Stop Scrolling. Social Media is Stealing Your Life.

Feature by Meredith Broadway

If not restrained, social media can (and will) suck up our God-given margins

When do you find yourself tempted to check social media? I’ll bet it’s as Dr. Seuss says so famously, “in the waiting place.” Waiting for grocery checkout, for school to let out, for the conference call to start, the pot to boil, the game to begin, the laundry to buzz, the dog to go out. We all have waiting moments in our days and many of us are using these marginal moments to scroll our feeds. 

We can feel a sense of personal entitlement over marginal time – almost as if these short moments don’t fall under Jesus’ lordship. But the Bible says otherwise. Ephesians 5:15-17 instructs us to look carefully how we walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time. The best use. Is social media the best use of our time – even our marginal time? 

How many conversations have been lost in the public square because our eyes are cast down into the glow of our screens? How many grace-filled moments have been given to parents with their children only to be squandered by interrupting notifications? How frequently have we neglected sharing a smile or cheery hello with a fellow human being face to face in trade for posting heart emojis or like thumbs? Melissa Kruger writes in “Social Sanity in an Insta World:”

“Time is a limited resource. Once it’s lost, it never returns. Unfortunately, social media dulls us to the world around us. We may sign on to quickly check one notification and end up still staring at our phone 30 minutes later…And there’s nothing wrong with checking in on social media occasionally. However, it’s also good to recognize that during these ‘waiting moments’ I could pray, text a friend, chat with the person in line beside me, or allow my mind a moment to rest.”1

Marginal time is still time and if not examined, these moments could be lost to a digital space that may not leave much of an impact on eternity.

Social media overuse dulls our capacity for deep work

When’s the last time you sat down and tried to focus on something that required deep concentration? How would you compare your ability to focus now with your ability 10 or even 20 years ago? Our phones are constantly interrupting us and much of that is due to social media: a like on Facebook, a snap, a DM on Instagram or for the youngsters, a reminder to “Be Real.” Little alerts are always popping up and stealing our focus. Apple knew their users had a problem because in 2021, they added a “Focus” option to their devices that allows users to disable notifications and calls for a predetermined amount of time.

Why does this matter? Well, it turns out, our brains don’t like to be constantly interrupted. Early this year, there was an interesting article in the science section of the online newspaper, The Guardian, where the author conducted several interviews with professionals who study attention problems. Here is a small excerpt of his conversation with a neuroscientist that demonstrates how constant interruptions, like social media notifications, impact our ability to do deep work:

“Prof Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained…to me. He said ‘your brain can only produce one or two thoughts’ in your conscious mind at once. That’s it. ‘We’re very, very single-minded.’ We have ‘very limited cognitive capacity.’ But we have fallen for an enormous delusion. The average teenager now believes they can follow six forms of media at the same time. When neuroscientists studied this, they found that when people believe they are doing several things at once, they are actually juggling. ‘They’re switching back and forth. They don’t notice the switching because their brain sort of papers it over to give a seamless experience of consciousness, but what they’re actually doing is switching and reconfiguring their brain moment-to-moment, task-to-task – [and] that comes with a cost…your brain has to reconfigure, when it goes from one task to another…your performance drops. You’re slower. All as a result of the switching.’” ((1      https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/02/attention-span-focus-screens-apps-smartphones-social-media))

Why should we guard ourselves against interruptions to work? Because we were made for work, good work. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). We should protect and harness our God-designed brains to do good work in whatever profession we find ourselves in. Imagine the vast amounts of creativity, deep-thinking, ingenuity and innovation that has been lost to the pacifier of social media and other digital distractions. As Christians, we must steward and protect our minds.

Social media taxes our emotions

We’ve all experienced scrolling through pictures of puppies, first-day-of-school smiles, engagement portraits and funny memes when, BAM, seemingly out of nowhere, comes a post about a hot-button issue that rips us out of the saddle. One aggravating post by someone we barely know has the potential to raise our heart rate, tense our shoulders, inspire rage, signal depression or tempt us toward retaliation. The Gospel Coalition conducted a social media survey to see what emotions users experienced while on social media. Their findings? Users reported feeling irritated, angry, afraid, jealous, lonely, isolated and (dead last) … happy.2 What’s at the root of all this negative emotion?

