Redeeming Technology, Part 2: Community
Technology has forever changed who we do (and do not) communicate with.
After establishing a foundational Christian perspective of technology, I wish to turn attention to those areas where technological progress is yielding human regress. What are the most significant negative consequences of our technological age? The first I will address is the collapse of community.
Statistically speaking, rates of loneliness have reached epidemic proportions, and subsequently, so too have depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicide. Even the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently declared our social isolation a public health emergency.
What is happening to us?
I want to suggest that technology has fundamentally reordered human relationships in a profoundly detrimental way. Not on the surface. Ironically, technology promised to break the boundaries of community, which it has in many ways. However, we are discovering that the boundaries we have forsaken were necessary for community to truly flourish.
What is technology’s impact on us relationally? Relationships have become effortless, limitless, narcissistic, voyeuristic, tribalistic, and are therefore increasingly non-existent.
Effortless
Human beings are created in the image of our triune God, which means we are intrinsically relational. God is one in essence yet in three in person, which means God has forever existed in perfect fellowship within Himself. And we who are created in the image of God bear this indelible attribute. We are relational beings created for community.
However, the human experience has been corrupted by the fall, and how we do relationships is now fundamentally flawed. The flaw is that I am no longer a selfless relational being but a selfish one. By nature, I seek to take rather than give. But the Trinitarian community is based on selflessness, not selfishness. Each Person of the Godhead gives, but in turn, each likewise receives. There is a big difference between receiving and taking. In the former, you enjoy that which you have already extended to another; in the latter, you demand that which you are unwilling to extend.
True community patterned after the Trinity is only experienced via selfless giving, not selfish taking. This means there is always a built-in cost to community. But having turned inward by the corruption of sin, we naturally don’t want to bear that cost. We much prefer taking to giving. Do you know what technology, specifically social media, has done? It gives us what we desire, the veneer of community without the built-in demands of relationships.
Relationships are difficult. You must invest time, earn trust, demonstrate kindness, express interests, and, yes, have actual conversations. Intimacy has always carried an inherent cost. But now, with a simple search, I have bypassed hours of effort and am entirely “let in” on your life. Your vocation, hobbies, opinions, family, vacations, heck, what you ate for dinner (still trying to comprehend food pics)—I can scroll through your life in a matter of minutes.
Therefore, I no longer must bear the burdens of time, commitment, awkwardness, conversations, social norms, pleasantries, and so forth. Historically, Relationships demanded a lot of us, but these costs were necessary for relationships to flourish. Now, these selfless costs have been bypassed. Hiding behind the safety and convenience of our screens, relationships have become effortless, which, in turn, is making us utterly inept at authentic community and its demands.
Limitless
Consider how many friends and followers you have on social media, or how many contacts you have in your phone. And even those not digitally connected to you can easily find and contact you. Surely, you recognize how unsustainable that is. Access to us now has no limits, which means we are untenably stretched thin relationally.
Historically, we were constrained by natural physical communal limitations—our town, neighborhood, social circle, etc. This kept the scope of our attachment within a manageable range. The research of Robin Dunbar resulted in the “Dunbar Number,” which argues humans have the capacity for 150 personal connections and deeper intimacy with 30-50 people. According to a Biblical worldview, this is because we are limited creatures possessing limited capacity, time, energy, and so on. But technology has created an ever-growing and unmanageable supply of people with access to me.
Don’t you feel overwhelmed? Don’t you feel like your time is demanded in an untenable way? Don’t you feel like you’re always letting someone down? An email, a text, a message—there are endless demands we vainly try to meet, while relationships in our life that truly need attention are neglected. Technology has made us available to everyone and everyone available to us, but this is not the way we are made to live, certainly not flourish.
Narcissistic
Sin always yields self-obsessed. The fundamental flaw of fallen humanity is that we naturally assume the world revolves around us, or at least desire the world to revolve around us. But one of the beautiful benefits of community has always been its ability to wean us off ourselves and recognize the presence and preferences of others. But our technological lives do not draw us out of our self-obsession but reinforce it.
