Thinking Christian about Social Media (and Technology) with the Surgeon General

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this bonus episode of Thinking Christian. This week and on Monday, June 17th, the Surgeon General wrote a guest essay in the New York Times titled, Why I'm Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms. And the Surgeon General, whose name is Vivek H. Murthy, wrote this article in response to what he sees as a problem that is a growing issue amongst adolescents. He actually put out a mental health advisory on social media, I think it was sometime last year, and I'll also link that in the show notes as well as a piece that I wrote in response to that, sort of interacting with some of those ideas. But this is a really important moment. When the Surgeon General is calling for warning labels on social media platforms, he's doing so because what he's seeing, what he's recognizing, is that social media is, like cigarettes, let's say, something that is not good for kids, not good for adolescents. And so he cites these statistics in here, and he says, adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours. So if you're spending more than three hours a day on social media, you're facing double the risk, and the average from summer 2023 was 4.8 hours. So we're well above the average. Additionally, nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies. And so he details a lot more of these problems in the mental health advisory, which again, I would encourage you to read. He also advocates for more than just a warning label. This is not something where he's suggesting that we just stick a warning label on social media and that will solve the problem. Even in this guest essay, he talks about the various different levels and practices that we need to put in place in order to protect our kids. Now he does mention at the end of the article, he asks this question, I'll just read straight from his article here. Here's what he says. Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes, or food? These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting. They are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency, or accountability. I agree. I think that, yeah, to some degree, is willpower involved? Sure. To some degree, is parenting involved? Yes. But he's not denying those things. What he's saying is that we have unleashed this on ourselves, that this technology came on us and nobody really understood what it was, how it was going to affect kids' brains. We put it out there and just decided to see what was going to happen. Now we're seeing what's happening and we need to come back and adjust. Now what I would argue is that this is the case for any technology. And while I don't think that every technology should come, let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. for the warning label, I do think that the way we're implementing and adopting technologies is going to lend itself to this sort of situation occurring over and over and over again. You know, if we were in a situation where we were just releasing drugs from drug companies without any testing, without any oversight, without any accountability, we would probably have a slew, a lot more negative side effects from those things than we would under our current system. And so there's a sense in which taking the time to think through what these technologies may do to us and putting some safeguards in place, taking a harder look at how these things are intended to influence our brains, which you've seen a lot of that out there now, that social media was designed specifically to change our behavior, to take advantage of the way that we end up thinking about rewards and consequences and all of those various things. That is not to say that the social media companies were, you know, evil people twisting their mustaches and trying to hurt adolescents. I don't think that's the case at all. But what I do think is that the way they approached this was certainly intended to influence the behavior of users and that in and of itself should have been questioned. So we've got these platforms, we've got these technologies. But again, what I would argue is this. This is not simply about social media. This is just what he's addressing. My argument would be that it's every technology. And while it'd be easy to kind of jump over and talk about AI, I'll link a few of the episodes that I did. I've done on AI in the past if you're interested in my thoughts on that. But I actually want to go back to something slightly different and talk to us as Christians about how technology really does influence the way that we interact with one another and how important it is for us to take a step back and try to think through what are the implications of implementing or adopting new technologies en masse so that we can better understand how to deal with these things as we go forward. So just take something like the technology of the car. You know, I remember growing up and I would watch Little House on the Prairie on TV. And whether that's really true to life or not, I couldn't tell you. I'm not really astute on that arena of history. So we're going to take a little history lesson from Little House on the Prairie. But if any of you have ever watched that show, it's about a time prior to cars. They had steam engine trains. I think cars probably came in in the later episodes. But most of the time people are traveling by horse. They're traveling by horse and buggy. They're walking. And so even the farmers who are, you know, doing their thing out in the field, they have to be able to walk to the various services that they would need. The smaller industrial and community events needed to be in a local area. And so you have a small church in Walnut Grove where Little House on the Prairie is largely set. And it serves as both the school and the church on Sundays. And the community that goes to church goes to that church. There's not a whole lot of other choice. It's not like you've got another one 15 minutes down the road. 15 minutes down the road for them was probably, you know, a much longer journey. And so you're going to go to that church. You're going to be part of this community. And being part of that community and going to that church lends itself to a certain level of accountability. A certain level of accountability of simply being known and being visible within that community. So now flash forward to where we are today. We have cars. It's easy for me. I live five minutes away from my church. But we looked at churches within about a 20-minute radius. Now, even though I live five minutes from my church, I don't know anybody who is in my little sort of cloistered subdivision where I live. I don't know anybody in the subdivision that also goes to my church. They might be there. I just don't know. Because the dynamic is that we all hop in our car on Sunday mornings. We drive to the church. We attend the service. We can participate in church events and those kind of things. But I may never run into somebody who's going to the same church I am simply because they've opted to go the other direction. In other words, we've allowed sort of our ability to travel and the technology of automobiles. I'm not saying that it's evil. I'm saying it's had an impact. I'm saying it's had an influence on the way that we do community and the way that we think about our church congregations. And so as we're reading through and we're thinking about this plea from the Surgeon General, this call from the Surgeon General to put warning labels on social media programs or platforms, what I would also just encourage us to think about is the ways that these technologies, technologies of all sorts, change the way we interact with one another. And they do act back on us.

