Living in the Facebook Generation is dangerous and too much time on Facebook will surely make you dumber, however, what makes Facebook worthwhile are the opportunities it provides for building community. The reason that I am on Facebook is because it helps me to connect with people.
When I speak of building community I mean to communicate that Facebook helps people with common interests to connect. As a Christian, community that encourages me most is community built around the gospel–Facebook can aid us in building such community and it can deter us from building such community. Facebook is amoral–it is neither inherently good or bad. What makes Facebook dangerous is its propensity to swallow us all up into the world of the superficial and distract us from ever using Facebook for the one purpose that makes it worthwhile, namely building community.
Facebook allows us to connect with people that we might otherwise never connect with, it provides an online venue for community on some level to be formed. So to answer my question, yes Facebook does help us build community. Perhaps the more important question would be is the type of community built on Facebook worthwhile? My answer to that question is . . . sometimes. Facebook can be utilized to develop genuine community, it just takes work to do so. However, if we aren’t careful with Facebook, it becomes less a place for building community and more a place to waste time learning random facts about people we never talk to. Simply put, developing genuine, worthwhile community on Facebook takes some work and discipline!
Let me be honest, many of the people who “friend” me on Facebook never contact me again. The vast majority of my “Facebook friends” never talk to me except to wish me happy birthday or perhaps to poke me (which does nothing for me in terms of building community!). It may sound like I am hurt by this–I am not–I don’t talk to many of the people that I “friend” on Facebook ever again either–I know I am a hypocrite (as long as I know the person, I accept nearly every “friend request” I get because perhaps it might be an opportunity to talk to person about the gospel)! However, there are a number of people who contact me regularly on Facebook who I would have difficulty keeping up with otherwise. As a Christian, Facebook allows me to encourage some of these people in their relationship with Christ and vice versa. Furthermore, many of the members/attendees of my church are on Facebook and thus Facebook provides yet another venue in which I can connect with people from my church. I think I have pretty solid personal relationships with these people and connecting with them on Facebook has mostly been encouraging.
Facebook can be a place where people come together and encourage one another. I enjoy sharing prayer requests with several friends on Facebook, I also love to get on Facebook and share a laugh with a number of friends. Many of the trivial aspects of Facebook are funny and worth a laugh from time to time. As a pastor, I am continaully trying to put gospel-centered resources into people’s hands–Facebook provides a unique venue to do so and I am continually trying to use it to do so–that is primarily what I try to use my status updates for.
Finally, I want to say that it is very difficult to cultivate true, gospel-centered community on Facebook because Facebook’s more trivial elements are incredibly addicting. If we are all honest, we would admit that we have found ourselves at times mindlessly reading people we barely know’s Facebook profile only to then mindlessly look at someone we barely know’s photo albums from their recent Family vacation. Or perhaps playing Pirates for 2, 3, then 4 hours at a time (again, its not wrong to play Pirates at times, but if it becomes a replacement of more important things, perhaps its time to be concerned). When I first got on Facebook, I wasted an inordinate amount of time looking at people’s profiles–which does nothing for developing community. However, when I first got on Facebook, I also spent a lot of time writing on my friend’s walls and messaging them and thus cultivating some relationships which are still important to me today.
So, yes can Facebook help bulid community, but if used unwisely can destroy that same community with numerous distractions and a wealthy of addictingly needless information. So if you want to use Facebook to glorify God by building healthy, gospel-centered community, perhaps its time to discipline your use of Facebook. I don’t pretend to be an expert on disciplined use of Facebook, but I have attempted to set some guidelines toward using Facebook wisely. I will post some of these guidelines tomorrow.
[...] to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Drew posts Part 3 (or so) of his series on Facebook, Does Facebook Help Build Community? Basically, he says yes, as long as it doesn’t destroy it. (No Love Yet) Loading [...]
For this topic of Facebook, it would probably help if you focused not so much about the outlet causing the problems but rather the people using the outlet. That way, you tie together the addictiveness of using Facebook as a waste of time (a very real problem) with the faces behind Facebook (the source of the problem).
For example, we could ask: What are our motives for joining Facebook in the first place? Do pastors waste time complaining in their statuses when that time could be better spent talking with laymen in their churches or with other pastors in person? When we go online, do we desire to communicate good news and grace, or lessons of repentance from our Bible studies, or other good things of peculiar grace, in such a way that people are edified even if they don’t know us personally?
I think with this sort of focus and with these sort of questions, you get people to think critically about their behavior on Facebook in light of the Gospel (as with all of life). My rule of thumb is: The communication outlet isn’t so much to blame as the communicator. That is, I have to bridle my tongue to grace and humility when handling any outlet in life. James 3 really outlines the waywardness of our tongues in our surroundings: “See how great a forest a small fire kindles!” If we understand that, if we see the person rather than the outlet as the source of the problem, then we can probably counsel people about their addictions to outlets like Facebook.
As for the issue of community, my other rule of thumb is that the more “machinated” the communication outlet, the more distant the communication and friendship will be between people. For example, I don’t mind writing e-mails like they were handwritten letters; I’m comfortable writing out the intimacy of old-fashioned handwritten letters either by the letter itself or by my Yahoo account. And in a larger way, the way I speak in person is often the same way I express myself in e-mail or by handwritten letter or over the phone. But other people like to make hard and fast distinctions, and so I try to accommodate them on that, based on the apostle Paul’s desire for reaching all types of people in the first book of Corinthians: To those under the Law, he became as one under the Law; to those not under the Law, he became as one not under the Law. You learn to reach people where they are in their lives, based on your own grasp of contentment in Christ.
And so, even though I’m fine with speaking the same way across different types of communication outlets, I recognize that people like hard and fast categories. So my rule of thumb on creating community with people and discerning different communication outlets is this: The greatest level of intimacy and community is face to face, and the lowest level of intimacy and community is between machines.
So for talking with people, the biggest priority I make for intimate communication – and going down a list here – would be: First, person to person, then telephone, then handwritten letter, then e-mail, then iPhone, then Facebook, then Twitter, and then AIM. (This is not a hard and fast list, by the way.) But you can see as the list goes down, the level of kept intimacy goes down too. And that works for the different distances of relationships you’re trying to build: some missionary friends overseas want you to keep in touch by Facebook or by handwritten letter, other friends in your home church only want face to face contact. And you learn to adjust to people’s preferences along the way, making use of all communication outlets in your keeping of communion with God and with your fellow brethren.
[...] that has the potential to make us all dumber. I have also noted how Facebook, if used wisely, can help build community and enable people to connect in significant [...]