Does Social Media Connect Us or Distract Us?

Social media has become one of the most powerful tools of our time, offering unprecedented opportunities for connection while also posing significant risks of distraction. On one hand, it allows people to stay in touch with friends and family, build communities around shared interests, and access information instantly. On the other hand, the constant stream of notifications, endless scrolling, and pressure to present a curated life can easily pull us away from meaningful relationships, productivity, and even our mental health. The real challenge is learning to use social media intentionally—leveraging its benefits for connection without letting it control our attention or our hearts. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Welcome to episode three of Between Sundays. I'm Zach Casey, the executive pastor at City Awakening Church. And today I'm joined by Savannah Alderman, our kids director, and Seth Finch, our student pastor. And we're going to be talking about social media today, so I thought it would be fun just to start off right out of the gate with a question. What is the first form of social media that you remember using? And how long ago was that?

SPEAKER_05 0:32

For me, it would have been Facebook when I was in college. Yeah. What? Because everything in college is on Facebook.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Everything is. You didn't do MySpace before that?

SPEAKER_05 0:44

No, I didn't do social media growing up.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

I don't know if MySpace counts, but I loved MySpace. You had like a top 10, top 8 friends. It was horrible. It was not a great thing, but... I feel like that was really social media's start was MySpace, would you say?

SPEAKER_04 0:58

Yeah, I used MySpace a little bit. I did have an account, and I don't remember using it much. But it depends on, I guess, what we consider social media, which we'll touch on in a second. But maybe even before that, AOL Instant Messenger.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Oh, I did love AOL. I was like, mm-mm. Middle school. I would say high school was really AOL Instant Messenger. Oh, yeah. High

SPEAKER_04 1:19

school, AOL Instant Messenger. That's actually a funny story. That's how I asked Brittany out on our first date was through AOL Instant Messenger.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

What? Well, Seth's a little baby. I'm a little younger. He's a little young.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

Yeah, he's young. So that would have been 20 plus years ago for me, for sure. I'll

SPEAKER_05 1:33

be honest. I've never heard of AOL Instant

SPEAKER_04 1:37

Messenger. Actually, you know, the AOL, I think they're finally like... shutting down that business. I don't know if you remember ever getting them CDs in the mail all the time for AOL dial up internet, but yeah, that was the thing. I

SPEAKER_01 1:49

guess. So I, yeah, I guess my space would have been really like high school for me. So that was 2006. I was a freshman. So yeah, 20 years ago, that's when I was a freshman in high school. But I remember Facebook, uh, I remember hearing about it when I was in high school and it was really designed for college kids initially. It

SPEAKER_04 2:08

was. Actually, I think I remember it coming out right after I was... graduated college or maybe the year I was graduating, and you had to have, if I remember correctly, you had to have a.edu email address in order to sign up for Facebook initially.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yes. I heard about it because I was a senior in high school and I had a friend in college, and she was like, oh, yeah, there's anything called Facebook. And then I remember specifically I got Instagram when I was a sophomore in college because I was working a Fuge camp, and I posted a picture a day of like, And I was like, here's where I am at summer camp. So that's like, it's funny to look back at.

SPEAKER_04 2:45

Yeah, it is. So why do you think that you started using social media to begin with?

SPEAKER_05 2:50

Mine was for sure just because I was trying to stay connected to a new college. I didn't use it in high school or middle school or anything. All my friends had it. But it was... Everything in college moves through Facebook, and I guess I don't know if it still does now, but it was every social club, every announcement, everything was running through Facebook, so it was almost like a necessity to have Facebook. And then I also had Twitter, because when I was in college, I had a radio show. What? Yeah, yeah. What was it called? Inside the Clubhouse. It was sports. And so I was always tweeting sports stuff, but it was out of that account, not my account.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_05 3:30

I need to go back. Is there like recording? Yeah, yeah. They're out there.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Is it just you or you had a friend?

SPEAKER_05 3:34

No, no, no. Me. I had a couple of buddies.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Seth by himself in a radio show?

SPEAKER_05 3:38

It was on the FM station.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

What?

