Bethany: Where
is my phone?
Fridge: Who
cares?
Martha: We
are in different bodies! It doesn’t seem like the most pressing concern at this
moment.
Bethany: Really?
You don’t think this would be a good moment to make a call, or text somebody,
or change your status to “stuck in a video game”?
Jumanji: Welcome
to the Jungle (2017)1
 |
| What a lot of likes. Like, you’ll notice, is a noun now, and friend is a verb. |
I had it all figured out.
I was going to write a post called ‘If You
Think Social Media Is Bad, You’re Doing It Wrong’, and I was going to talk
about the good and helpful and uplifting things that using social media can
achieve. I was going to talk about how easy it is now to keep up with friends
that you no longer see in person – perhaps you only really hung out with them
for a year or a season, but you still care about how they’re getting on – and find
out when they start a new career or move country or get engaged or whatever
else. I was going to talk about how helpful it can be to be able to check out
people’s profiles: with people you’re going to meet in person shortly, to get a
sense of what to expect, for instance, or with your friend’s new significant
other to see whether or not you approve. I was going to talk about how
thought-provoking it can be to read news articles and opinion pieces that pop
up on your timeline because someone you follow shared them; it gives you a window
into perspectives you wouldn’t necessarily seek out for yourself. I was going
to talk about how much beautiful artwork and hilarious memes can brighten up a
dull moment of the day, and how the global nature of the Internet means it can
connect you with people whose interests and tastes and sense of humour nestle
in almost exactly the same weird niche as yours.2 I was going to
talk about how much fun it is to be able to chuck requests for recommendations
or suggested meet-ups into the digital ether and see how people you’d never
have thought to ask in person respond; this year, for instance, I ended up
going round the British Library’s summer exhibition on the history of writing
with a random assortment of ten of my friends as a result of a Facebook post in
which I wondered whether anyone would like to go with me.3 I was
going to talk about the vast support networks one can call upon through online
means, the way one can mobilise people all over the world to pray for a very
specific concern. I was going to talk about all these opportunities social
media gives us to be more and better connected with one another.
And I was going to shrug off all that stuff
people say about how social media fosters jealousy and insecurity, as you watch
everyone else showing off how brilliant their lives are and feel that yours
fails to match up. It’s not something I’ve experienced very much – probably to
some degree because my newsfeed tends to consist more of thought-provoking
opinion pieces and hilarious memes than other people’s photographs of their
ostensibly perfect lives, and to some degree because my aspirations and ideas
of perfection are a bit off-piste – and so I sort of don’t see the problem. If
it makes you sad, well, stop looking at it. But you know, why should hilarious
memes make you sad? And I was likewise going to shrug off the complaint that we’re
all glued to our devices all the time, that our private digital universes are
killing off face-to-face interaction: I might not be that old but I’ve lived
long enough to know that people have always wanted excuses and pretexts to
escape human company for a bit; a phone is surely just a very effective and conveniently
pocket-sized excuse of this type. If it’s getting in the way, well, stop
looking at it. If the thing’s got out of hand, just stop. Don’t blame the
product, with all its myriad benefits, for your own lack of self-control. If
you think social media’s bad, you’re doing it wrong.
I had it all figured out. But then it
suddenly hit me that actually, I was doing it wrong. I’d let it
get out of hand. I couldn’t stop.
I’d got to a point where scrolling Facebook
was essentially the default resting state of my brain. Every idle moment, there
I was opening the app before I’d even realised what I was doing. It’s funny how
it starts to feel like a need – how if I spend a few hours away from my
phone, I get this strange sense of relief when I go back to it and start
scrolling. Does this sound alarmingly like an addiction to you? Because once I
actually started articulating this stuff to myself, it certainly sounded
alarmingly like an addiction to me.
I hadn’t expected this. I suppose because I
didn’t really relate to the problems people most often raised in connection
with social media – the jealousy, the comparison, the pressure to present
perfection – I thought I was immune to letting it foster sin in me. I wasn’t that
girl. My Instagram consists primarily of pictures of interesting things I’ve
found in museums; I think I’ve only taken one selfie in my life; I didn’t even have
any social media accounts until I was sixteen, or a mobile phone until I
was eighteen; I sometimes feel as if I would fit more easily into the society
of a hundred years ago than I do into the current one.4 I couldn’t
end up addicted to social media, in slavery to it, ruled by the need to look at
it and letting that, rather than love or fear of God, shape my behaviour. Some
people could, granted, but surely not I.
