Happy Friday to all of you guys out there sitting in front of a screen that mercilessly shines blue light in your face at such an ungodly hour JUST to read some words a freshly twenty-year-old dude with no clue about life has to say!! I feel so honored to share some thoughts with you this morning and hopefully enlighten your day. Today’s topic is pretty straightforward, but it has a lot of hidden truths to it – the influence of social media on my life and my relationship with God.
Reasons To Go Online 🤳🏽
I think we have all come to a point where we are not just sucked into our social media but actually addicted to it. It happens slowly, maybe you don’t even judge it as an addiction, but yes: more than two hours of Instagram in a day is nothing else than addictive behavior. I’m not here to write an essay on screen time and fasting-from-social-media-because-we-don’t-have-any-leisure-time-left kinda thing (because I have already done so multiple times in Grammar School), but I want to explain how I have come into an addiction to it and what it did with my relationship with Jesus. Disclaimer: I am not trying to force a digital detox on you, but it may result in it anyway.
Let’s talk about the two different reasons why we open our Instagram feed or scroll through our ForYou page on Tiktok. Or scroll through the latest Tweets, read our friend’s Facebook post, or try the newest Snapchat filter on our face to make our besties laugh. You get it.
Entertainment ▶️
One reason that seems rather healthy and justifiable is entertainment. You feel bored, you don’t know what to do in your fifteen-minute coffee break - OBVIOUSLY you feel the urge or desire to check your comments and like some beach posts. Visiting your socials for entertainment in a free minute is okay, but it mostly ends up taking more of our time than just a few moments. I have found myself hours on the same platform, completely drifting away from reality and not getting anything real done.
Distraction 🏃🏼♂️
And that gets us to the next possibility: we use our socials to escape reality. Especially in hard and stressful times, I often searched for an escape in thousands of videos and pictures. I felt like I could relax, lean back, and just enjoy, without having to worry about anything. However, after distraction seasons I tried to recall the past hours and couldn’t remember anything I’ve watched that was helpful in my situation of hustling. It works as a distractor, that’s for sure, but it is a temporary pleasure with no profound meaning. Reaching for your phone, in this case, means suppressing your feelings, may that be grief or stress or some kind of depression. Whenever you feel lonely or sad or hurt, your socials won’t be able to heal you. Instead, they drive you away from God who wants to console you with his open arms. You may think escaping reality helps you and so you proceed, but you don’t see the bigger picture.
Maybe I should tell my story first before confronting you with any more truths. When I was fourteen years old, I started to get obsessed with Instagram. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I scrolled through my feed endlessly, but I was stunned by what I saw and tried to copy influencers. Some of you readers have known me for years and certainly saw me during this phase. I started doing photoshoots, editing pictures, and posting stories of my everyday life, just because it was fun. Bear in mind, I was fourteen years old. These weren’t good pictures. I was not really a well-known influencer. I wanted to be these things because I was looking for acceptance, attention, and recognition. I wanted to be seen in the middle of the crowd. If not in real life, then online, I thought. And after some time, I had made over a thousand followers. Today, that’s a small number. Back then, remembering how my posts looked like, it was huge. It came to the point where I wasn’t happy with the whole Instagram thing anymore because I felt pressured to post content for the three people who kind of cared and the other 997 people who in reality ghosted me. I was jealous of real influencers and their life, everything seemed so perfect. They lived in a big house with their family, went on a vacation every other week, and ate healthily, and did workouts with the sunset in their them. They all looked beautiful from at least three angles, and that was too much for me. I knew that their life probably wasn’t as good as it seemed, but I couldn’t be sure. That’s still a thing I have to learn today. I know that other people have struggles too, but then again, I don’t know for sure. They all look so happy.
You will lose touch with reality, and you will no longer know your own identity.
This quote is from an essay written by a good friend of mine (thanks Jamie), and it puts everything in perspective. It’s not just a warning, but the naked truth. I know because I have been there. I still go to that place sometimes. And it doesn’t make things easier. We’re all given an identity by God, but I can’t even begin to summon all the identities the internet has tried to give me. And I have believed it for many years. It made my teenage years the most confusing time in the history of youth. Please do me a favor and don’t go down that road, for it is a cul-de-sac.