SPEAKER_05 3:40

Yeah, yeah. Wow. And Facebook and Twitter. Seth's famous. We didn't even

SPEAKER_04 3:44

know it. Yeah, yeah. Watch out. You should have been doing all these podcasts. Yeah, right. So, yeah, what about you, Savannah? Why did you start using

SPEAKER_01 3:50

them? I don't remember. I mean, I feel like when I started using it, it was just, like, me and all my friends did it together. I feel like at the time, I was really only connected to my friends. So, like, with MySpace, I remember, like, you had, like, a top eight of friends, but there was only, like, 40 people that you were friends with in general. It was, like, every kid in my class or youth group at the time. So I feel like that's why I started using it. I don't really remember... But in college, definitely Facebook was when we started using groups for like... I mean, I was in a sorority, so we had a big page. That's where we posted like, here, you can get this shirt. Here's this event. So I feel like it was definitely more of a social platform for communication in college. And I feel like when it really started to take off was when I was in college is when I really saw the boom kind of happening.

SPEAKER_04 4:38

Yeah, I think it definitely wasn't like content-driven. I mean, it was communication. So going back to AOL, it was a way to...

UNKNOWN 4:45

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 4:45

The funny thing is my home only had one phone line, and so you're still tying up the phone line. You would get a busy signal if you called. So we only had a certain amount of time we were allowed on there, but you could be chatting with multiple people at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Okay, Seth, since you're younger, it was literally like texting on your computer when you still had like 50 text messages a month you could use.

SPEAKER_04 5:06

Yeah, it was basically texting.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

I feel really old, and I feel like we're not that far apart in age.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

I mean, I lived in the

SPEAKER_05 5:13

age where I only had so many text messages on my phone. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

Yeah. So that was definitely why I think I got it. And of course, everybody was doing it too, you know. But then I remember Facebook. I definitely remember people talking about that and me logging in. And the biggest thing I remember with Facebook initially was people connecting with people from the past or whatever. Like that was a big thing. Like, oh, I can keep track of my friends from college or, you know, my relatives that I don't live near, that kind of thing was a big driving force behind some of that, I think.

UNKNOWN 5:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, I think I would do, I will say, I feel like when I started in college, it was fun because you saw your high school friends that you don't see anymore.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

Or

SPEAKER_01 5:51

like, I was really close to my youth group. So like my youth group friends that we went to tons of different colleges and it was, I do think that was the driving factor at first was like, it's all about connection and you know, your sweet grandmother now can comment all these pictures she's seeing of you, which I remember was a really big thing for my grandparents. They were like, I feel like I'm going to be a part of what you're doing at college because I can see all these pictures now. So it's funny how things have Thank you. changed. Yeah, that's

SPEAKER_04 6:17

almost like a byproduct of it now. It's still there, but it's not why people use it so much. So just for kind of a foundation, social media, a good definition is websites or applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. So that would include things like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or X, whatever you want to call it. YouTube is a form of social media, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, and the list goes on and on. But it's Anything where social networking or interaction can take place. And it's what makes social media unique or different from just like a website or even a blog or other thread, something like that, because there's not the back and forth interaction. So when you think about that, what are the dangers or problems with a digital platform for interacting and relating to others, do you think?

SPEAKER_05 7:15

I think you can become disconnected from reality really quick because you can live on that platform and you can find your purpose and meaning out of what people are saying about you, how you're entertained. It can frame your mindset because if you've watched... documentaries or whatever on it you know they're trying to drive you towards a certain leaning and they're going to keep feeding you content in that way so it's easy if you don't have guards up uh to kind of get stuck in your lane and not be able to see other people's perspectives so it can be an easy slippery slope

SPEAKER_01 7:50

yeah i mean i when i that question immediately my thought is comparison i think especially dangerous with our kids and teens but i think social media in general people are posting what they want to post so they're not just posting like their everyday like here's how I look when I wake up in the morning it's here's the best picture of me and my family and this thought through process of posting a picture and I think it easily leads to comparison of oh that's their life it looks beautiful hunky-dory like this is amazing when in reality like they're posting one snapshot of their week or their month and I think that's I think even as a mom, I can compare myself to like, man, this mom is doing so many things, going out and about. Well, she might just be posting all the things she's doing, and that's all they're doing. But I think that's so easy. I think as women, too, it's a comparison thing. It's so easy to compare ourselves to what we see on social media, and I think that's a really big danger that I've seen.