Well, that was blooming stupid, wasn’t it? It’s
the sins you don’t think will ever get you that’ll do the most damage when they
do. And make no mistake, every addiction – every way in which our attention is
demanded and our affections diverted and our actions dictated by something
other than God – is slavery and idolatry and sin. And sin must be killed,
resolutely and ruthlessly. But that isn’t necessarily as straightforward to
actually achieve as it sounds. Social media isn’t inherently bad – everything I
said above about its benefits remains true – so just cutting it out altogether
and calling the problem fixed is no real solution. The problem isn’t the
product; it’s I. But of course, I, my heart and soul and self, am rather more
difficult to fix than a mere product would be.
I tried a few things. I uninstalled the
Facebook app so that I’d have to go through the mildly more inconvenient
process of opening the site in my web browser in order to start scrolling,
which I hoped might make me think twice rather than just start doing it automatically.
And yeah, that helped a bit. I also imposed a rule on myself that I mustn’t let
going on my phone be the first thing I did in a day – my morning routine,
including devotional time, was always to precede it. And yeah, that helped a
bit too. I tried to impose another rule that I mustn’t do any mindless
scrolling after a certain point in the evening, but I found it impossible to
enforce, because I use my phone for so many things (including as an alarm
clock) and so there were just too many exceptions for the rule to do the job of
covering any particular territory properly.
 |
| Not sure I’m ready to revert to this sort of thing having got used to my phone’s gentle waking tones of a morning. |
So if you were hoping for an inspiring
rehabilitatory journey, or a step-by-step self-help precedent, I’m afraid I’m
going to have to disappoint you. I don’t yet know how I’m going to continue to
treat the problem. But what I am certain of is the need to continue to
treat it. Sin must be killed. I may at some stage, therefore, end up trying a slightly
more extreme solution than the minor adjustments I’ve made so far. Still, even
if I do, that won’t really be the solution as such. It’ll be a tool in
my hands – any more than that is just replacing one slavery with another.
Rules don’t make anyone righteous. If even
the perfect Law, as directly revealed by God himself, couldn’t do it because it
was weakened by the flesh, what chance does any other command or regulation
stand? The law to which we are now subject is the law of the spirit, by which we
are set free from every slavery. To live according to the law of the spirit is to
set the mind on the things of the spirit. It’s not to impose constraints on
the impulses of my flesh; it’s to drown them out with something better. If your
spirit’s not alive, your flesh is all you’ve got, but we’ve been made alive in
spirit, and so we can put the flesh to death because we have something better
to fill up its place. Our old selves are already dead with Christ, our new
selves alive in him; we don’t put the former to death in order to die, but in
order to live more fully by clearing away the dead stuff.5
This is true in all areas of life, no less online
than anywhere else. I’m never going to stop scrolling Facebook from being my
default resting state by just forcing myself not to scroll Facebook; rather,
that impulse needs to be usurped by something greater. I need to set my mind on
the things of the spirit and let them clear away the dead stuff of the flesh. How?
Well, scripture, prayer, meditation, and the encouragement of the saints, of
course. How else is one supposed to get anything done?
I was going to write a post called ‘If You
Think Social Media Is Bad, You’re Doing It Wrong’. But in light of what I’ve
talked about, I would have had to subtitle it ‘If You Don’t Think It’s Bad, You
Might Still Be Doing It Wrong’. There are a heck of a lot of things in the
world that aren’t particularly good or bad in and of themselves, but that will nonetheless
ensnare us in slavery and idolatry and sin given half a chance – not because of
what they’re like, but because of what we’re like, weak in the
flesh. But the remedy is always the same: to set the mind on the spirit; to
consider what God has done for us in sending Jesus in the likeness of sinful
flesh to condemn sin in the flesh, to leave the flesh dead and make our spirits
alive with him – and thereby to have our attention and affections and actions
realigned to reflect that phenomenal, earth-shattering, splendid and glittering
truth. Mere rules won’t make us any more righteous, but wonderfully,
graciously, the law of the spirit will. My old self is doing social
media wrong; my new self is as perfectly righteous in all spheres of
life as her Saviour. The nature of the task now is only to nourish and grow the
latter so as to clear away the dead stuff of the former.
Footnotes
1 Thanks as usual to Springfield! Springfield! for the script: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=jumanji-welcome-to-the-jungle.
I’m not entirely sure whether I’ve ascribed all the lines to the right people,
as I was doing it from memory, so apologies if not.
2 A recent discovery I’m pleased to have made is Steve the
Vagabond and Silly Linguist: https://www.facebook.com/stevethevagabond/.
3 The exhibition is closed now, but to give you a sense of it,
here’s a very fun article about the development of the alphabet: https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/the-evolution-of-the-alphabet.
4 Though I can’t say I fancy the idea of living through two
world wars, so you know, I’ll take what I’ve got.
5 I’m basically getting all this out of Romans 8: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+8&version=ESVUK.
Do check it out, a) to see whether you think I’m handling it legitimately and
b) because it’s kind of the best chapter in the whole Bible.
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