SOCIAL MEDIA - While social media can be a tool used with good intentions, it is can also be filled with an overwhelming amount of hatred and strife. There is a dark side to it and it is the posting of emotions and thoughts that are not proper to be posted. Prayerful people are usually not the ones that are posting and ranting on social media.

Speaking life through social media

Susie Larson

While social media can be a tool used with good intentions, it is can also be filled with an overwhelming amount of hatred and strife. 

Brady Boyd helps us understand how the change in our behavior and processing of emotions has lead to this outcome.

“Social media has replaced journaling. It used to be that when we had these angry thoughts we would sit down and write them in our journals, now we just post it on social media. It has literally become real-time, digital journals.”

 “They would write their deepest thoughts, fears, struggles, hurts, or aggravations. Nobody does that anymore, now we just post it on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter and so we have these real-time, digital diaries and we all now know the deepest, darkest hurts and secrets of everyone.”

Unfiltered emotional outbursts are littered across social media platforms and it’s become normal.

 “At least the diary was a filter, a place to vent to get it all off your chest before it went public. Now we go straight from an emotion to public. We have an emotion and immediately we go public with it and we’ve lost all of our filters along the way.”

“We feel like we all have not only a duty, but a sacred right to post all of our emotions on social media and when emotions are running high like during an election, it’s not good for us to read and to try to absorb all of the emotions that are coming from the people that we follow, it’s just too much. It’s emotional overload for people to hear that much pain coming off social media pages.”

When all we see is pain coming from social media pages, it staunches the flow of genuine relationship.

“I love social media, but there is a dark side to it we have to be aware of and it is the posting of emotions and thoughts that are not proper to be posted.”

What can we do if we sense we are caught in this social media trap?

Brady says the solution is simple.

“Holy prayer produce Holy words. If we don’t see prayer as a divine and holy moment of conversation with God than we’ll never get our words right. It’s the holiness of private prayer, where God gets control of our words. Prayerful people are usually not the ones that are posting and ranting on social media.”

Key Scripture:  Proverbs 12:18 English Standard Version (ESV)

¹⁸ There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

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Brady Boyd is the Senior Pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

http://myfaithradio.com/2017/speak-life/