Unfriend Yourself (Part 1)

I was planning on starting my 2011 top 10 today.  I enjoy looking back on last year’s past mercies and giving thanks.  But yesterday I ended up starting a short book and reading it in an hour. I wanted to spend some time sharing about some things that I felt God convicting me on in that book, in hopes that maybe it would stimulate others thinking in the area of relationships, communication and social media.  So for the next couple of days, I am going to be sharing some quotes and thoughts from the book Unfriend Yourself by Kyle Tennant.

Lest you think I am some sort of speed reader, this book is very short. It is an introduction, three chapters and an afterword. And it is meant to be read over the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) as you take a three day break from Facebook. But since I already logged off of Facebook a few months ago, I decided to just read straight through it in one sitting.

And you should also know that it is not a book that is trying to make you feel guilty for using social media or telling you to shut down your Facebook page (just as I am in no way condemning anyone for using any type of social media or think you should choose the social media I use). This is what the author ends the book with:

My hope in writing this book is not that people would unfriend themselves indefinitely, closing their profiles and ending their accounts. My hope is that people would say farewell to what we’ve allowed Facebook to create—a new kind of social and intellectual environment that encourages false intimacy and feigned friendship.

My hope is that we would be a people who remember what it is to live in the flesh, to dwell face to face with each other, and to live virtuously online.  My hope is that we become a people who remember that we are created in God’s image, and so created as a community (“male and female he created them”).

My hope is that we become conversers, listeners, huggers, hearers, smilers, lookers-in-the-eyes—friends, essentially.

Tennant, Kyle (2012-01-01). Unfriend Yourself (Kindle Locations 736-742). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

I picked up this book mostly because it is offered free for the Kindle right now. I saw it on the Gospel eBooks feed (by the way if you are a Christian with a Kindle (app) you really should follow this feed for free and cheap books!) and thought the title was fabulous. And when I finished a book yesterday on my Kindle and saw how short this one was, I decided to take some nap time to read some of it…and ended up finishing it. I also have Tim Challie’s book The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion in my “on deck” reading so I figured I would immerse myself in looking at technology from a Christian perspective for a bit.

I thought this book was very well-written and thought out, especially for a guy who was writing his first book at age 23. And I was really encouraged because much of what he wrote was exactly why I shut down my Facebook after much deliberation. And I was even further encouraged that it is a good think to think long and hard about our use of technology. He quotes Tim Challies as saying:

Tim Challies concludes: “Many of us live in the experience circle, where we have never invested any significant effort in understanding the theory of technology and have never paused to even consider the theological dimension of technology.”3

Tennant, Kyle (2012-01-01). Unfriend Yourself (Kindle Locations 143-145). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

So often as Christians, we just want to do the “right” thing, but don’t spend enough time thinking about WHY we think it is the right thing to do. We are to be serious thinkers about every aspect of our life. Not in a dull, serious or studious way, but in a free, bought-by-the-blood-of-Jesus-so-I-can-enjoy-life-to-the-fullest kind of way.

In this book, Mr. Tennant pulls the veil off the cloud of smoke surrounding social media. In his introduction, he goes through 3 promises that social media makes to us:

1. Media are amoral.
2. It’s okay to make it all about you.
3. Community can be found anywhere.

Here are some great quotes that relate to promise #1.

In the long run a medium’s content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act. As our window onto the world, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it—and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and as a society.5

Tennant, Kyle (2012-01-01). Unfriend Yourself (Kindle Locations 168-170). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Postman wrote that every medium has resonance.6 That is, a medium’s power and influence resonates—echoes, grows, increases—in ways that we can’t quite predict. In the end, a medium changes the way we think and the way we relate; a medium has creative power that extends far beyond itself.

Tennant, Kyle (2012-01-01). Unfriend Yourself (Kindle Locations 171-174). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

So back to the promise Facebook makes, or more appropriately, that technology makes as a whole. We have come to believe that how we communicate doesn’t really matter; we think that media are neutral vehicles, well under our control. We believe that social media are our tools, and that these tools are our friends. As Carr notes, In the end, we come to pretend that the technology itself doesn’t matter. It’s how we use it that matters, we tell ourselves. The implication, comforting in its hubris, is that we’re in control. The technology is just a tool, inert until we pick it up and inert again once we set it aside.9 We are wrong. A medium is not a neutral bystander in our communication. Quite the opposite: “Every technology has an inherent bias,” writes Postman. “It has within its physical form a predisposition toward being used in certain ways and not others. Only those who know nothing of the history of technology believe that a technology is entirely neutral … Each technology has an agenda of its own.”10

Tennant, Kyle (2012-01-01). Unfriend Yourself (Kindle Locations 182-191). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Tomorrow I will take a look more at the second promise and some of the implications that I saw for that promise in my own life.

Have a great Wednesday,