SPEAKER_04 8:43

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think there's the relationship side of it, you know, which there's superficial relationships that are taking place. There's conflicts that happen on social media, reduced attention. Like, so our ability to relate in person gets affected by our online presence.

UNKNOWN 9:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:06

A term that I recently learned called fubbing, which is phone snubbing. Are you guys familiar with this? Fubbing? Yeah, fubbing. P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G. So it erodes, the idea is that it erodes quality time with family and friends because you're distracted by your phone and so you're phone snubbing somebody. So there's relational effects. There's obviously mental health. I was reading some interesting information about this. Some studies showed that depressive symptoms were 27% higher and suicidal ideation was 37% higher among adolescents who spent three or more hours per day on social media. 64% of teen girls, as Savannah mentioned, reported very often feeling pressure to look perfect, strongly tied to social media usage. And so there's all the tons of misinformation that's out there, quote-unquote echo chambers, because algorithms are designed to feed us information that we want to hear or see, which leads to a distorted view of reality, which you mentioned, Seth. And then it affects society as well. Decreased productivity, cyberbullying, privacy loss, manipulation with ads. So there's lots of negatives here. There are some positives that we'll talk about as well, so it's not all bad. But it was interesting reading earlier, I was reading an article actually, and it was talking about the time lost. So I just wanted to speak to this for a second because it was new kind of information to me. So the article was focusing on how we lose time using social media, but it went into it's not just about wasting time. But it talked about the idea behind social media and time itself. So you know when you're on vacation or you're doing something fun, time flies. We say time flies when you're having fun. But then when you're waiting for something, you're waiting at the airport or the doctor's office for something, time seems to crawl. And there's... I don't know all the terms, but there's scientific reasons for that. It's because when we're enjoying something, our brain is not consciously thinking of how much time is passing. But then when we look back on that event, we create a lot of memories that were fun, and so it stands out in our minds. Versus we don't look back at a long period of time waiting, what seemed like that, like in a doctor's office, as a fond time, because we didn't create memories. And so social media plays into that, and it... in a way creates an illusion of time because we're constantly being hit with so much information that's designed to kind of be a shock and awe that we lose track of time because we're not thinking how long this is taking but because it's such random information when it's not a story that's linear we're creating we're not creating any memories and so when we look back on it it doesn't seem like we spent a lot of time on it either

SPEAKER_01 11:56

this is like an article you read

SPEAKER_04 11:58

yeah

SPEAKER_01 11:58

fascinating and

SPEAKER_04 11:59

so it's really interesting so we in our Our brains don't process the time like we do other things in life. But that's about design. So this goes back to the way casinos were designed and actually before that supermarket. So if you ever go to the Publix or Walmart, you know, where's the milk and the staples that you need?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

The very back of the store. The very back

SPEAKER_04 12:16

of the store. That's by design so that you have to walk past all the other things. Well, casinos picked up on that in the 70s. I forget the guy's name, but they started designing casinos this way where they would create winding paths through the casinos, even to the restaurants and the bathrooms so that you had to to go past all this thing. Well, then they started creating them in these cubicle layouts that you were only seeing what was immediately around you, but yet you knew there was a room around the corner that you were hearing the bells go off and people went, and so you wanted to go over there. But even beyond that, they learned that not to create 90-degree turns into these rooms because when you come to a 90-degree turn, you have to make a decision, am I going to go right or left? And you might stop and think, you know what, I just need to turn around and go out the door. So they created curvilinear lines so you didn't really know when you were leaving one

SPEAKER_02 13:08

and starting the next.

