Redeeming Social Media
The word ‘redemption’ carries tones of rescue and recovery, but also of renewal and repurposing. When we talk about redeeming social media, we recognize its great potential for drawing people together and its tendency to isolate and divide us instead. How then do we create social media in ways that promote flourishing rather than conflict? How do we engage personally with social media without becoming addicted or devoted to it in an idolatrous manner? And what wisdom does Scripture offer to us?
To discuss these questions, we met with Professor Felicia Wu Song, author Michael Sacasas, and Google engineer Nick Kim. We were excited to gather a panel that consisted of both theorists and practitioners in the hope of offering a more holistic and wide-ranging set of perspectives on the issues at hand.
Our conversation got going when Nick acknowledged that social media platforms have amplified rifts and divisions in our societies but warned against misattributing the divisions themselves specifically to social media. Attempting to find a solution by banning or simply personally avoiding social media entirely would be to misunderstand the nature of these more universal human problems. Moreover, Felicia and Michael recognized that social media’s effects on loneliness and other measures of well-being extend even to non-users. All of the panelists advocated for some degree of limitation or restraint towards social media use, which led into a conversation about the practice of the sabbath and what its role might be in our digital age.
If you missed this conversation, we hope you’ll enjoy the recording above. Here’s some more about our speakers:
Felicia Wu Song is a sociologist who studies the social and cultural effects of digital technologies on community and identity in contemporary life. Trained in history, communication studies, and sociology from Yale, Northwestern and University of Virginia, she is professor of sociology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. She is author of a new book, "Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age (Intervarsity Press Academic). Her prior research includes her first book, "Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together (2009) which explored the democratic efficacy of online communities, and other studies on expectant women's online information-seeking habits and the evolution of "mommy bloggers".
Michael Sacasas is the associate director of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville and the author of The Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology, culture, and the moral life. His work has appeared in The New Atlantis, Breaking Ground, Real Life, The New Inquiry, and Mere Orthodoxy. He is the author of a forthcoming book titled 41 Questions: Technology and the Good Life.
Currently on assignment at Google, Nick Kim drives engineering projects for YouTube and is a member of the Google Christian Steering Committee. He is also involved with global missions organizations with the heart to supercharge missions and innovate on ways to serve the nations. Nick is a superhero by night and a father of two biological sons and an adopted daughter by day. He is based out of Mountain View, while living in Orange County with his wife and three children.
