Social media: friend or foe?
Is a smart phone in the hands of a young, tech-savvy Christian a help or a hindrance to their spiritual growth? Or can it be both? The jury, it seems, is still out.
"Understanding the new media is not easy, and the Church around the globe has struggled with it," says Tony Creech, an instructor of communications and media at Briercrest College and Seminary in Caronport, Saskatchewan.
"Some parts hail it as the ultimate tool for discipleship and evangelism, and some blame it for everything from bad parenting to infidelity."
Either way, there is no escaping the question. Last October, a Statistics Canada survey found that 58 per cent of respondents reported using social networking sites, and that 86 per cent of all Internet users were under 35.
"It's all in how you use it," says Nicole Sivyer, advancement project coordinator at Emmanuel Bible College in Kitchener, Ontario. "If it wasn't for social media, then we'd find something else to be wasting our time on. But a lot of organizations have great discipleship apps that will send you features and ways of connecting with other people."
A lot depends, too, on the setting in which the discipleship training takes place. For colleges like Briercrest or Emmanuel, the level of concern is much less than it is for many Christian camps.
Red Rock Bible Camp in Manitoba's Whiteshell Provincial Park, for example, does not allow young campers to bring their phones with them.
"It's just not the right place for it," says executive director Kim Coursey. "It's well-documented that children don't get out into the wild enough, and social media and video games and all of that are taking the place of that kind of activity in kids' lives."
And unless they do spend the week unplugged, Coursey believes they risk losing out on hearing God speak to them through nature. "I can't count how many people have told me they feel like they step on hallowed ground when they come to Red Rock," he says.
At times, children have been caught with a phone in their possession. Yet often it is the parents who insist their kids defy the rules.
"I did a visioning forum for the Ontario Camping Association," says John Friesen, executive director of Fair Havens Ministries in Beaverton, Ontario, "and one of the things that came out is that it's almost more the parents who are demanding that their kids keep their cell phones, in case they need to get hold of them."
Because Fair Havens is a family camp, it does allow children to hold on to their phones, while placing the onus on their parents to make sure they are used appropriately.
On the other hand, Kaléo, a leadership program run by Briercrest in partnership with Camp Qwanoes on Vancouver Island, has banned social media during class time. "Some of our teachers that go there have seen it as a distraction," says Creech.
But on the Caronport campus, that decision is left up to the individual professors. Some do not allow even the instruments in class, while others encourage using Twitter as a backchannel for students to learn by restating and asking questions.
But Sivyer says her students, at least, have "pretty much caught on that if they're not paying attention in class, they're going to be missing out. So they kind of self-monitor."
For Creech, that is the kind of discernment needed when handling social media.
"Because our spiritual growth depends on more than our interactions with others," he says, "unplugging from any kind of social engagement to spend exclusive time with God has always been a path for growth."
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