This evening I attended a lovely Christmas choral evening at a church. It was fantastic – very atmospheric. There were lots of people there whom I hadn’t met before, faces I’d maybe never see again, and though I made a few new friends I also realised that for a fleeting moment all of us in that room were all experiencing the same thing, together. This got me thinking about how we can apply the characteristics of community in religion to today’s modern social media phenomenon.
Social media can be compared to faith in many ways, since faith is carried in the hearts of everyone who has it just as social media is all around us all the time. You can’t escape either – whether it’s on our TVs, on the radio, or on our mobile phones. Social media is a guiding force, as is one’s faith, and just as social media enriches the experience one has on the internet, faith can enrich the lives of those who have it.
I think you’ll agree that amongst all of the millions of websites and internet users, it’s things like the social networking websites that bring everyone together in a community and make people feel as though they belong, just as faith does.