SPEAKER_04 13:10

So you take that and it moves into social media. That's exactly what social media has done. If you remember back in the early days of Facebook or those kind of things, you could scroll and eventually you'd come to the end of the feed. And so that was like a trigger to our minds. Hey, like I've been on here for a while. I should probably stop. Now it's infinite scroll. And so we can scroll kind of like those curvilinear lines in a casino and we lose track of time and we don't know where it's, you know, how long we've been on there. So it's all by design. These social media companies hire people. like, I forget what they're called, attention engineers, I think it is, to help you know, navigate this. But that also leads to FOMO because with the difference in a casino, when you're in a casino, you're only there for the amount of time you are. But our phones are always within arm reach. And so we can always know, hey, like that cubicle effect, like there's something happening there that I'm missing

SPEAKER_02 14:03

out on.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

And so that then creates, leads to the anxiety that we talked about, which actually this article went on to go on to say, not only are we losing time and wasting it, studies are actually showing that this is aging us. faster because of the anxiety, because of the effects of it, and even unhealthy habits that tend to come with a lot of screen time. But they were saying that these studies are suggesting that it's actually eroding our physical well-being as well and taking time away from our lives. So pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Wow, that's fascinating. Well, even, I mean, when you're talking about that, my first thought too is, because I deal with this when I'm working with kids all day, is like, are kids and adults like have not, have forgotten how to or never learned i guess how to be bored so like that's a whole attention thing too of like we don't have boredom these days because kids just have a screen which that goes more into like screens and social media but i think it come as an adult i think our kids are seeing us as adults not know how to be bored because if we're sitting there, sometimes even like, I'm just thinking about like, sometimes I'll be watching TV and then I think, oh, I'm going to look at this real fast and end up picking up my phone. I literally am watching TV as I'm on social media. And I've, me and Robbie have really caught ourselves being like, what are we doing? Like, that is ridiculous. But I feel like that's really common these days of like, we're trying to get input however we can in whatever area we can. And sometimes, It's really causing an issue of attention across the lifespan, which I don't even know the science behind that, but I can only imagine in a few years the science behind the lack of... people knowing how to be bored is going to impact people.

SPEAKER_05 15:43

Yeah. Yeah. I'll find myself when I'm watching TV and if I hit a low point in a show or, or whatever I'm watching or it's a commercial break, I pull my phone out and I'm like constantly searching for that commercial breaks for sure. You know, I've had to start like putting my phone in the other room, uh, or to break that habit because if it's there, I'm going to pick it up and I'm going to look at it. I'm going to

SPEAKER_04 16:03

scroll.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 16:03

Well, some people say that the average attention span of the, of a human is shorter than a goldfish. It's like less than 10 seconds. Which I hate sometimes because as a church, even thinking about like marketing strategies and those kinds of things, it's like you almost have to utilize that information and not say play into it, but keep that in mind as we're trying to communicate with people, even about something positive, because if it's too drawn out, probably like right now, like people start to lose interest, you know, if it's not quick enough, if it's not fast. Yeah. All those are negative things. What are some of the positive effects of social media, would you say? What are some of the highlights of it?

SPEAKER_01 16:40

I have a lot of friends that have created businesses through social media. That's how they promote their business. I feel like that's probably the one I can think of as the most positive. Yeah. But then, of course, that becomes like social media is not to learn about people's lives. It's more people to promote their business. So it could be a positive and a negative. And I think communication is huge. Like, I will say, like, I, both Seth and I, like, we grew up in one place and then moved down to Florida. And so it's a way for, I feel like, for me to stay connected to the people that do still live in Tennessee. It makes me feel like I'm there even if I'm not, which I think has helped me. make the move easier for me is I can still kind of check in. I'm seeing pictures of, you know, my sister's had a baby. I'm able to see pictures of my nephew, even if she doesn't text me because it's on social media, which can be a benefit.

SPEAKER_05 17:31

Yeah, I agree. The connectivity part is probably one of the biggest positives of it because, you know, people are moving around. And when, especially since COVID, it feels like we're more and more trying to find digital ways to stay connected. Um, and so connectivity, I have no problem promoting a business. I could see the, the positive effects of that being able to get your friends from, I know a friend of mine recently wrote a book promoting, you know, book on a, on a social media platform. I get those things. Those, those are, those are all good things.

