Does Facebook Trash Talk Mean The End Of Social Media?

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Just before Facebook's IPO, GM announces they are taking their ball and going home, the game doesn't work and they are not going to play anymore. The next week the wealthiest investors, who don't seem to have any idea of what social media is all about, invest in the most anticipated IPO in recent history on a stock market that ironically has technical difficulties. Instead of doubling their money by day's end, they walk away with less cash...way less. By the next week, everybody is an expert and suggests they predicted the demise of Facebook. Really?! Now, as Facebook's stock continues its downward spiral it seems in vogue to declare that people are abandoning Facebook and that the brief era of social media is going the way of chat rooms and dodo birds.

Problem is, I don't think so. At least not for social media.

People intuitively desire to tell others what they are experiencing, and Facebook has been a great platform for doing that. I concede that Facebook traffic is down, but there is not another common platform just yet that the masses are willing to embrace. People migrated en masse from MySpace to Facebook in large part because Facebook was easier to use, and perhaps more socially acceptable for people who were not 16 year old girls. But it does not mean people have stopped using social media tools to get their experiences out.

Case in point, the other night we went as a family along with my wife's office coworkers and their families to see the Sacramento showing of Wicked. If you have not seen Wicked yet, GO...but I digress.  Perhaps because this group is mostly lawyers, accountants and financial planners, society has us on the balcony. Whatever the reason, it is a great place to observe people during the intermission, and observing others is something I love to do. As the break happens, the lights come on and all across the auditorium people are either making a bee-line for the restrooms, checking their cell phones, or in some cases, doing both! It was pretty impressive to see all of those little blue square screens light up across the crowd. People were tweeting, texting and checking messages. Some may have even been posting on Facebook, but I am not sure...no time to ask. The point is, they were all actively engaging in what is otherwise known as social media.

Whether or not it is appropriate to do this while your friends stand around you with their hands in their pockets will be the subject of another post.

Using technology to share experiences with others who are not physically present is social media. Chat rooms went the way of the dodo bird in part because they were too time bound to be a useful tool, and in part because there were too many people you didn't know inserting themselves into personal conversations. This was not good. However, as long as the population is highly mobile, people will embrace the technology that keeps them connected with the folks they care about the most. That is something I do not see changing any time soon.

Don't Step In the Cow Poo!

My parent's were in town this weekend and re-shared a story of a time when my son was about 3 years old and staying with my parents on their cattle ranch. Walking across the cow pasture, Grandma helped avoid the numerous cow pies with a simple warning to watch out for the cow poo. As they zig-zagged across the field, they came to the winter feeding area, one end of which had a rather large mound of cow manure that the tractors had pushed out of the feeding area to clear the ground. What was a fairly disgusting hill to most adults became a Mt. Everest that needed to be conquered in a child's mind. With surprising speed and determination, grandson tore off to climb manure mountain, leaving grandma in the dust with little to stop the horrifying collision of child and poo but a shouting appeal to STOP, DON'T CLIMB THAT HILL!

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Whether it was the shrill in grandma's voice, fear of the unknown or the action of an obedient child, forturnately for grandma, her grandson stopped short of becoming a brown ball of muck. Of course, bewildered, he turned to grandma to ask why not, to which the instructive reply came that the hill was in fact a really large pile of cow poo. Confused, my son turned back to the hill of manure, studying it for a moment before asking a simple question of childhood wonder:

"Was that a big cow?"

Experience is a great thing. From experience we gain wisdom, we develop an ability for insight, and we use it to frame an intuitive understanding of what we are experiencing in this world. In fact, everything we experience for the first time is filtered through a mental filter of past experiences that help us form an understanding, or perspective really, of our new reality. This tool of interpretation happens instinctively, we are not overtly aware that we utilize it. Consequently, it is easy to expect others to have the same intuitive sense that we have. It is easy to get frustrated with people who don't seem to get it.

Social media as an expression of human community is fraught with intuitive misunderstandings. The reality is that early and middle age teens do not necessarily have the life experience (and at times the cognitive ability) to interpret the social messages they are experiencing or understand the rippling social consequences of their own postings. Even though it may feel that teens want their space, it is important for adults to be very aware of their kid's social footprint, being available to guide young people away from the piles of poo that are often present on social media postings.

The best way to accomplish this is to walk these social fields together, being ever available both online and off to provide an additional perspective of the manure mountains.

Blessings on the journey!

Brad

Why You Don't Want A "Social Media Voice" In Youth Ministry

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Looking through an upcoming conference website I noticed a break out session focusing on social media. Of course, this gets my interest as I pretty much always take the time to read such descriptions. Most of these make me angry and this one was no exception.

The thrust of the breakout is that social media exists because the cry of the human heart is for community and this cry fuels further social technological advances. The description sets up a sort of snapshot take of social media, a mere and incomplete reflection of real relationships. The story is the same as many of these types of sessions: we as a society do not get the community that we crave and so we have set up these complicated computer mediated networks that simultaneously attempt to connect us yet safely keep us at arms length with each other. The answer is to simplify our lives, yet not abandon social media completely because there is a need for a Christian voice in this medium.

Let us not abandon these poor digital souls who do not know any better but to engage in empty relationships. Let us take pity on them and tell them instead there is a better way. Let us be a voice to the lost, let us draw them to our blogs so that we can be encouraged by our stats and the multitudes will know the truth and be informed that what they really want is a non-virtual relationship.

Yes...that paragraph is dripping with sarcasm.

The problem is that we are so conditioned by entertainment we use this as a background to interpret what is happening on social networks. By doing so, we limit the impact of social media to how many followers we have, and measure significance by audience. Consequently we completely miss the ministry point, and conference organizers continue to throw away precious Kingdom resources because we do not understand why our young people's smart phones are an extension of their arms.

Social media does not exist because people deeply desire community, social media exists as an expression of community. It is a place where people tell those they have a relationship with what is going on in their lives.

The primary motivation to joining a specific social networking site is friends. The biggest technological change efforts in the social media landscape is not how to build the largest audience, but how to segment your friends into relational circles, so that you can interact with only the group you intend to. Bringing a voice to this is like yelling in a digital wilderness. Additionally, teens are bombarded with so much data they cannot possibly take it all in. We do not win by merely contributing a voice to that onslaught of data. We win by being a part of a teen's offline network so that our online interactions are an extension and reflection of our existing offline relationship.

We win by listening to what people have to say.

Which leads me to wonder, how do you decide which voices to help navigate the social media wilderness do you listen to and why? How do you evaluate them?