square up top. But when you put lines next to both of them, you see that they end up being the same shade.
[00:14:53] Our minds are very powerful, and our minds are always trying to create shortcuts in what we see and experience. And social media platforms have become genius at rewiring that. Here's a quote recently from our US. Surgeon General children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health cris, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that cris, one that we must urgently address on the HHS Gov website. There's the full PDF document of what the Surgeon General has recently issued. This was back, I believe, in May of this year. As of 2021, eigth and 10th graders now spend an average of three and a half hours per day on social media in a unique natural experiment that leveraged the staggered introduction of social media platforms across US. Colleges. The rollout of the platform was associated with an increase in depression 9% over baseline, and anxiety 12% over baseline among college age youth. And this was approximately 360,000 youth across college campuses. The study's coauthor also noted that when applied across the entirety of the US college population, the introduction of social media platform may have contributed to more than 300,000 new cases of depression. 360,000 were a part of the study. Nearly 300,000 most likely may have contributed to new cases. 300,000 new cases of depression. Limits on the use of social media have resulted in mental health benefits for young adults and adults. A small, randomized controlled trial in college age youth found that limiting social media used to 30 minutes daily over three weeks led to significant improvements in depression severity.
[00:16:44] I feel like we are at a place where in the late eighty s and early 90s, this feels kind of familiar to that. Granted, I was five, but it still feels familiar. If you remember, in the early to mid 90s in particular, there was a really big ads movement to talk about the dangers of big tobacco, right? There were a series of clever ads, and we've referenced this before in this class. We had documentation going back to 1964 where one of the original US. Surgeon Generals said, hey, these cigarettes might be dangerous. Tobacco products may be dangerous for us. The 90s culture decided, okay, we're going to get aggressive here.
[00:17:22] We're just now getting data that says, hey, actually social media is pretty dangerous for our young people in particular.
[00:17:31] We're a generation and a half into social media.
[00:17:36] If we wait for legislation to put in the guardrails for our emerging generations in the church, we are always going to be at least a generation behind.
[00:17:47] Because you don't have data until you have negative data, right?
[00:17:52] Until you have experience. For a long time, as Christians, it is our role, and as those of you that are in this room, that are older Christians, that have been Christians for a long time, it is your role to mentor and to take time and to teach younger Christians how to think and see spiritually in this life.
[00:18:10] Because the things that are a part of our culture, our society from a civic standpoint, our city, our state, our nation, they're not designed for our souls.
[00:18:23] We are a part now of an attention economy.
[00:18:27] Tristan Harris is one of the guys that put together documentary The Social Dilemma. If you have not seen it, I would encourage you to gain access to that on Netflix somehow and legally gain access and watch that. It's very eye opening. There's a lot of information there. One of the things that is driven home over and over again is that technology, specifically social media, is not neutral.
[00:18:49] It is designed with a purpose in mind, and therefore it's not neutral.
[00:18:54] If we as parents are passive in our parenting, we will not have success. If we as Christians are passive in our faith, we will not have success in growing and cultivating a deep, resilient faith in Christ. We will not become like Jesus. Passively.
[00:19:11] We can do, and we have to do hard things. If the Surgeon General is saying warning, warning, warning, we really need to be on alert. I ran across this quote recently. We are not who we think we are. We are not even who others think we are. We are who we think others think we are. It's a lot of words there. We are what we think other people think we are, because that typically determines what we do, how we talk.
[00:19:45] I am not an antisocial media guy. My title is Media Outreach Minister. So you're among good people.
[00:19:52] I love my job, and I don't want to lose it. And I hope this study will not bring that about. But I do hope that we will consider the dangers, and not just the dangers of physical harm and mental and emotional harm, but spiritual formation, the spiritual harm that can come when we place our children in the middle of Times Square unchaperoned, in the middle of Beijing, unchaperoned, because social media brings that situation into reality. At what age are you comfortable having your child roam about in the middle of Rome, Italy, by themselves?
[00:20:31] These devices? We've talked about this idea as well, this idea of a silicone relationship, an artificial relationship.
[00:20:40] Emerging generations have grown up with devices in their hands constantly.
[00:20:46] When they wake up, when they lie down, when they walk by their doorpost.
[00:20:54] What does Scripture say should be present when they wake up, when they lie down? Write it on their doorpost.
[00:21:04] Deuteronomy says the word of God devices can be fantastic. I can access more commentaries on my phone today than entire college university libraries have in their halls. It's remarkable.
[00:21:20] We can have connection to a million people globally, and yet we can still sit in our room in complete and utter isolation. In fact, that's what the studies are telling us now is that we've never been more connected. We've never had more ways of connection globally. We've never been more isolated and lonely and depressed and anxious.
