HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS AFFECTING STUDENTS, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.
Gabe Knipp
Hardly anyone has been immune from the social media virus. Social media has been blamed for the increasing polarity in the United States, for creating a fear of missing out (FOMO), for making those already insecure even more so. We point to teenagers as the main perpetrators and users of platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and BeReal (many teens no longer go to Facebook), and 13- to 18-year-olds reportedly log more than eight hours of screen time a day on their phones (from commonsensemedia.org).
But we all live in a social media world, whether we kick against it or run toward it. The question: what do we do about it?
First, let’s understand what social media is. Platforms where users readily share content — whether in the form of posts, videos or photos — have not delivered on their scintillating original promises of connecting the world and helping us solve problems. Rather, they seem to be creating problems. Echo chambers where opinions are repeated and dissenting opinions have no place are only a small part of the social media phenomenon. For people young and old, almost a third of social media usage is due to “digital addiction.” That is, usage that was not intended, nor do users feel good about it afterward.
In fact, The Atlantic published a story in 2021 comparing social media to yesterday’s adolescent bugaboo: alcohol. According to journalist Derek Thompson, “Like booze, social media seems to offer an intoxicating cocktail of dopamine, disorientation and, for some, dependency. Call it ‘attention alcohol.’”
This attention alcohol is a social lubricant — like the liquid version — with dangerous side effects. Rather than the promise of connection, it delivers on multiplication: social media seems to exacerbate negative stories we tell ourselves — if those stories are already present. And the group that suffers most from potential negative stories and spends the most time on social media?
Adolescents.
Now, we engage students before they get to campus. (Social media) has extended the year well before they come and well after they leave.
Yet, instead of pointing to future generations’ problems — problems that previous generations created for them — we need to view social media as what it really is. According to John Byard, the divisional coordinator for Young Life College in the Southwest U.S., adolescents are looking for something familiar: “What they’re looking for is real relationships,” he explains. “Instagram is the football game of 25 years ago. Back then, you would show up, shake hands and sit in the student section. Today, the student section is Instagram.
“Now, we engage students before they get to campus. (Social media) has extended the year well before they come and well after they leave.”
It may seem odd to use the very thing that seems to be hurting students — too much time on social media — as a way to create connection. Yet, this has worked for John and those he leads. He shares the story of Ben Boulter in Fresno, California, who moved to the city in the fall of 2020. In-person meetings were essentially prohibited, but Ben knew students needed connection. So he started an Instagram account.
“Within a few short months, he’d grown numbers and developed genuine relationships with people he could never meet during the pandemic. His first gathering happened a few months after that with over 75 students who had never heard of Young Life besides their connection over social media and Ben. Now the Instagram account for Fresno State has well over 1,300 followers and is a primary tool they use to meet freshmen yearly.”
In the Gospel of John, we read how the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. Or, as Eugene Peterson has riffed on it, He “moved into the neighborhood.” Later, John relates Jesus saying that He did not come to condemn the world but to save it.
We can demonize social media, or we can ask how and where God is at work through it. Like alcohol, it seems to create some sort of dependency. And we may — as Derek Thompson noted — need to encourage users to “view responsibly” in an echo of alcohol ads on television. But the analogy breaks down: alcohol is illegal for young people, and parents readily place phones in the hands of their teens, not least because every other teen seems to have the same.
What do we do?
Show up. Move into the neighborhood, even if that means a virtual neighborhood in the metaverse. We go where kids are. Just as leaders go to football games to be seen, in order to create deeper relationships offline, we do the same. Make a connection that can lead the way to deeper relationships.
Every six seconds a new user signs up for a social media platform. Adolescents are opening their minds to all sorts of influences on these platforms, and we can fret about it — or do something.
Let’s move into the neighborhood.