The Information Age is absolutely a golden one, in my opinion. It has turned the entire world into one, big neighborhood.
And isn’t that the whole thrust of Christianity anyway? Loving your neighbor as yourself? Despite its known challenges, the Internet is still the best tool we have to accomplish that.
Of course, there are growth pains to it. We don’t always like our neighbor, even if we are supposed to love them. We’re kind of like teenagers when it comes to the Internet. Mostly self-absorbed, maturity levels TBD, sexually-obsessed, with penchants for drama, and ready to do battle.
Framing it this way reminds us that there is a learning curve as vast as the Internet itself to making appropriate use of such a world-changing invention. If we were to describe to ourselves 50 years ago that such an invention was right around the corner I wonder if we would have been able to anticipate that we would treat it the same as most earth-shattering changes? First we would love it, then monetize it, then resent it, then abuse it, then learn from our mistakes and move on. We are mostly in the abusing-it phase at the moment. But we’re learning. I am optimistic that we will ultimately benefit from our present mistakes.
I assumed that sex dominated the majority of the Internet, or at least a large chunk of it. But as it turns out, sex sites constitute only 4%. Social media is actually the largest occupier of the web at nearly 60%. Social media is where we get most of our information, where we connect with friends and family, and get most of our news. Through this medium in particular, we are struggling deeply with the question of honesty, of course. There are virtually no smart guardrails yet in place to ensure it. We’ve seen how the truth gets regularly distorted or manipulated, and lies are manufactured wholesale for the purpose of swaying consumers and voters alike. We have to remain constantly on guard.
So we must become accustomed to fact-checking virtually every claim someone makes online. That is an area where we are sorely lacking. We prefer to believe what we read, despite knowing that the truth is so vulnerable. It is my expectation that truth verification algorithms will eventually help us better sift through untruthful claims. But while it’s certainly already possible to use artificial intelligence as a way to automate the sorting of truth from fiction, lies are still a big money-maker for online platforms. Once that shifts, once people start demanding truth as a consequence of our growing fatigue of online falsehoods, greater use of those algorithms will be inevitable.
My predominant guideline for social media now is to engage with things that make me happy. Of course, I have broken that rule several times and typically regret it. But more often, I take advantage of the existence of already-existing algorithms designed to figure out my preferences and notify the platforms of exactly what I like. I do everything I can to avoid letting them know what I don’t like. That is important.
First rule: Don’t use the angry button. Because social media algorithms favor angry reactions, sadly, because they are still more profitable. The more riled up we are, the more clicks that occur, the more clicks that occur, the more money social media corporations make.
But you don’t have to play into it. You can use that power for good by making a point to click only on what you like and avoid reacting to or commenting on anything that you don’t. That’s hard.
To define for myself what I personally like, I use the concept of joy. If a post makes me joyful, I click like. If it doesn’t, I move on without comment or click. Over time the algorithms have picked up on this trend of mine, and now I see virtually nothing in my feeds that enrages me. When I do, I mostly avoid falling into the trap of including myself in it. Mostly.
This doesn’t filter out real-world occurrences, but it does filter in less hostile tellings of them. Additionally, I will always unfollow, unfriend, or outright block anyone who uses their social media platform to endlessly complain, argue, abuse people, name-call, or express every single thought they’ve ever had. None of that brings me an iota of joy, so I banish them from my online experience.
This practice is simple to say and hard to live up to. But it’s definitely worth it. And it will greatly improve the quality of your life, the friends you make, and the experience you have of an invention so incredible, they named our Age after it.
Wil Darcangelo, M.Div, is a Unitarian Universalist Minister at the First Parish of Fitchburg and the First Church of Lancaster. Email wildarcangelo@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @wildarcangelo. His blog, Hopeful Thinking, can be found at www.hopefulthinkingworld.blogspot.com.