[00:21:43] Read you a few more stats, and then we'll get into our Bible study portion here.
[00:21:49] Pardon me.
[00:21:51] The number of teens and young adults with clinical level depression more than doubled between 2011 and 2021. And this is the rate of clinical level depression is nearly twice as high for girls than it is for boys.
[00:22:07] These trends can be looked at as something that is not necessarily measurable by real data. Some people have kind of criticized those numbers, and this was a national survey on drug use and health saying that that was just kind of a sign of time. Not necessarily. Each generation did that, but it wasn't a measurable. These were self reporting, so they're not really reliable stats. But what is reliable is that the trends are also measurable in self harm behaviors and suicide attempts that are reported at local hospitals. More teen and preteen girls have been admitted to the emergency room after deliberately harming themselves, especially among girls ten to 14. In that same period of time, those numbers quadrupled.
[00:22:48] That's a measurable stat, and it trends with the first stat.
[00:22:54] There was a Wall Street Journal article in December 2022 said, by 2020, more than 25% of female teenagers had a major depression. The comparable number for boys was just under 9%. The comparable numbers for millennials at the same age registered at half the gen z rate, about 13% for girls and 5% for boys. Kids are on their devices all the time. The author says here, boys thrive if they have a group of boys competing against another group of boys. So boys are on video game consoles. Girls are on platforms that are measuring themselves. So that's his reconciling the disparity there in the numbers. Most girls, by contrast, are drawn to visual platforms, instagram TikTok in particular. Those are about display and performance. You post your perfect life, then you flip through the photos of other girls who have a more perfect life, and you feel depressed.
[00:23:40] It seems to make sense. I was in youth ministry for ten years, and the stereotypes of the male and female there are generally pretty consistent.
[00:23:50] These stats are nothing more than symptoms, and they show us that in our churches, in our communities, in our country, we are in the midst of a very serious pandemic and has nothing to do with COVID In the coming weeks, we're going to talk about the pervasiveness of pornography and specifically how social media has become kind of a bridge for that.
[00:24:15] But tonight, I want you to consider how you relate to social media and then think about the people in your life. If you have kids, that's probably the first group that comes to mind. If you don't have kids, you do have friends and coworkers, and you do have brothers and sisters in Christ here that you worship with that are struggling.
[00:24:34] One way to leverage social media in a great way is that oftentimes people feel more comfortable to speak online, more so than they do in person.
[00:24:42] There are approximately 160 people in this room right now. That's how many chairs were put in.
[00:24:49] I guarantee you there are at least a few people that are surrounded by 159 other folks. But right now, they feel completely alone in this building.
[00:25:01] Loneliness and isolation is not new, and it's not novel to social media. What social media has done is become an amplifier. It's become a megaphone for everything.
[00:25:12] Growing up, you would walk through the grocery line and you would see on the racks celebrities, and you knew they were celebrities because they were on the magazine, because those were the images that anybody else could see. When social media came along, and I got to put my picture online for anybody else to see. I stepped into this realm of celebrityism on a very small scale. Doesn't matter how many followers I have. I am now in this realm of vulnerability, of transparency.
[00:25:43] I am now in this river that could sweep me up and take me down the road of vanity.
[00:25:48] You know what we call vanity today in our language? Narcissism.
[00:25:54] Vanity is a Bible word, right? I don't hear it very often outside of like Vanity Fair, which is kind of ironic. It's like American Idol. Not judging you. I'll let the Lord do that. But when it comes to narcissism, we know that we can identify that. We see that in our politicians, we see that in our celebrities, we see that in these followers.
[00:26:14] Have we trained the next generation to identify narcissism and biblical vanity?
[00:26:22] It's a good and bad, but the bad is really, really bad.
[00:26:26] And it's so pervasive now in so many ways. It's really, really subtle.
[00:26:31] As Christians, we are to become wise in how we live this life and how we leverage technology, how we leverage the blessings or the tools that could be there. This was a quote that was mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Sonny, do you mind if I quote you in class tonight? Thank you. I did try to call.
[00:26:49] We were talking about phones and devices and Sonny said, for me, being on my phone is entertainment, but for my daughter, it's her life.
[00:27:01] This is what we see in those symptoms, all of the data.
[00:27:06] There are three main questions that every person tries to answer while they are in adolescence. Who am I? Where do I belong and why do I matter?
[00:27:17] Who am I?
[00:27:19] Identity.
[00:27:21] Where do I belong? Community. And why do I matter? Purpose.