SPEAKER_04 18:01

Yeah. I think for me, uh, uh, the learning aspect of it. So, um, Especially if you think about YouTube as a social media platform. I go to YouTube a lot. Just this weekend, I replaced the battery in

SPEAKER_03 18:14

an iPhone. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:15

And so being able to go and watch that video, and even some of those things where I'm working on my car or something, and read the comments, even from an interactive standpoint, and see, hey, this video is good, but here's what I learned in this process, or here's what's not. So that's probably... Honestly, the primary way that I use it now at this point in my life, I don't use it for really interaction. Maybe I'll get on every now and then and check for the connection standpoint, but the learning part of that. And people use it for news. Again, that could be good or bad because there's a lot of bad news out there or the algorithms tend to feed what we want. But there are positives to it.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

And even information. I think sometimes if I'm looking up like, is this restaurant open for dinner? Sometimes that's almost more accurate as social media than like a website. They don't always update their website, but usually social media, you can be like, oh yeah, they're open. They're posting about it right now. And information can go a long way too.

SPEAKER_04 19:09

Yeah, for sure. So like when we talked about artificial intelligence, it's not inherently bad. Obviously there are good things to it, but there are definitely reasons to be cautious and especially as believers, things to be aware of. So I want to jump straight to some applications. Savannah, as the children's director at City Awakening, what would be your advice or even vision, maybe if we want to use that word for how families should approach social media?

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Oh, that's a big topic in my house. Um, I will be honest when it comes to kids ministry and you're talking babies through fifth grade, I think there should be a hard no on social media. I just think our kids don't have the, um, executive functioning skills, the emotional regulation skills. And so they're, um, The information they're taking in, there's so much growth in those ages and development in their brains that for me, I'm a pretty hard no. That's definitely not something we should even approach before middle school. I'm even kind of a weird one about middle school. I just think our kids are growing up really fast, and I think they're losing some of their sense of ability to play because of things like screens and social media and all that. And the quicker they have access to that is the quicker they're... using that as their play rather than truly playing, using their bodies, their minds, their imagination. Um, so I don't know if that's harsh, but I'm a pretty big, like fifth grade and under should not have any access to social media whatsoever.

SPEAKER_04 20:33

Yeah, no, I don't, I don't think that's harsh. I, I think I agree with that. And, um, you know, you know, even more than I do, but like we were talking about earlier, the attention, the effects, the effects that it has on their learning, their creativity, um, all those factors, um, it's hard to come up with a positive for using social media. And we're going to include in that, I'm going to include in that even YouTube shorts and those kinds of things that still, they may not have the interacting piece so much socially, but the scrolling to getting lost in time and those kinds of things would be included in that.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

And just exposure things. I just think like you can't always control what other people are sharing and posting. And so as much as in households, you're trying to protect your children, like... immediately they start scrolling you don't know where that's going to lead them and so I think that's just anything that can take them from one place to another I think yeah YouTube is a great example of that I think in those younger ages YouTube's probably the social media parents are allowing quicker than like obviously Instagram, Facebook and stuff like that but If that allows them to scroll and click and move and you don't know what's popping up, that immediately becomes dangerous,

SPEAKER_04 21:44

I think, in our homes. The modern term is brain rot.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 21:48

It's brain rot. My kids the other day were showing me a video of this gummy rat and this person playing with this gummy rat and essentially dissecting it in this really weird voice. And I watched it. And at the end, I was like, what did I just watch? I don't even know. It was funny, but it was also disturbing. A lot of stuff out there like that. Yeah, no kidding. So I think there is that question, like, who's parenting your kids?

