By Ricky Altmiller
“Social media. It’s just a tool, right? It is not bad in and of itself. The issue is how you use it.” But what if social media and cultural influences are having a greater impact than we realize?
We have all been there. Seconds turn into minutes, minutes turn into hours, and down the inevitable rabbit hole we go. We fall into a digital information and social spiral that takes us places we never thought we would go, landing in a foreign metaverse. We spend vast amounts of time on clicks, videos, articles, and reels, ending up in an unknown realm. Everything looks the same but feels very different. Sometimes we come out feeling discombobulated and other times we come out feeling empowered and enlightened. Most Generation Z teens (born between 1999 and 2015), many of whom are in middle school and high school, take this journey multiple times a day.
The Battle of the Mind
The primary battle zone resides in the mind. This makes sense, as the mind is the communicator and controller of all aspects of our bodies. Control the mind, control the body. In Genesis 3, Satan proposed a thought of doubt or distorted truth. The serpent said, “Did God really say?” Eve confirmed the statement, but Satan replied, “You will not certainly die.” It was at this moment Eve shifted from a foundation of truth to a foundation of a perversion of truth. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened” (Genesis 3:1-7, New International Version).
Is this not the same spiritual war we are facing today? Satan’s conniving ways have not changed. Teens are engulfed in a culture and landscape the Barna Research Group describes as “Digital Babylon.” This is where we find ourselves as we attempt to make disciples of teens who will also make disciples.
When we think of spiritual warfare, the spectrum can run from subtle questioning of truth to the extremes of demonic possession and Satan worship. All are prominent in our culture and world. We need to be prepared to face all fronts. But the broader, more detrimental impact on our teens today is psychological manipulation through social media platforms. Here is where culture, politics, fluidity of truth, pornography, misinformation, greed, and so much more collide.
The Impact of Social Media
Based on a Gallup Poll conducted in 2023, “on average 51 percent of teens use social media on various platforms for at least four hours a day.” The other 49 percent use social media less than four hours a day. This amount of online interaction is also accounting for the extreme increase in the mental health pandemic that has hit our teens. Researchers and mental health professionals have traced this spike to the year 2010. What is significant about this year? Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, marks the year 2010 as the beginning of the “phone-based childhood”. This is a period when children, including adolescents, began growing up with devices that connected them to the internet. He also describes what he calls “the Great Rewiring” that took place between 2010-2015. He asserts that teens, when they are not on social media, are still thinking about it. “It has enormous implications for cognition, addictions, and the wearing smooth of paths in the brain (not the decision of a rational consciousness), especially during the sensitive period of puberty.”
This is scary when viewed alongside Romans 12:2, which says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” No wonder we have confusion over truth, over identity, over purpose, and much more. This is a massive spiritual attack on our teens that continues today.
Around that same time, social networking platforms evolved into social media platforms. Facebook had just introduced the Like button. In The Social Dilemma, a 2020 Netflix documentary, the co-inventor of the Facebook Like button, Justin Rosenstein, said, “Our entire motivation was, ‘Can we spread positivity and love in the world?’ The idea that, fast forward to today, teens would be getting depressed when they do not get enough likes, or it could be leading to political polarization was nowhere on our radar.” And yet, here we are.
Intentional Design
A spiritual battle evolved over the course of the next decade. In The Social Dilemma, Tristan Harris (former design ethicist for Google and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology) and Tim Kendall (former Facebook executive and CEO of Pinterest) describes the motivation for all of the social media platforms to compete against one another for your (the user’s) attention. How much time can they keep you engaged with their platform? How much of your life can we get you to give to us (the platform company)? Joaron Lanier, computer scientist and the founding father of virtual reality, describes it as “the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product.”
