Is social media evil?
It is a nice question. Those of us Catholics who take seriously the call to become missionary disciples need to pose it and at least confront the ways social media frustrates efforts to spread the Gospel and build a Catholic community.
Let us look at three specific problems with social media, all of which are related.
First, social media defeats the kind exchange of ideas that democracy requires because it makes silos of the like-minded only a click away.
Posters want to get “likes” more than they want to make an argument or, still more, challenge conventional wisdom. This feeds persistent polarization.
The second real problem with social media is the way it dumbs down discourse by focusing on style at the expense of substance. Photos and videos work well on social media, but they do not lend themselves usually to pondering deep thoughts.
The third problem with social media is that it democratizes arguments but never curates them.
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Michael Sean Winters, where this article originally appeared.