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:12

Like, when you're not parenting them and social media is, like, that... It's influencing their thoughts and teaching them something. What are you modeling as a parent I think is hard too. Like you were mentioning earlier, like you and Robbie noticing like, hey, we're just going to our phones. Something I try and be, I'm not perfect for sure. Brittany and I try and be very conscious of like if we're telling our kids not to use social media, well then why are we constantly consuming it? So I think you have to be aware of that. and then fighting against that peer pressure to just give in while all of my kids' friends have it, you know, and everybody else is using it. So, you know, I don't want them to feel left out or not have that. Um, I think it's hard

SPEAKER_01 22:52

as a parent. Very hard. But I also think that's where like we were called to be parents and we're trying to raise our kids in godly homes. And like, how does that, how's that look for our kids? And like, I just even think about if I was exposed to these things at 10, 11, 12, like I didn't even know what, Yeah. Yeah. or someone that I trust.

SPEAKER_04 23:37

Yeah, yeah. Seth, same kind of question. As a student pastor, what would your advice or vision for students and their families be when it comes to social media?

SPEAKER_05 23:46

Well, I definitely think parents shouldn't be afraid to take a very active interest in what's on their kids' phones, what's on the social media. I would lean, I know you kind of alluded to it, I don't agree with really a middle schooler having that social media. I think it's too young and it's teaching them too many bad habits too early on. And then even in high school, I think that the parents should be very hands-on and understanding and knowing what's coming in, what's going out, making sure these students have the ability to still create those social interactions in person and not losing that by just being glued to your phone and what people are saying or what you're saying to other people. And so the parents, I think you have to remain in there. And as a student, as an older kid, you have to be seeking out in your faith first and walking with the Lord and learning how to set up guardrails for yourself because it It's not going to be long as a sophomore, junior, senior that you're going to be in the world and all of a sudden mom and dad aren't going to be there every single day. And so helping parents coming alongside your kids, helping them create those guardrails while in the safety of your home right now so that when they go out into the world here in just a couple years, those guardrails are there. I know that's what my parents do with me. I didn't have social media growing up, and those guardrails when I went off to college were there, and I didn't draw into it as much as some of my other friends that were just addicted to their phones, sitting there scrolling every moment of every day in the dorm room. And so I think parents, you have to be very intentional in that. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 25:18

I'd be interested, Zach, because I have a sixth grader, a fifth grader, and a third grader. So we are just on the balance of my older two are like, when can we have phones to call our friends? So right now, they can every now and and use my phone to FaceTime their friends, giving them a little freedom, but it's all on my phone. I can see everything. But you have teenagers, so I'd love to hear what y'all have in place.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

Yeah, it's tough. And we were definitely the minority, I would say, among our kids' friends, but we were okay with that, and we talked with them about that regularly. So our general rule was no phones before 13.

UNKNOWN 25:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 25:54

They got phones when they turned... I have four teenagers in my house right now. They got phones when they turned 13 where they could text and receive calls. And a lot of that was because that's when they started to go places without us. And so we wanted to be able to stay in touch with them, communicate, track their location, whatever. So we definitely are of the delaying use as long as possible, even from just a phone standpoint. I'm going to expose my teenagers here. They still don't have social media like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, any of those major platforms. They do have things that they've used for school groups or church groups like GroupMe, Slack, those kind of things. I don't know if that's considered social media. There is still online interaction taking place. But we've also definitely put in place, like we have full rights to our kids' phones. We don't check them constantly or even daily, I would say, but we have their passwords. We can get on and look and ask questions about whatever we find there. So from my standpoint, parents have the freedom to monitor. If you're living in my house and under the umbrella of my blessing as a parent, then... You're under my authority as well.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

