It's time for social media to go. I think at this point, we've run the experiment long enough to find out that what little benefit it provides is far out-weighed by its detriments. I don't know him very well but John Podhoretz had a fantastic thread on X (yes, I see the irony) discussing this very topic. He writes,
"Here's the danger of social media. It allows people to publish their internal monologues. Our internal monologues and fantasies are often incredibly ugly. People go to therapists because they feel so guilty about them, and one of the tasks of therapists is to explain that thoughts are not actions. You can rage in your thoughts about your brother, or someone at work, even fantasize about them dying -- but you have done nothing and are guilty of nothing, and you need to forgive yourself and learn how to calm yourself down. [...] Since 2007, people have a means of externalizing that interior monologue and this means something. A researcher at MIT saying, rather than thinking, "I really want to see that video of Charlie Kirk dying again because it works better than my anti-depressant" has become a public act. I see it. I am affected by it. This public discourse is too. My sense of how the world works and what people are really like undergoes a change. I become rageful, and believe people who think this way are evil. It's likely they are not. They just have a means of externalizing the parts of them that no one ever saw.
But another human tendency, the tendency to extrapolate from individual samples to the whole, kicks in as well I will assume that anyone and everyone like that MIT researcher is an enemy of everything good and is unsalvageable. In that way my world shrinks. The part of him that dehumanizes Charlie Kirk and turns his assassination into a joke then threatens to dehumanize me in a way. And seriously, before social media, I would never even know he existed, or that he thought what he thought, and that was better for him and me."
"Has become a public act". That's the part of social media that bothers me. If God had intended for us to communicate every idea we have come through our brains, He would have created us in a way where there is no gap between brain and mouth. Instead, He created with the ability to self-censor...to self-reflect...to NOT say everything little thing that comes to mind. I believe that's intentional. Afterall, scripture says, "Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." And also in Proverbs, "When words abound, transgression is inevitable, but the one who restrains his words is wise. What the righteous say is like the best silver, but what the wicked think is of little value."
I'm seriously considering deleting my social media (I really only use X/Twitter at this point) and would encourage everyone else to do the same. Not only does everyone not need to hear my thoughts (especially my more reactionary ones), but I also don't need to hear theirs. It'll be better for all involved.