[00:27:29] When you drop your child off in the middle of Times Square by themselves as an eight, a ten, a twelve, or even a 16 year old, are they probably equipped for survival for a long period of time?
[00:27:47] Most likely not.
[00:27:49] There are a lot of dangers physical, emotional, spiritual.
[00:27:56] They probably haven't developed the discernment to know exactly what's going on around them in their environment. So most likely we don't just drop them off and say, I'll see you later.
[00:28:08] We've talked about dopamine in this class and what happens to the brain when you do something that is fun or invigorating. Dopamine is released something that's exciting, it may even be dangerous. And it forms a neuropathway in your brain when you get a notification, that little red number on your phone, a little bit of dopamine. OOH, what is it?
[00:28:31] Right when you go home and you go to your mailbox and you open it up and it's garbage, garbage. Bills, bills.
[00:28:40] A handwritten envelope from a human and you open it up, oh, vote for me. Never mind. Right.
[00:28:48] Dopamine is involved.
[00:28:52] Social media has leveraged brain activity for the betterment of social media platforms, for the betterment of influence and power. And sometimes those things align with us and our values, and sometimes they align with the things that we're wanting. Sometimes we do just want to be entertained. But if you've been raised with this dopamine fix, but you're not necessarily in a place in life where you can discern exactly what's going on, then you are no longer in control.
[00:29:27] Other forces around us are weighing a heavy influence on us. And this is not just in political cycles. This is in every aspect of life.
[00:29:38] I grew up in high school being able to go to the internet to answer some of the questions to life. Right?
[00:29:47] The Internet is not always the best place to go. Remember the commercials? I heard it where'd you hear it on the internet. Okay, right. It must be true, but we know it's not true. It's just the really big loud voice that everybody gets to contribute to. But I also had ten to 15 years with more analog living. My children will not have that. My children will know to go to Chat GPT, whatever number it'll be by then. Chat GPT-3 and a half was pretty good. Chat GPT four passed the bar exam.
[00:30:14] Are you kidding me? I have a cousin that studied for three years to pass the bar exam.
[00:30:20] Chechi BT four did it instantly. Essentially. It's a great place to go for some really cool things.
[00:30:27] But if our children are cultivating a relationship with their devices and they're going to these places to find truth and they're allowing technology to form what a relationship is, we're in trouble.
[00:30:43] God created us for community.
[00:30:46] God created us to be in each other's lives. When you go through the Book of Acts, what do you see? You see people sacrificing for other people. You see people changing their life for other people and for the cause of Christ. You see 3000 people in one day dying to self, going back to their homes and doing the exact same thing, telling other people about it.
[00:31:06] If we don't have that kind of community here in the existence of God's Church, then our children in particular are going to find it somewhere.
[00:31:15] We cannot allow this place to be a place where people gather and are still alone. That is unacceptable. That is antichrist. It is anti his mission. It is anti what he did to come here to serve.
[00:31:29] It is not what we are about.
[00:31:32] So a few verses here that talk about the idea of identity. Galatians, chapter 326 through 28. You are all God's children by believing in Christ Jesus. Clearly all of you who were baptized in Christ's name have clothed yourselves with Christ. There are neither Jews nor Greeks, slaves nor free people, males nor females. You are all the same in Christ Jesus. Paul would say in this same letter I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, in the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith and the Son of God who loved me and gave himself. For me. For me. It's not just a song that you might have learned as a child. It scripture holy inspired truth.
[00:32:11] Emerging generations are struggling mightily with two things identity and identifying truth.
[00:32:20] How would you answer this question? What does it mean to be an image bearer of God?
[00:32:33] You made eye contact and you were whispering. Yes. You got lucky.
[00:32:39] I've said many times, we call ourselves Christians, so therefore people should see Christ in us.
[00:32:46] Therefore we should bear his image through our life and reflect him in.
[00:32:51] Say that first part. I'm sorry. We call ourselves Christians, so therefore others should see Christ in us by how we live our lives. Okay? Others should see Christ in us by how we live. What else?
[00:33:07] What does it mean to be an image bearer?
[00:33:14] To be a spokesperson? To be a spokesperson. Somebody who I'm sorry, striving to do God's will?
[00:33:23] All right, keep thinking our next verse, two Corinthians 517. Same author. Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.
[00:33:36] As a Christian, I am not who I once was.
[00:33:40] I am not, in fact, he sorry. It was funny to me. I am now new. What's new about a converted person?
[00:33:52] Everything. What a beautiful answer.
[00:33:56] They are new every morning, right?
[00:34:00] How we view ourself is very important.