And that's not a

SPEAKER_04 27:10

privacy issue, but also I think society tells us like, oh, we're entitled to our privacy. Well, I might have a disagreement about that with my kids. I'm not trying to invade their privacy, but their hearts aren't ready. It's hard enough as adults, but they're not ready to fight those battles and to guide themselves on their own. And then the last thing I would say is we really try to utilize downtime. So luckily, if you're an iPhone user, Apple user, the screen time options that those phones have in place are pretty good if you learn how to use them. And it takes a while to learn how to use them. We've tried outside softwares. We found that screen time is the best. But to utilize phone-free time. So at this time, you gain access to these applications on your phone, and then it goes away. Yes, that's a big one. Yeah. It plays into that. So back to what you were saying, Seth, to make sure that they're still able to engage with people on a personal level as a family, there's going to be times when we're sitting around talking or having that interaction without phones being a distraction. And we know that. So I want to make sure that they're able to do that and not just get lost. And there's still some times when I come in and I see all my kids sitting around on their phone, it's in the middle of the day and it I don't like it, but I can't really say like, Hey, you can't be texting or whatever right now. We have the guardrails and I just have to be okay with that. But, um, yeah, I'm with you guys as, as delaying and limiting that. And then when it's age appropriate and it might be different from every child, but giving those little steps of freedom to earn responsibility and to show that, um, with the guidance of a parent so that then when they're, they're released on their own, that it's not a free for all because it's been complete isolation.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:15

But it's also, we're not already down a road that we don't need to be on before we're ever on our own, you know? So that's kind of been our approach.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Yeah. I mean, our initial plan was our kids would not even talk about getting a phone until they were 14. Now our kids are trying to stay home by themselves a little bit more. And like, I do have kids that play sports and are not with me. And so we've had the conversation of like, there's a safety piece there, but we've talked about, we've literally looked up like the old classic flip phones that you can text and call, or Gab phones, is that what they are? Actually, Robbie's looking into, because we actually have a house line connected that we pay for. We've talked about getting a house phone again so that there's a way for them to call. And so I do think there's good in giving kids freedoms to learn. And I want them to talk to their friends. They're in an age where that's what they're desiring, and I want to encourage that, but in a safe way. And so I think, like we've already said, like, social media maybe their senior year of high school they can get it so that we're there to help them learn how to use it yeah before they go into college but that's we still got a few years so i like hearing your perspective because oh it gets hard when they become at the age where all their friends are doing it and how and as parents to have the power and the confidence in yourself to be like i understand that everyone in your class is doing it But we are not, and here is why. I think that's important.

SPEAKER_04 30:37

Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. And the frustrating thing was something I was thinking about when you were saying that, like we looked into all the Gab phones, all the different options. They're difficult to use. They're more expensive to use because not only do you have to pay for the phone, you have to pay for additional service. And then you get into a place where, depending on what activities and things your kids are in, like they're expected or sometimes even loosely required to have– other communication platforms like group me or something like that i remember one of my our child that first got a job um that was one of the primary ways that they encouraged them to communicate was through a private facebook group but he didn't have facebook and i was like sorry you're gonna have to find a different way to communicate like this can't be a requirement for this job as a teenager like there has to be a different way and so we fought that for a little while and Until we finally kind of found the solution to that. But those things are frustrating when you're trying to take that stance in our society that doesn't understand why you'd have those parameters in place. So I just want to mention, you know, yesterday Robbie used James chapter one kind of as a text for this, and he was really speaking to the conflict and. miscommunication that comes through social media a lot of times. But at the end of that chapter, James says, therefore ridding yourselves of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror. But if he looks at himself, he goes away and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. So when we think about this, how does that text to you speak to our approach or even your personal warning signs or caution when it comes to social media?

SPEAKER_05 32:33

Well, for me, I'll just tell you guys, I don't actually have social media anymore at all. And by no means is my experience everyone's experience, but hopefully... You know, maybe you're struggling with on the fence of if I should have it or not have it. Maybe you go my route and don't have it. I don't know. But as I was years and years ago, early in ministry, towards the end of college or just out of college, I was finding it more and more difficult for me. while being on those social media apps to relate to people that were different than me. And I felt and I saw how social media was pushing me further and further into my little bubble, my little click, my little camp. And so I wasn't able to be a doer of the word and go out and be active in my faith, or as active as I could be, because I had been kind of chained to this set of ideals that... And obviously, social media is not the only reason. There's other factors as well. But I found that it had been... kind of pushing me further and further down this rabbit hole. And so I just decided, I was like, you know what? I tried deleting the apps, and then I would inevitably come back to them. I tried all these different things. I was like, you know what, Lord? We're just going to get rid of this stuff altogether. And so I got rid of it all. And let me tell you, it is peaceful. It is super peaceful. I don't have to worry if someone needs me. They can text me or call me. They got my phone number. I don't really have to worry about keeping up with anything or anyone. And I can also, more importantly, meet people where they're at. Especially for me now. As I'm in a new place or a newer place in Florida, which is much different from where I grew up in Tennessee. And so I encounter people that are a lot different than me. And I don't have those same chains that were pulling me where maybe I go into that conversation. Oh, well, you have this set of beliefs or that that you're kind of weird in this in this way. I just see them as a broken, fallen sinner, just like I'm a broken, fallen sinner, also creating God's image. And it just helps me not to have those preconceived notions, those those hindrances, those blinders on. as I go into these interactions and conversations. And it's really peaceful.

