Social media is designed to massage our minds into comfort, not equip our minds with truth. In fact, our relationship with the social internet and the various kinds of media we consume there often comfort us at the cost of truth. When we let social media take an inappropriate seat of authority in our lives, we let it define truth for us rather than deliver truth to us. We forget, or maybe we never even knew, that our feeds are designed to keep our attention, not inform us. Unfortunately, the kind of content that keeps our attention best is often the opposite of truth, or at least a gross distortion of it.
We must acknowledge the unfortunate reality of “discernment bloggers” here. The social internet has given rise to an entire genre of Christian content creators who brand themselves as some form of “discernment blogger,” which practically manifests as they criticize the theology or practices of ministries with whom they disagree. One pastor I spoke with said that he feels like he must “navigate the troubled waters of false discernment on a weekly basis.” Indeed, there seems to be some sort of belief that if someone makes an accusation online—of bad theology, ministry malpractice, etc.—that there is a burden of proof on the accused to defend themselves against the accusation of the “discernment” blogger(s) who levied the charge. This, unfortunately, filters down into the local church context leading to local church pastors having to weigh in on matters of theology or otherwise that have no bearing on the actual, day-in, day-out ministry of their churches. Ultimately, much of the faux-discernment blogging phenomenon is rooted in a distortion of authority. A pastor in Wyoming who cares more about how many page views his blog receives than the spiritual health of his own church has no authority to write a hateful screed criticizing the theology of a pastor in Texas who is trying to lead his people to better love Jesus. But because such bloggers create conflict, and algorithms reward conflict, their audiences grow and their messages are heard. This is not discernment. It is evangelical tabloidism. It is a circus in which the clowns hold all the microphones.
Discernment is interested in knowing the difference between right and wrong and the difference between what is real and fake. Our relationship with social media hinders our discernment on both fronts. In reality, there are probably about a dozen reasons social media inhibits our ability to discern what is real and what is good, but let’s look at two that are pretty foundational. One basic way social media handicaps our discernment is rooted in the design of the social media platforms themselves. The other is rooted in our relationship with social media, and we’ll start there.
Our relationship with social media creates a content glut that clouds reality and hinders discernment. The pervasive nature of misinformation is one of the modern hallmarks of the social internet. With faster, more pervasive communication and information transfer today than ever before in history, sifting through mountains of data, news, commentary, and all the rest of the content we encounter any given day can feel truly, and terrifyingly, overwhelming. It’s like we constantly exist within a hurricane of information, hot takes, and viral content. We aren’t designed to drink in all the content we consume. As Neil Postman wrote in 1985, “How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television … causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken?”[1] The same question can be asked of social media, our modern means of information glut.
But why is it a problem that we consume such a significant volume of content? What makes that inherently bad, especially in terms of discernment? Because we are overwhelmed with so much content—whether informative, entertaining, or otherwise—our ability to discern the truth and moral value of content is hindered. When we become overwhelmed by the content glut to which we are helplessly addicted, our discernment is fractured and we begin to rely on less than reliable rationales for trusting people on the internet. Postman wrote in Amusing Ourselves to Death, “The credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of truth of a proposition.”[2] He was bemoaning this sad reality, not endorsing it, and it has perhaps never been truer (like so much of what Postman wrote in Amusing Ourselves). One of the crutches we use in our attempt to discern reality while drowning in content is shared identity.
Older internet users are usually assumed to be the most likely to fall for misinformation on the internet for all the same reasons that scammers target the elderly. Though it is a bit prejudicial to assume older people are more prone to fall for misinformation online, the logic that young people are more likely to be internet-savvy and able to dodge misinformation traps is sound. In 2021, Jennifer Neda John, then a sophomore at Stanford University, wrote an article for MIT Technology Review about why Generation Z has become particularly prone to falling for misinformation. Without naming Postman, she recognizes a twenty-first century manifestation of his lament that whether we believe something is true is determined by the person communicating the information. She writes:
As young people participate in more political discussions online, we can expect those who have successfully cultivated this identity-based credibility to become de facto community leaders, attracting like-minded people and steering the conversation. While that has the potential to empower marginalized groups, it also exacerbates the threat of misinformation. People united by identity will find themselves vulnerable to misleading narratives that target precisely what brings them together.[3]
When we are faced with an insurmountable mountain of information and related opinions, we tend to just trust people who look, think, or live like us. Sometimes this may lead us to the actual truth, but often it will not.
Another way our information overflow problem hinders discernment is by making fact-checking a nearly impossible enterprise. The whole idea of most social media platforms, especially quick-hit ones like TikTok or Instagram Stories, is to consume lots of short content for as long as possible. YouTube’s strategy tends to be built around keeping you on the platform to watch longer-form, minutes-long content, but TikTok and other platforms deliver you content that is often less than a minute long as quick bites to be consumed in large quantities. Where baby boomers and other older internet users may be more prone to be deceived by dis- and misinformation on platforms like Facebook, younger internet users are more prone to be led astray on platforms like TikTok and YouTube—and quick-hit video disinformation is notoriously difficult to thwart.
