In the age of social networking

Welcome to the New Year. How are you doing with your New Year resolutions? I hope you haven’t fallen off yet? I bet many of us posted our resolutions on twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

About everything we do today goes on social media. From what we are eating at the moment to what we wore to church on Sunday. What happened in our home last night, what is going on in our relationships and marriages, our emotional state at the moment, our newest big ticket purchase. It’s scary!

In our world today, you can practically find everybody on social networks. You have to be on there or you feel like you are left out in the world. You can’t even connect or communicate with some teens these days if you are not on a social network. My brother for example would rather respond to my tweet or post than pick up my calls.

As helpful as social networking is in finding and connecting with old friends, people around the world and sharing information, the evils perpetrated and encouraged are also humongous. We see how people’s lives are being destroyed daily via these social networks. The news is replete with stories of people who got killed after they hooked up with people on Facebook, got lured to a destination, maybe got raped and eventually killed. We also hear of thieves who go on these sites, get all your information and have just enough to rob you effortlessly. Marriages and relationships are not left out. Wives or husbands find an easy and convenient platform to cheat on their spouses emotionally and even physically after a couple of messages, tweets and eventual hangouts with their old boyfriends/girlfriends. Some parents even let social media raise their kids. Recently, a site was discovered where high school girls posted naked selfies. Some kids have also committed suicide after they were bullied by their peers on Facebook. Children no longer feel the need to talk to parents or even socialize with friends and family physically. They’d rather stay on the internet chatting 24/7. Whew! Inexhaustible!

Now, as Christians, where do we draw the line? How much should we be involved in the use of social media? How much of our information, lives and activities should be uploaded to social networks? How can we protect our families from the evils/dangers of social media? How much time should we spend on social networks? I’m waiting to hear from you….