What Would Jesus Tweet?!

An interesting question was posed to me yesterday, wondering if I thought Jesus would use social media.

Hmm, good question. He certainly is all over the Internet already.

bradley howell

Though we don't have any evidence that Jesus himself wrote anything down, he consistently referred to and used the stuff of everyday life. Yes, I think its quite possible that Jesus would use social media as a way to connect with those in his relational circle.

So, what would Jesus tweet?

Who knows!

Whatever it is, it would embarrass his family. They would try to get an insanity order to take him off.

Jesus probably would not repost stories that implied if you were a real Christian who was not ashamed of your faith, you would pass this to everyone you know.

Instead he'd probably post: you have heard it said_______, but I say_________.

The religious establishment would likely try to use his own words against him.

After spending time alone in prayer, he would text Peter to send the boat over to pick him up. Then walk out to the middle of the lake just to freak him out.

The look on Peter's face would have made a perfect mobile pic status update! Judas would probably be the first to 'like' it.

He would probably turn his phone off when he was with other people, in prayer, or when it was just time to sleep.

He might enjoy videos of kids doing cute kid things.

I can imagine Jesus tweeting bits of the sermon on the mount. I don't imagine him taking a picture of 5 small loaves of bread and two fish with the post "Dinner for 5000".

Well, maybe if it had a cat in it...

What about you, do you think Jesus would use social media? What do you think Jesus would tweet?

When To Make Sure You Say 'Goodbye' Online

© Rhphotos | Dreamstime.comBe

Among social media users, younger teens are the most likely to filter online interactions only from their own perspective of reality. They have little capacity to view life from another's shoes without being prompted to do so. Additionally, they use their new found Internet independence to gather positive interactions with people they know online - they are very in tune with whether interactions would suggest you like them or not. Consequently, more than anyone else in your SM network, younger teens are the most likely to get a sense that they have been ignored online. This seems to be especially true of younger females, but there are plenty examples of young men that are quick to send an IM the moment they see a green icon light up online and looking for affirmation from you.

Teens reaching out to you online is a great thing - it reveals that they value your relationship. Using social media to reinforce relationships with younger teens in your life is good for them - it helps build 'social capital' - an important ingredient on the journey to adulthood. The reason they view the interaction pretty much only from their definition of reality is because they are concrete thinkers. It goes with the territory. So, when the conversation needs to be wrapped up (and it would practically never end without a pop up video of a dancing kitten), it is an important practice to concretely end the conversation with a solid 'good-bye'.

And, for good measure, why not throw in an emoticon? Everyone loves to stick out their tongue when they get the chance...no?!

  

R U An Inadvertent Cyber Bully?

Have you ever left an app with instant message abilities open on a different tab or even different window? Then you might have been a cyber bully perpetrator and didn't even know it!

© Andres Rodriguez | Dreamstime.com

This is common practice for many of us to have multiple tabs open online at the same time. Some of those tabs are open to social media sites like Facebook that have IM features to it. No big deal?

Well, probably not, unless you have any early adolescents as part of your IM contacts.

Cyber bullying is most prevalent among younger teens. More than half of teens who have experienced cyber bullying in the past several months are most likely to report that the form of bullying was by being ignored online.

That's right...being ignored.

This can happen intentionally, but it can also happen accidentally. Early adolescents tend to be concrete thinkers, they take the world at face value - everything is what it appears to be. Mr. Bean is a caricature of this. If they want to IM with you and your online icon is lit up, then subconsciously to an early adolescent you are available.

But if you are not? The lack of response is unnerving to a young person.

However, there is hope!

If you have a habit have using multiple tabs, make sure your message alerts are activated. If you are going to be away from your computer for a while, take the time to log off any IM enabled sites. Finally, teach younger teens and pre-teens to understand that a lit icon does not necessarily mean another person is there. They can understand this, they just need prompting. Also, teach them to be aware of how their icons may appear to their friends. This learned behavior can vastly reduce the number of perceived cyber bullying incidences.

How have you seen misunderstandings happen online because people were not physically sharing the same space?

Using Social Media To Connect Extended Family

© Swaminathan Narayanan | Dreamstime.com

Social media is a great tool to connect extended family with each other, especially considering the distances that often separate grandparents from grandchildren and cousins from each other and their aunts and uncles. The good news is that many teens think social media helps them stay in contact with extended family too. 


For extended families that travel together, one idea is to setup a family event page. Because the anticipation of the trip can be as much fun as the trip itself, a page like this will gain momentum quickly. Encourage those going on the trip to offer lodging, meal and activity ideas. Large groups tend to go back to the same place as they have been previously, so post some old pictures of past trips and links to new experiences. Tap into the cleverness of that crazy uncle who knows all the weird trivia to create games or contests, and then award winners at family gatherings. Use it during the trip as a place to post gathering times, locations and contact information, and encourage teens especially to post videos and pictures capturing family memories. 


Every family has their story, creating a place to gather memories and anticipate new ones will build connections both across and between generations.


How is your family using social media to keep connected with those you don't see regularly?

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!

© Serghei Starus | Dreamstime.com

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

© Amritanshu Singh | Dreamstime.com

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?

What is the Floating Entourage Project?

The Floating Entourage Project is an effort to equip adults to utilize social media as an aspect of developing healthy adult-adolescent webs of relationships. This serves as a part of my final project for the Doctor of Ministry degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. As part of that effort, I am seeking Sacramento area churches that would be willing to host a seminar for parents and those who serve youth who are concerned about teen social media use. The seminar could be done in a single, 2 hour evening event or over two Sunday morning sessions. For the beta groups, there would be a pre and post survey as well as opportunities to share experiences in an online community. Please let me know if you are interested in participating.

For those seeking more ideas to connect with youth online please feel free to check back here often and participate in the discussions around how young people are using various social media tools. It is my hope that these blog postings serve to point you in the right direction and that your participation will help me understand how others view teen use of social media.

If you are interested, would you please take a few moments to fill out a survey before exploring this blog, and again after using it for at least a 4 week period of time? Thanks for you help, you can access the surveys here:

Pre-blog Survey

Thank-you for joining with me in this very important project,

Brad
March 20, 2012