If we are all being honest, we are overwhelmed with information. We are overwhelmed in our inboxes, newsfeeds, and timelines. There is more content there than we even come close to having time to read, and (frankly) most of it isn’t worth our time. That doesn’t mean it’s all “bad.” But it does mean that very little of it ranks with the important things in our individual lives that deserve priority, and it does mean that much of it is not making us more whole human beings. Given the environment of social media overload, I think Catholic communities need to consider how we are contributing to it.
I say this as a blogger and aspiring book author who utilizes social media to share my writing. Writers and speakers like myself feel a lot of pressure (from publishers, ourselves, others) to promote our writing, and by extension ourselves, through social media. It’s the publicist of the 21st century. While it is necessary for us to use it, I’m concerned with the typical use I see. I fear that a significant amount of the content I read, often by highly-followed Catholics and Christians, is contributing to the excess social media “noise.” I call it noise because, while the more substantive writing and speaking of these individuals is highly edifying, the social media content often presents a different persona.
I recently held a local