Monk or Missionary: These are the only options now.

Everyone I know who has deleted their social media has seen their life dramatically improve within three to six months (or, as a friend of mine corrected me, “Try three to six days.”). Once they get through the detox period, the cravings for dopamine subside, and the phantom buzzes vanish, people consistently find that their anxiety lessens, their mental capacity increases, their relationships strengthen, and their overall quality of life is better. I don’t know a single person who has deleted their social media and concluded that their life is worse because of it.

All you have to do is read The Anxious Generation to see that the data regarding how social media negatively affects us is crystal clear. Just to pull one stat of many, since 2010, anxiety has risen by 52% in people ages 35–49, 103% among ages 26–34, and a staggering 139% among ages 18–25. Haidt makes the definitive case in The Anxious Generation that this increase, along with many other equally shocking statistics, is due to social media — the fountainhead of our mental health epidemic.

It’s Time to Reconsider

This alone should make every single person at least pause and consider their relationship with social media. Being a casual social media user is far more damaging than it is beneficial. Casually using social media, mindlessly scrolling through videos or tweets looking for entertainment or pretending it’s making you more informed than it actually is, is not a neutral option. If you are not in control of your social media, social media will be in control of you. And your life will be worse off for it. Why would you subject yourself to a worse life, poor mental health, weak relationships, and a number of other damaging factors just to watch a few mildly funny videos? Count the cost.

Should you delete your social media right now? Not necessarily. I think it’s possible to be on social media and not lose your mind (not to mention your soul). But I’m increasingly convinced that most people should delete their social media and the ones that stay must adopt a more active posture toward it and not allow themselves to become a passive user that is subject to the whims of the algorithm. Both groups, those who stay on and those who get off, must practice the fruit of the spirit of self-control. 

It seems to me that there are going to be two dominant postures toward social media moving forward, both legitimate and both necessary. They are monks and missionaries.

Digital Monks

Digital monks are not luddites. They do not eschew every technology. They have iPhones, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, and more. But they do abstain from social media. Digital monks get little to no value out of social media. They don’t believe that keeping up with some high school friend they haven’t talked to in 10 years is worth the toll social media takes on their day-to-day life. 

Being off social media doesn’t meant they are passive, either. It just means they are active in other, more substantive ways. They realize that most of the news they find on social media is a distorted view of reality and would rather either be happily ignorant of every single hot-button issue or get their news from slower but more reputable sources. They understand that wisdom rarely, if ever, comes from content they see on social media, so they dig deep wells for themselves by reading books instead of skimming the surface of a constantly refreshing feed of posts. They know that their closest relationships will never be the people they only see on their screens, but the people they see at church, live down the street from, and invite over for dinner.

Digital monks trade followers for true friends. They invest locally. They develop deep relationships, connect people together, organize hangouts, practice hospitality, and serve their church. Their measure of success is no longer reach, but depth. No longer posts, but people. No longer likes, but love. Digital monks are not passive, but active in their church, their community, and the development of their own person and spiritual life.

Digital Missionaries

The second group is digital missionaries. Digital missionaries are not the opposite of digital monks. They, too, measure success by their local community, depth, people, and love. But they also see the internet as a mission field, and they are tasked with reaching it. Whether that’s writing, a podcast, a YouTube channel, or any other digital medium they can devise, they create content in order to reach those who have been sucked into the internet’s distortion zone.

Because the reality is that many, many people are sucked into it. They’ve developed internet brain and lost touch with reality. Their mental health is in rapid decline and they’ve been raptured to cyberspace. Who will reach them? Who will help them find the truth? Who will share Jesus with them?

The digital missionary volunteers as tribute. They believe they have something to offer and the skills to do it. They knowingly step into a dark place in order to bring light there. They believe that it’s possible for God to reach someone through the internet in such a meaningful way that it can change their life, push them back into reality, into community, into a church, and set their soul on a new trajectory. It can save them—in more ways than one.

Yet just as a missionary has a sending church, so, too, the digital missionary rooted and grounded in their local church. They live in thick community, their content is held accountable by their elders, their online presence is open to feedback from their friends, and their local life takes priority over their digital life. They don’t use social media like everyone else, mindlessly scrolling for entertainment or anxiously keeping up with every breaking news story. They have parameters set around their social media use. They hold themselves to a high standard of rules for engagement. They actively practice James 1:19 and are “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” They don’t create content that plays to people’s fears or clickbait to maximize views. They conduct themselves with honesty and integrity in their online content, even if it slows their growth compared to others.

To the Mission Fields and Monasteries

Digital missionaries are desperately needed in our digital age. But just as a few people in a church are set apart and trained to be sent overseas, so too, there needs to be a few digital missionaries who are set apart and trained to reach the internet. Everyone needs to reconsider their relationship with social media and decide what their posture toward it will be. If I were to put a semi-arbitrary percentage to it, I would say that 80 to 90% of people should consider deleting their social media and becoming digital monks. For the other 10 to 20% who are digital missionaries, they need to work to deepen their relationships, strengthen their roots, and define their rules of engagement. 

I believe adopting these two postures is going to be critical for the church in the digital age. We need healthy Christians. We need healthy churches. Social media is actively sabotaging both of those things. It’s time we redefine our relationship with social media and control it — and ourselves — more than we allow it to control us. I don’t see any other way forward.