In the same way that a soccer goalie would have a difficult time evaluating and blocking penalty kicks if a dozen of them were kicked at him all at once, our ability to discern what is true and what is good is hindered by the waterfalls of content we attempt to drink every time we scroll our favorite feeds. In this way, we are responsible for our lack of discernment. We can become so information-drunk that we don’t know what is real anymore. Our unquenchable thirst for more content blurs our understanding of reality and can lead us into any number of intellectual or moral ditches.
But we aren’t the only ones to blame. The trouble is that the actual social media platforms themselves spread sensationalism at the cost of truth, and this makes it even easier to succumb to a lack of discernment.
Social media platforms spread sensationalism at the cost of truth. As we just explored, social media platforms deliver us so much content in such a short period of time that it is often difficult to discern what is real and what is not Compounding that problem is the reality that one of the primary ways social media users are provided with engaging content is through a share or retweet function that causes content to spread across social networks at lightning speed. On Facebook it’s the “Share” button. On Twitter it’s the “Retweet” button. Other platforms also have their own ways of perpetuating their content, but these are the two most prominent to be sure. The ability to share or retweet content on our preferred social media platforms is vital to the platforms themselves because it creates conversation around content, or to put it another way, it creates social media. Unfortunately, social media users are more likely to share untruth than they are truth.
A 2018 study by three MIT researchers found that false news stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories are, and that true stories take about six times longer to spread to 1,500 users than do false stories.[4] Brandolini’s Law is an internet term that states that it takes exponentially more energy to refute false information on the internet than it does to create and perpetuate it. Someone has said, “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”[5] But why does false news and misinformation spread faster on social media platforms? Here’s a quote from the press release for the MIT study:
“False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information,” says [Sinan] Aral, who is the David Austin Professor of Management [at MIT]. And on social networks, people can gain attention by being the first to share previously unknown (but possibly false) information. Thus, as Aral puts it, “people who share novel information are seen as being in the know.”[6]
Misinformation is novel, and it’s often quite sensational, which is much more entertaining and fun than the boring, old truth. We don’t need an MIT study to understand that a piece of content claiming the president of the United States has had secret communications with aliens about their pending invasion is more likely to go viral on social media than a story about the president of the United States having a conversation with a leader of a foreign nation about their joint efforts on climate change. We long to be entertained, and one of those stories, truth aside, is far more entertaining than the other. And lest we forget or get sidetracked, this is not just a matter of what is true or false, right or wrong. Spreading dis- and misinformation is a spiritual issue. If we as Christians become known for perpetuating incorrect information—intentionally or unintentionally—this will negatively impact our gospel witness and reflect poorly on Christ.
The way social media platforms work is that the content that spreads the fastest is dependent upon what social media users decide to like, comment, share, retweet, or express interest in by clicking buttons of some kind. Unfortunately, misinformation gets a lot of engagement because of its sensationalism, which means it gets perpetuated by the social media platforms and lands in others’ feeds, leading them to possibly be duped by it.
How this process hinders discernment in the people you pastor, parent, or otherwise lead is quite clear, I’m sure. As we use social media we come face-to-face with a flood of content that may or may not be true, and we sadly use less than ideal thought processes to determine whether or not we trust a piece of information. Often in our disoriented state, drowning in information, we are more likely to believe content that comes from people we trust or content that tells us what we want to hear. This leads to being deceived by misinformation, which can send us down the proverbial rabbit hole and may impair discernment in more areas over a long period of time. Likewise, we should consider how our ministries’ social media strategies factor into this problem. Are we contributing to the content glut that people face online? Is there any way our ministries’ social media strategies could better support social media literacy and discernment online?
Pastors, church leaders, parents, and anyone else involved in discipleship need to be aware of this phenomenon.
Chris Martin is a content marketing editor at Moody Publishers and a social media, marketing, and communications consultant. He writes regularly in his Substack newsletter, Terms of Service, and author of Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media (B&H, 2022), and The Wolf in Their Pockets: 13 Ways the Social Internet Threatens the People You Lead (Moody Publishers, 2023). Chris lives outside Nashville with his wife, Susie, their daughter, Magnolia, and their dog, Rizzo.
[1] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 68.
[2] Bid., 102.
[3] Jennifer Neda John, “Why Generation Z Falls for Online Misinformation,” MIT Technology Review, June 30, 2021, www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/30/1026338/gen-z-online-misinformation/.
[4] Peter Dizikes, “Study: On Twitter, False News Travels Faster Than True Stories,” MIT News, March 8, 2018, news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308.
[5] Various attributed to Jonathan Swift, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, or Mark Twain, among others.
[6] Dizikes, “Study: On Twitter,” (emphasis added).
The above section of text is taken from chapter 5, “Foster Discernment,” from Chris’ book The Wolf in Their Pocket: 13 Ways the Social Internet Threatens the People You Lead (Moody Publishers, 2023). Used with the author’s permission.