One reason for these negative reactions may be because social media platforms tend to reduce super complex and nuanced topics to over-simplified emotionally charged one-liners. Simply put, there are conversations being had on social media that need not be. Issues like abortion, gender dysphoria and racial equality are big topics that demand more than a hundred characters. When engaging with tough topics, it helps to be able to read facial expressions, hear voice tone and read body language. 

Two, technology has connected us more than ever. Avid social media users know intimate minute-by-minute details about friends, acquaintances and even strangers. So not only are we receiving over-simplified opinions on complex issues from our closest friends, but we are coming face-to-face with the inner thoughts of people with whom we have no real-life relationship. With the average person scrolling 300 feet, yes feet, of social media posts a day,3 social media consumers are emoting (often quite strongly) to massive amounts of information.

Proverbs reminds us to guard the heart for everything we do flows from it (4:23). To guard the heart means to give prayerful thought to what comes in because it invariably affects us. The wise Christian on social media will take stock of how much content he is consuming and think about how he can “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).

Social media can turn us inward and wayward

Go to any restaurant, concert, theme park, ball game or even youth group meeting and look around at the people there. You will notice something quite prevalent – people on their phones. To be sure, humans now, on a large scale, experience life through their devices. With shoulders hunched and eyes cast downward, this phenomenon is absolutely changing how we interact with other human beings.

Stephanie Greer, in “Social Sanity in an Insta World,” writes “perhaps the most problematic way social media affects our relationships is by promising connection while simultaneously pulling us away from the connections we already have.”4

We go to ball games with friends, out to eat with our spouses, to a theme park with our children and struggle to put down our phones. Even when we find ourselves in ideal relational settings, we tarnish it by turning away from real life and inward toward our carefully crafted digital worlds. We can “fancy ourselves omniscient or omnipresent” but the reality is that God has made us finite – to be “fully present where God has placed us.”((“Social Sanity In An Insta World,” Jen Wilkin, p.47))

There is also a high potential for social media to serve up content that can lead us wayward. With strong algorithms and marketing dollars at work, users are lured into highly customized and tailored content that may lead them down dark paths. Pew Research reports the following: “Nearly all the content people see on social media is chosen not by human editors but rather by computer programs using massive quantities of data about each user to deliver content that he or she might find relevant or engaging. This has led to widespread concerns that these sites are promoting content that is attention-grabbing but ultimately harmful to users – such as misinformation, sensationalism or ‘hate clicks.’”5 We must remember, when using these powerful tools, that this is happening behind the scenes of our feed.

Social media requires a thoughtful approach

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Cor. 6:12). If you are feeling mastered by your phone, you’re not alone. While some can use social media to the glory of God, many of us just aren’t. Many are held captive to the notifications, streaks, hearts and comments. If this is you, then I implore you to give your habits a hard look. Pray that God would reveal the good and the bad of social media use and ask yourself the following questions:

Just how much time am I spending on social media?

In what ways am I using social media that glorifies God?

Do I often trade social media for time that could be spent engaging with people?

Have pick-ups and notifications interrupted times of concentration?

What kinds of content am I crafting?

What emotions am I experiencing when I scroll my feed?

Am I pointing to God or to myself?

What are my goals with social media use?

Who can keep me accountable? 

Don’t let social media steal your life. Prayerfully discern its place as a tool for relationship building and ministry but do so with open eyes. May God give you great wisdom in navigating social media use for we know that our days are numbered and there is much work to be done.

Meredith Broadway serves as Media Coordinator for ACGC in Charlotte, NC. She is wife to Matt Broadway, Appalachian Region Superintendent and mom to two teens, Elias and Lillian.

Meredith Broadway, “Stop Scrolling. Social Media is Stealing Your Life,” The Advent Christian Witness, Winter 2023

  1. “Social Sanity In An Insta World,” Melissa Kruger, p.71 [↩]
  2. “Social Sanity In An Insta World,” p.56 [↩]
  3. https://www.netnewsledger.com/2018/01/01/average-person-scrolls-300-feet-social-media-content-daily/ [↩]
  4. “Social Sanity In An Insta World,” Stephanie Greer, p.98 [↩]
  5. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/11/16/algorithms-in-action-the-content-people-see-on-social-media/ [↩]