FIELD NOTES
By Rev. Allie McDougall
WHEN THE CHURCH engages in conversations about stewardship, we categorize our God-given resources in three ways: time, talents, and treasure.
We tend to think of stewardship as an extension of parish and diocesan administration rather than an exercise of lifelong Christian discipleship. We are called to serve Christ in all things, in every facet of life, not just the time spent at our local parish. What we have failed to do is consider how our attention, which is really a commitment of time, can be stewarded for our spiritual benefit or co-opted and wasted for the benefit of corporations who will consume everything we offer them without compunction.
As the landscape of social media and Big Tech becomes continuously politicized and influenced by the whims of the billionaire power players driving the boat, the question of how Christians should engage with social media has become convicting. Financial profit on social media platforms is driven by user engagement and advertising. The more we scroll on our phones and give our attention to feeds by ads, non-human spam bots, and AI-generated slop, the more money is generated through advertising revenue for the platform.
The likelihood of users making frivolous purchases through repetitive and compelling ads is also increased – it seems like every time we open our social media apps, we are being asked to spend money on something that we probably don’t need. Whether we intend to or not, we work to enrich shareholder profit while giving hours of our time away for free. Our attention, information, and images are being daily sold to the highest bidder and there is no great conspiracy to conceal this, it’s all baked in to the user agreements we blindly checkmark.
Attention farming aside, there are environmental and ethical factors that must also be considered as companies like Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), X (formerly known as Twitter), and Google become more reliant on AI. AI has become nearly impossible to avoid and uses, with permission buried in terms & conditions agreements, the images and data we upload at an enormous environmental cost. AI queries and generated images rely on already-strained water and energy resources, and for what purpose? To poorly replicate the human image? To “streamline our creative processes” by incorrectly plagiarizing and spreading misinformation? The allure of convenience is not worth the added environmental and intellectual degradation.
A metric for godly social media use and screentime, a topic that our ancient corpus of Scripture is famously silent on, could be viewed through the lens of stewardship, but perhaps it could be even simpler than the management of time. Does your usage of social media platforms help you love God and love your neighbour?
I made the personal decision to taper off social media and close accounts that I had held for over a decade because I found the answer to this question to be, no. Getting sucked into my phone through the allure of notifications and the mindless, never-ending scroll made me feel inadequate, anxious, and misled about world events. Observing vicious Facebook comment wars about seemingly minor issues, echo chambers of virtuosity, hate speech, and the stifling influence of American politics on Canadian affairs mixed in with eerily specific targeted ads and the occasional update from a friend or family member did not help me on my Christian path.
Discerning the decision to unplug from social media is a personal one and the ubiquity and convenience of these platforms has made it difficult for us to imagine life without them. But there was a time before, a time when connecting with the people we care about was only slightly more effortful, when the search for knowledge required a bit of skill and judgement. To feel more human, more aligned with the love of Christ, we may be called to surrender those things which distract us from our humanity, from beauty and nature and transcendence. Our time is a valuable gift from God that we are called to steward for the sake of love and the work of His Kingdom. To whom are we giving this gift and for what price?
Rev. Allie McDougall is the Vicar of St. Paul's and St. Stephen's, Stratford.