[00:34:03] And those of you that are older generations, you grew up in a different time of analog at a really important time of life. Adolescence, childhood and adolescence. There is so much that goes into how our brains function and process life at that stage that determines all of the other things. It's how we filter things. It's how we think about things. It's how we talk about things. It's how we relate to people, how we don't relate to people.
[00:34:33] When it comes to social media in particular, who has access to your profile?
[00:34:41] Everybody. If you're set to public. Right. There are some restrictions you can do to kind of lock it down, to keep it to where I want it to be. An online family album. Or as I saw it in college, it was an online yearbook where I got to see a bunch of people that I hadn't seen in years. Right? And now that I've seen it, I don't have to go to the reunion because I saw what I didn't want to go see. Right?
[00:35:03] There's some of that, but we also have access. So let's be a little bit more specific with Facebook. That's the vast majority of the people in this room probably have some access or some experience with Facebook. With Facebook. That's what I used to call it. It was an online yearbook. You got to keep up with people. You could post pictures back in the day, it would say Jason Is, and then you'd fill in the blank. But now you just write whatever you want, which is fine, but I remember the old days instagram. What's? Instagram.
[00:35:32] What's that?
[00:35:35] I don't know.
[00:35:36] You don't have an account. Quit bragging. Instagram is a social media platform that is predominantly it started out as only photographs and a little caption, and you couldn't put links in the caption. You still really irritating. You can tag people. But now it's also got a lot of video.
[00:35:52] What? You'll see trends in most of social media platforms right now. Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, everybody's trying to keep up with the next one. Right? So TikTok came on the scene and really Snapchat started it. Vertical video.
[00:36:05] Snapchat promised that you can post an image or a video and it'll disappear within a certain amount of time. And anonymity was a really big factor that was leveraged in the success of Snapchat became the main way of communication for a lot of our teenagers, particularly towards the end of my youth ministry time, it was the vast majority of our youth were communicating through Snapchat. TikTok came on the scene. TikTok used to be vine, where you could record yourself doing lip syncing. A music video. I used Millie Vanilli last week, should have been this week, because they were ahead of their times, because they lied a lot. But on TikTok you can make a video and it's a short video now they can be longer and they just keep growing. Keep scrolling, keep scrolling. There's an infinite scroll to all of these, where as you scroll, there's more. And you scroll and there's more, and you scroll and there's more. So whatever platform you're on, the spiritual formation dangers are there. Infinite is not eternal.
[00:37:03] The fact that there's an infinite scroll of content does not cultivate eternal habits in our hearts.
[00:37:11] Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence. Jesus didn't come and teach a new moral ethic, a new way to be good. He came teaching a different way of life.
[00:37:23] Should we shun all technology?
[00:37:27] I really like lights. Huge fan of indoor plumbing, HVAC systems. No, I'm not for shunning all technology. However, it is possible. If you don't believe me, let's just go. About an hour and a half north, just across the Tennessee line, there's a community of people that live in houses they built with their hands, barns they built by hands, carriages drawn by horses. It is possible, and so I say that to say that we get to choose the life we live.
[00:37:53] We're in far more control than we think. We're in as much control as we allow.
[00:38:00] Being wise and understanding our identity impacts how we use technology. Genesis, chapter one, verse 26 and 27. Then God said, let us make humans in our image, in our likeness. Let them rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the domestic animals all over the earth. And all the animals that crawl on the earth. So God created humans in his image.
[00:38:21] In the image of God. He created them. He created them. Male and female social media has a tendency to create celebrity perspective.
[00:38:33] And what I mean by that is when I would see those people on the magazines, in the checkout aisle, at the grocery store, they were not personal to me. I wanted to be like Mike, just like the Gatorade commercial and the Nike commercials. I wanted to dunk like Michael Jordan, not happen, right? But I tried and I took it and I scaled it down in my room and I recreated all the moves. I wanted to be like someone else. I wanted to walk and talk like them. I wanted to wear the same clothes as them.
[00:39:04] God created humans in his image.
[00:39:08] It's natural for a child in particular to want to be like something. When celebrity then came in my home and in my life personally with social media, it changes things. When you spend your time or when the people around you spend their time staring at these phones, what has your attention, has your heart, right? So let's call that idolatry. And you want to be like them to the point where it goes beyond acknowledging someone is attractive or acknowledging that someone is interesting, but you want to be like them.
