Social media is a gift, but it comes with a dark side. How can we use it wisely?
In his new book Terms of Service, Chris Martin helps us think through the blessings and challenges of living in a social media world.
Chris Martin is a content marketing editor at Moody Publishers and a social media, marketing, and communications consultant. He writes regularly in his newsletter, Terms of Service. Chris lives outside Nashville, Tennessee with his wife, Susie, their daughter, Magnolia, and their dog, Rizzo.
I was happy to talk to Chris in the latest episode of the Gospel for Life Podcast.
Key Ideas
- We live in a social media world. It is impossible to avoid in today’s culture.
- The solution is not necessarily to delete our social media accounts, because that would not solve the challenge. Instead, we must learn how to survive the challenges of social media.
- The social internet goes beyond social media companies. It’s ubiquitous.
- Many of us aren’t thinking about issues of privacy as we trade our personal information for the privilege of expressing ourselves.
- The social internet promises us the love and affirmation we all desire.
- Web 3.0 may help move us from a few centralized companies, but will not overcome the issues around human depravity.
- To use the social internet wisely, slow down before adopting new technologies.
Quotes
“My primary charge is never delete your accounts.”
“There’s no way for us to live outside of social media at this point. It’s really difficult, if not impossible, to live outside of the influence of social media, and it’s increasingly that way.”
“We provide so many of these platforms with countless gigabytes of our data, and our data is what makes them billions of dollars. And I think a lot of us don’t understand the gravity of the trade that we have made of our personal information for the ability to express ourselves.”
“Attention is the currency of the social internet.”
“I just have too robust the theology of original sin and human depravity to think that giving everybody a little bit of power is necessarily going to be better than giving a couple of large companies most of the power.”
“Individually, I think we just need to slow down in our quick adoption of these platforms.”
Episode Links
Books mentioned:
- Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Transcript
Download a PDF transcript of this episode.
