Am I living a curated life?

Lately, I have been reading a lot about the widespread use of technology, different platforms and the potential problems of prolonged use. I used to teach school, and I can’t imagine trying to teach now, competing with phones for attention, and trying to create a learning environment for my students. Now, raising kids who see my phone, their friends’ phones and other electronic devices everywhere they turn, I am thinking through a lot of things. Some of my thinking concerns my own usage of electronics, my phone and other devices, and also how all of this is influencing how I live. The joke in our house is that we have personal agents who are “helping” us on our phones by sending personalized ads, prompting and finishing our replies in texts and emails, and even suggesting what we should name our kids: thanks Siri!

Of particular interest to me right now, is social media. I call it unsocial media, since I think it trains us backwards from having meaningful, real connections with actual people. I believe this unsocial media can slowly cause us to disconnect from reality and become a type of disembodied personality, living in a fantasy land. I further believe we are all being discipled by social media, whether or not we have an official account. Even if I may choose not to have an account, many of the people I am around do engage on social media platforms. I have seen it be a terrible time-suck and these wasted hours add up to equal huge chunks of our lives: GONE. One of the most unsettling effects I see, is that people are beginning to think of life as a type of social media feed, and they are curating their personas, picking and choosing which part of themselves they will present to those around them, adapting to the people and circumstances they find themselves around. I know that some of this curating is normal; before I leave the house, I change from my pajamas, and fix my hair. However, what I am witnessing is that we are becoming inactive participants in our own lives, passively choosing to be pushed around by outside forces and algorithms. Rather than taking an active interest in our own well-being and development, we are constantly taking ‘polls’ and checking for ‘likes’, and hitting the ‘record’ button to preserve certain interactions. It’s almost like we can’t be bothered with the real hurts and messiness of living in a broken and fallen world, because it lacks novelty and entertainment value, and requires engagement and possibly painful reflection. Trading our soul to the electronic overlords is done subtly, of course, just one log-in at a time, a scroll through here and there until hours of our lives are missing and we find we’ve missed an entire season of life with our family or friends.

As a Christ follower, I am appalled at what I observe in myself and others. I am not an avatar. I was not created to live in a 2-dimensional space. I was created with a body, soul and spirit. I occupy time and eternity simultaneously. Our descent down the entertaining social media hole is reminiscent of the story of the Israelites. God chose them, not because of anything in them, but because of Himself. Then, He commanded them to be different. He showed them a new and unique way of living. He wanted to be their God and He wanted them to be His people and He wanted them to stand out from the other nations. If you’ve read the story, you know how that turned out. They failed. Despite repeated chances, warnings and do-overs, we see that the people could not fulfill their obligations. They turned to false gods, and slowly began to blend in with their surroundings. However, even their eternal Enemy knows their beginnings, and throughout history, he has singled them out for particular persecutions. The solution God gave was Himself, as Jesus, walking this earth differently. Fully man and also fully God, He tuned Himself to His Father and accomplished living a perfect, distinctly unique life. He met the Holy and required standard He set forth in the law. Then, His death was different, too. It appeared He was doomed to death on the cross, and that would be it. However, He didn’t stay dead. He rose again to be seated in eternity at the throne of God, but also to offer the gift of His peculiar life to anyone who believes on Him.

Once my life is placed in Christ, and His life in me, I should be different, too. There should be something shocking, a type of dissonance about the Son of God walking this earth in me. I should stand out somehow. And yet, everywhere I go, I catch myself wanting to blend in, being enticed and trapped by the myriad offerings on this temporary earth. In every place, I measure up the situation and the people, and I am tempted to become a chameleon in order to be accepted, noticed more for my blending technique, rather than staying myself whatever the consequences. It’s like I’ve quit having a body to express my personality uniquely, and I am allowing my soul to flow unhindered through the atmosphere, randomly sharing bits of myself with other people, and then flowing by them for the next ‘like’, taking whatever shape I think the circumstance may call for. Behind the scenes, I frantically tread the water of superficial living, keeping every interaction light and airy, always striving to be nice, rather than genuinely kind. I shudder to speak the truth in love and risk appearing mean or harsh. Controversy among my ‘followers’ could lead to unfollowing, negative reviews, unfriending. What then? This kind of living is exhausting, for what will happen to my beautifully curated life if it is found wanting and unapproved by the judges I have appointed? What if all the clicks and likes diminish, and I must find new ways to bolster my approval ratings? It leads to a cat and mouse game of discontentment and lies. I live in fear of being found out, much like the wizard of Oz. Who is the one behind the curtain?