Consider the platform of social media. It’s disturbing that we so casually use the word platform without pause, but that is indeed what our online lives are. Social media is not community; it is consumption. And what is consumed is the intoxicating thrill of attention. We have created a world with a built-in audience that we constantly try to impress. Facebook calls them friends, which is laughably deceptive. They are not friends but spectators. At least the newer versions of social media are more honest, calling them followers.
We are not making friends or enjoying community. Instead, we are amassing a following that possesses the social media currency of attention. Within the only attention economy, we don’t exchange money but notifications. Thus, the mechanism of social media is inherently narcissistic. We have created a virtual world that does revolve around me, which is precisely what our fallen nature is craving.
Voyeuristic
What’s interesting about social media is that we are simultaneously on the center stage of our platform and the audience members of other platforms. You see, the flip side of narcissism is always voyeurism. If I am self-obsessed, I become obsessed with others, but not in a good way, in a competitive way. A narcissistic fixation is likewise fixated on how one measures up against the competition.
We often find ourselves endlessly lost in the details of others, many times people we don’t even know. But we are not viewing them through the lens of love. Instead, we voyeuristically peruse to envy those lives we covet and glee over those lives we condemn. But these sinful tendencies cannot be the basis of community because they are intrinsically divisive and relationally harmful. Despite how it is marketed, social media is not a space for friendship but for competition. Thus, we are lured into voyeuristically stalking our competitors in a zero-sum game for supremacy.
Tribalistic
The way our individual quest for supremacy manifests communally is we want those like us also to obtain supremacy. The history of sinful humanity is easily summarized as my tribe over your tribe. But again, when technology was limited, that tribal instinct was countered by the presence of real people different than us.
However, we have now created a reality that is almost exclusively tribal, because our it is shaped by algorithms that reinforce our tribalism. The algorithms that dictate what we consume view us as the product, and tribalism is a lucrative business. Therefore, our online existence is controlled by a very precise artificial intelligence able to deliver content (both real and fake) based solely upon the gut-level tribal instincts that control us.
What is fed to you loves what you love, hates what you hate, celebrates what you celebrate, fears what you fear, and rarely, if ever, contradicts your tribal commitments. Simply put, we exist in a digital echo-chamber.
But community according to God’s design requires us to renounce tribalism, certainly not cultivate it. But my sinful design for community is simply me. I only want to fellowship with people like me, which, in essence, is saying I only like me. This is a denial of the diversity in unity modeled within the Trinity. However, the algorithmic model is not diversity but uniformity. We are essentially fellowshipping with ourselves, which is isolation not friendship.
Non-existent
If technological community is effortless, limitless, narcissistic, voyeuristic, and tribalistic, then I conclude that community is increasingly non-existent. We come to the great irony of our technological age. Though it promised to be the great breakthrough in relationships, it has become the very demise of relationships. Paradoxically, social media has given rise to the loneliness epidemic. Sometimes, I feel the need to cite statistics, but the research is so overwhelming and indisputable that I don’t need to bore you with it.
Besides, you know it. You feel it. And you certainly see it in your children and grandchildren. Friendless, socially isolated, insecure, anxious, depressed, suicidal—it is a public health crisis. Nearly 1 in every 4 of our youth say they do not have a single friend. How is that possible? They have hundreds of friends online. The answer is that social media is not friendship. All of it is counterfeit, a cheap imitation of intimacy.
It is so obvious, yet nobody seems to notice. None of this is real. You are not with a person; you’re with your phone. That is not a real face with authentic expressions; that’s an emoji. You are not talking; you’re messaging. All of it is counterfeit. And though we may not notice this obvious fact, we most certainly are feeling it. We are a society with happy online lives who hate their real lives.
In follow-up postings, I will offer practical wisdom to combat this crisis, but allow me to conclude with a word of hope into the bleakness. To our friendless society, I proclaim a Savior who is a Friend of sinners. His parting words followers, “No longer do I call you servants…I call you friends.” The God of the universe wants to be your friend as well. Not because Your carefully curated online life fools him. He is not fooled. He sees all that you hide from your followers. But in the greatest news, the one who knows it all still wants to be your eternal friend. Even more, in the ultimate act of friendship, Jesus dies for the friends he loves. May the friendship of God fill the void we are vainly trying to fill with our counterfeit communities.