My Relationship With God 👼🏼
I deleted Instagram about three years ago. I never installed it again. I knew it was a trap for me personally. I always became jealous, overwhelmed, and sad. I noticed how much time I had invested in something that eventually didn’t even make me happy. Instead, I wasted time on stupid comments and irrelevant stories, although I could’ve used that time to strengthen my relationship with God. When anxieties crawled into my head and dominated my thoughts, I didn’t seek help in the Word of God or in prayer, but instead, idiot me was convinced that social media would help me overcome them. Since then, I’ve been in an on-and-off relationship with social media (and therefore God) and have downloaded and uninstalled many platforms repeatedly. A year ago, I went through a digital detox of like a week due to a presentation I held and my curiosity behind it. I found it to be easy to let your phone be and do something else for a week. So, I wasn’t addicted, right? I mean, I could just pause for a week without any withdrawal symptoms.
The answer is still no. I knew that I would have my phone back again after seven days, and I didn’t even shut off my phone, but I just blocked my remaining apps: Snapchat, Netflix, and Youtube. Whatsapp is usually a form of communication to me, and I was still in school, so it was relevant to me. That’s the only exception I made. And even though my screen time went down rationally, it was only temporarily. After those seven days, I reinstalled all my apps and went on with my life. Bravo. Still addicted.
Anything Good? 🤨
I have to admit, there are good things on social media. Encouraging words. There are tons of live streams of Sunday church. You can listen to amazing podcasts. There are so many good memories in digital form that you can relive. I’m still in many pictures on the accounts of my friends, and I love seeing those happy faces. I miss certain moments and people so much. It’s not bad to keep photos on your feed that make you remind you of good things, that lead you to one of your happy places. For me, it just doesn’t have to be online anymore. That’s why my bedside wall is full of selfies and group pictures.
What Scripture Says 📖
I just completed a Bible reading plan called Fasting From Social Media by Bettye Nicole, thus I have a lot of Bible verses that compliment and highlight my words. If you use TikTok because you feel depressed and you want to be healed, but somehow you end up in a deeper depression afterward, here’s a verse for you:
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! – Matthew 6:22-23 NIV
If you scroll mile after mile on your Instagram feed because you’re bored, read this:
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. – Ephesians 5:15-16 NIV
Social Media has a very fun side, but also a dark one. On platforms where content is just shown to you without being able to filter the results, it is impossible to skip vulgar or inappropriate posts. People are desensitized to images nowadays. Mocking the church, people getting shot on videos, people suffering greatly from oppression – we look at it, maybe question it a tiny little bit, process it, go on. It has become absolute normality to watch videos that should be unavailable because of sensitive content. With perfectly adapted algorithms, you are no longer just being entertained, you are also being influenced. So listen to this:
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. – Proverbs 14:12 NIV
Just to bring it to the extremity – addiction to social media means putting it before God. If Snapchat is more important than your relationship with God, you have another god than God Almighty. If the first thing after waking up is checking your phone for 15 minutes, it is a sure sign that social media is an idol in your life. Therefore:
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. – 1 Peter 5:8 NIV
The enemy loves seeing you turn from our God to a stupid phone. He enjoys every second where you let yourself be influenced by negative thoughts. He even adds to it. The enemy wants you to go down. He hates to see you worship our king, so he tries to keep you in this dark place full of negativity and insecurity. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10 NIV). Jesus wants you to have life to the full. He is the source of living water. He will comfort you in times of grief and sadness. He will give you rest in His presence. He will bless you with peace and wisdom if you need to solve a problem. But it is YOU that has to make the second step. You have to seek His kingdom and His righteousness first (Philippians 4:11) so that you may be given life in abundance. 1
Devotional 🙏🏼
I’m going to leave the prayer to yourself today. Whether you want to let go of your phone addiction, ask for God’s help in the eye of a storm or just murmur a thank you to God your Creator for his never ending-grace, this is the time and place to do so. Play some instrumental worship on your headphones or speakers, and seek His face. Dwell in the house of the Lord for a bit, it is literally life-changing.
Be Encouraged 👑
I don’t know how you feel right now, so I can’t really meet you right where you are. However, be encouraged to go through your day with excitement for the gospel. Instead of watching that one Netflix show that makes you feel super hooked, open the Bible App on your phone and listen to the Verse of the Day for two minutes. After I completed my Bible reading plan this morning, I deleted all my social media apps on my phone. Not forever, but just for now. To refocus on the Lord. And if you feel encouraged and called to do so, go for it in very this second.
Be blessed and see you next time,
Nici <3
Bible verses and thoughts inspired by Bettye Nicole. Go read her Bible plan on www.bettyenicole.org.