Are you catching on, precious reader? Even though I have no social media account of my own, I can adopt the language and understand the gist of how unsocial media works, simply by observing my friends, other people, the news reports and my own search for information. It is a pervasive and wide-spread phenomenon, and if we are not watchful, we are enticed by the behaviors and adaptations of others without realizing our slide into a fantasy world. You have a very real enemy, and he will use the things of this world to steal your affections, disconnect you from the importance of eternity and lull you into false security.

What are you becoming?

I remember when I was younger, and adults tried to discourage me and my friends from making ugly faces. They would warn us with, “If you do that enough, your face will stick that way!” For a while, the warning may have worked, but in reality, we just learned to make faces when adults weren’t around. It’s called behavior modification, and it’s still happening around us today. Usually, this modification is dictated by those with authority, who can apply pressure on us to conform to their acceptable image. Sadly, those adults in my childhood were right, in a way. When I look in the mirror now, approaching 5 decades of this life, I see deep furrows in my forehead. Apparently, your face really does stick that way. My raised eyebrows have cut permanent lines in my face, showing the world how I’ve spent my time. While this connection can ring with humor, what do you think unsocial media or your entertainment choices are doing to you? I would say that somehow, you are bearing the evidence in your soul, and you will be found out. If I am constantly tuned into a flickering screen, that image will be projected into my temporary reality, but also begin to shape my thoughts of eternity. I will begin to filter real, human interaction as if it was simply a feed or a channel to scroll through. Nothing interesting? Swipe to the next feed or short and be done with that one. Can you feel the tragedy? I’ve heard the clamor of my soul wanting to fed more drivel, and yet, in the stillness of morning, I hear my starved and undernourished spirit whisper the truth. I was made for real relationship. My spirit longs to know the deep things of God, and thus receive His comfort for this unpredictable, storm-tossed life. By receiving His comfort, I am able to overflow with His abundant provisions to those around me in real, meaningful ways. My interaction must be at the spirit level to offer them substance and truth. I must get past their own carefully staged persona and find who they are beyond that beautiful, filtered profile pic.

My precious reader, I encourage you to put your entertainment and unsocial media habits before your Father and ask Him for His direction. Is your real self being replaced by a 2-dimensional avatar? Is your thumb developing arthritis from all the scrolling? Are your neck muscles shortening and causing you back and shoulder pain because of your constant looking down at your phone? What is happening to you? Have you seen the pain in your neighbor’s eyes lately? Do you catch the sadness in her voice? Or are you longing for a more entertaining character to flit across your screen? Have you unknowingly lost an hour of your life by scrolling? These are hard questions, and yet we must ask them. We must allow our Father to make His mark on our lives in order that His difference may be seen and felt among the worldlings. As I click on more of the suggestions that pop up on my screen, am I really shaping the algorithm, or am I becoming what the algorithm is making me? Our interaction with the electronic world is costing us something valuable, and yet it is sneaky, persistent and subtle: a hidden cost. Don’t let your life become mundane and dictated to you by your previous likes and clicks. Take heart, lift your head and live your full, beautiful life in real time before your Maker and this lost world. Allow Him to direct your paths, looking fully into the faces of those around you. Offer your messy, unedited reel to the broken people around you, and show them boldly how our Father redeems everything. There is hope, and He resides in you.