various ways that sometimes we're not noticing and giving those, you know, attending to the ways that they're doing that is actually really important. We have to understand how, as technology gives us different abilities than we had before, what is it that we're leaving behind? What is it that we're losing? What is it that we're going to set aside that we may not even intentionally set aside, but it's just going to be a consequence now of the new capabilities we have. We have to think through those things and we have to... Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. To continually circle back to re-evaluate what are these technologies doing to us, what have we lost because of them, also what have we gained because of them. And so it isn't that I'm advocating that we view technology in a wholly negative way. I think that's a dangerous perspective to take, quite frankly. I think it's an unnecessary stance to take. What I'm encouraging us to do is to think about what does it mean for us to be human? What are those quintessential marks of humanness that we need to be stubborn about giving up and that we need to fight to keep? And as technologies come our way and they threaten to change or to strip away aspects of that humanness, what are we willing to do to keep them? And so all I would suggest is that this can be a bigger conversation about technology, a bigger signal that maybe some of the technologies we're using are changing us in ways we don't really want to be changed. And we need to ask ourselves these questions and then begin to think about what sort of changes we could make on the micro and the macro levels to really drive us back away from a technologically driven society and a technologically driven people because as Christians, we're not supposed to be imitating the world, imitating the culture or following after some technology, letting some technology determine who we are and what we do. We're supposed to be imitating Jesus Christ. And so I just encourage you to give that some thought. Give the Surgeon General's call for warning labels on social media platforms a read. I think he does a fantastic job with it. I really appreciated everything that he said in this article. And I also will link to his previous work, his mental health warning that he put out last year, which is also quite important. And I think he did a great job on that article too. So I would encourage you, if you're interested in this topic, check out some of those links, take a look at some of this and give some thought to what it means, how technology has changed us, what has it allowed us to do so that we are missing out on things that we'd rather not miss out on. There are benefits and drawbacks to everything we do. And as a friend has always told me, you know, whenever we make a change, change always comes with loss. And so if every change comes with loss, we need to understand what that loss is and make sure that the change we're making, as we make it, we're not losing something we don't really want to lose. Hey, that's all we have for today on this bonus episode of Thinking Christian. I put these out periodically on Fridays just to give you all a little bit of a glimpse into some things that I feel are significant that have come out during the week and that we need to be thinking Christianly about. So hopefully this was helpful. As I said, take a look at the various articles you've got the weekend, check it out, and hopefully you'll see you back on Monday for a weekly devotional on Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Relationships, mental health, work, family. Life can feel complicated, but you're not alone. I'm Shanti Feldhahn. And I'm Jeff Feldhahn. On I Wish You Could Hear This, we share simple, proven, and sometimes surprising secrets from decades of research to help you thrive in life, faith, and relationships. Want real stories? Real help? Real fun? And real hope? Listen on lifeaudio.com or follow I Wish You Could Hear This on your favorite podcast app.