[00:39:38] There's a spiritual gray area. I don't know where that line is. And really, in my heart, I don't know where it is in your heart. I know that we need to be mindful of it when we covet something. We talked about this last week with regards to Amazon and the ease of access of stuff when we covet. Paul says covetousness is idolatry. These devices so easily become idols in our life and the people that present themselves specifically on social media. It could be anybody. It could be us, it could be other people that we follow. We have to learn to discern what is it cultivating in our hearts and the identity of our children when we're trying to tell them, you need to be like God. We need to be you're, an image bearer of Christ, an image bearer of God himself. Genesis one says, he created us in his image. And a child says, I don't know much about that, but I want to be like this real. I want to be like this pote. I want to be like this influencer. I want to be like this creator.
[00:40:34] We have got to show emerging generations that being like God is fulfilling. It is joyful. It is who we were designed to become like.
[00:40:47] Christ came so that we may have life in Him. He came that we may have life in abundance. Not an abundance of things in this life. Ephesians chapter 219 through 22. That is why you are no longer foreigners and outsiders, but citizens together with God's people and members of God's family. You are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone. In Him, all the parts of the building fit together and grow into a holy temple in the Lord. Through Him, you also are being built in the Spirit together with others into a place where God lives.
[00:41:17] Probably not going to get to that when emerging generations are formed and shaped specifically to not know their identity or to show them an identity that is not Christ, we're in trouble.
[00:41:37] The reason I am adamantly opposed to our young people having access to social media at any early age, and I go into the teens, and this is Jason's commentary. So if you want to really get into it afterwards, holler at me and I'll tell you exactly where I stand on it. But I just don't think that the risk reward is there. The risk is really guaranteed.
[00:42:02] The reward.
[00:42:05] The challenge is showing that this tangible analog life, so to speak, can have just as much fulfillment.
[00:42:14] Because you're not chasing dopamine. They don't realize it. They're chasing dopamine with notifications. They're chasing these other chemical reactions in their brain. They're not actually chasing substance. It does connect us because we can observe a lot, but it also allows us to be only observers and only consumers. That may not be you. And if not, that's great. If this is not your challenge in life, that is wonderful. You need to know that it is the challenge of an entire generation, though.
[00:42:42] The dark triad, anxiety, depression, and suicide ideation, which is the thinking of suicide.
[00:42:49] Go to any hospital. In fact, go find a teacher, specifically a middle school teacher.
[00:42:56] One of my daughter's teammates last year, her mom was a vice principal of one of our local middle schools, and she said they're actively trying to get all of the tablets out of their school because anger has never been greater. Every single practice I talked to her, she had broken up a fight and had at least two parent conferences that day. Every week. This went on for, like, two or three months.
[00:43:19] They're trying to get devices out because kids are not only on the technology part of the education part of technology.
[00:43:28] The reward is just much smaller than the risk at this point, because as Christians, we think in terms of spirituality first. Paul says we take every thought captive for the obedience of Christ.
[00:43:42] But with our devices at the center point of our life, we're showing the next generation that it's okay for something else to control you, to influence you in your decision making, in how you relate to people.
[00:43:56] To be lonely and isolated again is not nothing new. It's probably the case in this room right now.
[00:44:02] Let's commit to changing that on every level of our life. In your home, on your pew, in your classroom, in your connect group, at your workstation, in your office, on your team at your kids school. You know who needs your support?
[00:44:24] Teachers.
[00:44:27] Find a teacher to show love.
[00:44:29] Find someone to pray with that awkward tension in the elevator. Hey, how's it going? What do we do?
[00:44:36] Because if I'm occupied, then I don't actually have to engage with somebody. I get it. It's super easy. It's way more comfortable. It's just not the way we were called to live.
[00:44:47] We driven with our heads up so we can identify opportunity. When you do scroll on Facebook, you're there for a purpose.
[00:44:54] It's not just mindless entertainment for hours on end.
[00:44:58] It's to seek and save the lost. It is to show christ. It is to be informed of the things around us.
[00:45:07] But we keep it in check and we put it in its place. We don't allow it to rule us. We don't allow it to make us into something that we are not called to be. It does not create an idolater out of us. It is a tool for us to be more effective for God.
[00:45:25] I know that this one wasn't a lot of dialogue. Now we are probably we'll see. We're going to be getting into specifically pornography and sexual holiness next week. We're going to get into see how social media is a part of this. But technology, in particular our devices, has created a generation or two of sexually broken people of sexual dysfunction.
[00:45:52] And it's not outside the church. It's here as well. It's all around us. And we've allowed these things to happen. It's a very serious topic. So if you have children, you might not want to let them watch online. With this one, we'll be talking with some fairly transparent adult language and some adult topics next week, probably the next couple of weeks. So I'll probably see you in three weeks then. All right. Love you guys very much. Have a great right and we will snore willing. See you next Sunday.
[00:46:20] Bye.