SPEAKER_04 34:40

Is it peaceful, Seth? It's

SPEAKER_05 34:40

very peaceful.

SPEAKER_04 34:41

Do you have any thoughts, Savannah?

SPEAKER_01 34:45

No, I mean, I think Seth said it well. I mean, I think when it comes to this various, like, be doers of the word, not hearers only, like, I think that speaks to me of, like, I think it's easy to hide behind social media and I think we are called to be with people. Um, and obviously there's a moral filth and evil that it talks about, but I also think there's a piece of, um, being a doer of interacting with people and having those relationships and communication outside of just like, I'm going to hide behind social media. And so I feel like I had a different interpretation of that, but that's what really spoke to me. Um, Because I think that verse talks about being quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. It is really easy to just be fast to anger and fast to speak when you have a screen in front of you. And I know a lot of people that, not personally, but just that I've seen, that are quick to say comments to people that they may not say to them in real life, in person. And so I think there's some danger there that I just think relationships and connectivity is important. And that is... a huge, huge downside to social media that I think really affects us today.

SPEAKER_04 35:54

Yeah. Yeah. I think that, um, I was kind of thinking about the, the being doers of the word and not hearers only too. I think social media tends to feed our consumer mentality, which we fight against anyways. And because we can take in the content, we can sit there passively, read whatever we want, take in, take in other people's comments, all the information, the videos, whatever, and And then, you know, we just become consumers of a lot of information. And so when you take that, it's easy to become a consumer, even if it's good information. Even if you're listening to sermons or podcasts all day that are encouraging or you're only reading scripture verses on social media or whatever, like there comes a time when we have to live that out. And if we're consumed with the input on social media, then it's only going to hinder, in reality, our ability to put that out. Because, like you said, we're isolating ourselves. We're distracted from the people around us. We're not paying attention to what's happening in real life and all those things. And so I think just as a guideline for all of us in life in general, we talk about this in the church sometimes. Don't just come to church and be a consumer, right? like be a producer, like be active participant. And so in life as well, don't just hide behind the social media screen. Don't just hide behind your profile or identity there and the information you're taking in, but get into the world and be interactive and be real and present and authentic there rather than just letting that exist in a digital presence. That's kind of what I thought of for that. So a lot of good stuff. I think this is a good place for us to stop. And while we've wrapped up our Kingdom Thinking teaching series on Sunday morning, we're going to carry these discussions over into a few more episodes, three or four episodes of this podcast where we'll deal with more issues that we feel like would be good to cover that are practical everyday things that we encounter. And so some of those are going to be some, I'm not going to tell you what they are now, but they're going to be fun topics for us to discuss. So I encourage you to come back and listen to those. We hope you keep tuning in. And if you use social media, maybe even share the podcast there. This would be a good use. Oh, good tie-in. You like that?

SPEAKER_01 38:08

That's a positive use of it. It

SPEAKER_04 38:09

might be helpful to someone else to hear the discussion. Maybe share your thoughts with us or questions. If you have those, you can send us a text link to send the episode description. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a good question, maybe we'll answer it on a future episode. I don't know. But we'd love to hear from you on that. So if you have the opportunity, head over to City Awakening Church, our website, cityawakeningchurch.com. You can find more information about who we are as a church or even some of these sermons that we've been preaching that speak to these topics that we've discussed in the podcast. So thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.