I like Facebook. I think most everyone does. It seems like everyone is talking about social networks; movies are being made, books and endless articles are being published and there seem to be hundreds of Christian Conferences explaining how to use this tool to reach the lost. I like Facebook, I'm just concerned. At the risk of being trendy I've written some of my own thoughts on Facebook.
As a Youth Pastor I'm concerned with how high school students use Facebook as well as their parents. It seems to me parents are not completely tuned in to what their teenager is doing on facebook. Girls are posting half-naked pictures of themselves with their friends. Guys are sexually harassing most female "friends" and/or bullying weaker people and leaving threats on the walls of others. Continually high school students post things on their wall that they would never say in "real life." They have a difficult time differing from their "online life" and their "real life." Unfortunately parents have no idea what their teenager is posting. I'm certain many of them would not be proud of their teens online activity. Many parents say they don't want to "invade on their child's private life." Really? Is that really good parenting? I'm not so sure that it is. In a worse case scenario a teenagers private life is where they hide their drugs, drink their alcohol and experiment sexually with others - not necessarily with the opposite sex. Not wanting to invade a teenagers private life is like believing that what happens in Vegas actually stays in Vegas. Its never a good idea.
As a younger 20-somethings adult, I'm simply concerned for my generation. I've noticed our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. I'm finding it more difficult to stay focused on something long enough in order to complete it. For example, I tried reading a well written 2 page article this morning and couldn't do it without my mind drifting off into lala land thinking the article would have been better if he would have simply added more pictures and made bullet points. Maybe its just me, but I don't think it is. I think as a society we are struggling to focus on things that matter, things of substance. We want our information to include a few picture and 160 characters. To prove my point, I'm willing to bet that people reading this blog post won't make it to the end. If they do, I'm betting that they skip a lines along the way. Let me know how you did!
Lastly, I'm concerned that our culture is becoming more self-centered as we attempt to portray ourselves better than we really are. I leave you with a quote from this mornings article, "A self-image controlled in much the same way corporate brands are controlled. Complete with pictures, videos, songs and most of all, metrics-the number of friends we have, the kinds of friends we have the kind of associations we have. We endlessly noodle, refine, create and consume a digital projection we want others to see. However, we are rarely what we project... The problem is that in real social settings, there are limits to what we can hide. At a certain point, people intuitively see through us." They discover what we really are; our flaws, our weird attributes, and our nervous twitches. Its time consuming to create a perfect image of who we want to be. The problem is that we and others are let down when they discover who we really are.
I'm not against Facebook, I like it, I'm just concerned...