The observations and information from the documentary are coming not from leading Christian experts, but from people who helped create aspects of the system. They give no indication of any religious affiliation. Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, is a professed atheist. Our minds and our teens’ minds are simply seen as a multi-trillion-dollar market. The methods social media platforms, advertisers, and market strategists use to extract that money from us include behavioral and psychological practices. Their goal is not just to get a consumer to like their product, but to control their mind by consuming their time, thoughts, and interests. Teens are already battling the culture of performance in sports, academics, and clubs. Youth ministers often hear that teens do not have enough time to be involved in midweek or weekend youth group gatherings. Somehow teens have discovered an additional four-plus hours every day to dedicate to social media platforms that are not concerned about their spiritual growth in Christ.
Not all social media and technological advancements are bad. Many of them have incredibly positive cultural and sociological implications. For example, teens can search information more quickly for school papers and projects. However, they’re also able to connect directly with pornography, hate groups, the occult, and other nefarious opportunities. Social media platforms were designed for connecting people. Yet this online connection rarely leads to positive developments for teens. The church needs to awaken to this realization.
Practical Steps
How do we guide teens to engage culture without being overwhelmed to the point that, as James might say, they look in a mirror and do not recognize themselves? The church can guide them by joining them on the digital battlefield and equipping them with the spiritual armor described in Ephesians 6. Each church will need to wrestle with their own strategic approach to protect and equip teens for this frontier, but here are a few ideas that may help.
Inform families about various technologies and the effects of social media platforms. Teach the cultural impacts and help guide parents toward emerging cultural trends. Collaborate with your local community to provide training for parents of teens. Involve local police to discuss the challenges and dangers of online activity and provide ways for parents to be engaged with their kids in proactive—not reactive ways. Messages to teens should offer guidance on how to navigate digital spaces in a God-honoring way.
Teens should have protected times and spaces to disconnect from devices. Statistics show that teens desire to disconnect. Many may simply need a structured environment for this to happen. The Barna study “Technology Promises Connection, but Gen Z Sees a Paradox,” shows that “though teens largely prefer in-person to online activities, they admit to often spending more time in the digital realm.
Focus more on in-person social engagement. Provide the space for connecting with God and others. Help teens understand the value of face-to-face relationships for development, especially spiritual growth. Digital discipleship will never replace face-to-face discipleship. Providing opportunities for teens to connect without tech nurtures the interpersonal skills necessary for discipling peers. I wonder how differently youth groups would look if group members had more disconnected times from their devices?
Encourage teens to use their skills and knowledge in the church. Here is where churches can lean into digital spaces. Launch teens on a cultural campaign to use the system for good. Let’s face it, they are going to do better at this than most youth ministers or other church staff (unless they’re members of Gen Z). The more content that is created to draw people to Christ, the more this will influence algorithms to change for the better and specifically guide people to Christ! How amazing would it be if we activated Gen Z teens to flip the script on the system and instead of having their minds rewired by the system, they rewired the system for Christ?
Help teens understand how their time on social media affects them. Explain how algorithms make predictions based on the information gathered by every click, video, and post they access. Teens also need to understand that they can be targeted by groomers and cyberbullies and manipulated toward products or groups. We also need to show how they can resist the system to grow their own faith or by helping others grow. The most important educational aspect we need to improve is ensuring that our teens know the foundation of God’s Word. Teens need to have a biblical worldview that reflects Christ and his teachings. Each of us needs to build a firm foundation, like a rock, on God’s Word as Jesus mentions in Matthew 7:24-27. Teens need to hear the full gospel truth and to know that it is absolute truth. They need to hear gospel presentations that avoid the “get-out-of-hell-free card” perspective and instead embrace the complexities of redemption, reconciliation, and the new creation. This is best captured by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 when he says we are ambassadors of Christ called to the restoration and reconciliation of this world. This culminates in the new heaven and the new earth that Christ will establish. Teens will rally to this call. This generation seeks purpose and fulfillment. They want to make a difference in the world and that is exactly what we are called to as ambassadors of Christ.
Ricky Altmiller is director of SICOM (Student International Conference on Missions) for ICOM (International Conference on Missions) in Clayton, Indiana.
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