Social Media & Christian Influencers

Sean Look, I run a TikTok.

Philip You are one of these people.

Sean I am such a TikTok influencer. I haven’t quite hit the levels of, you know, where they’re paying me. But someday — it’s something to shoot for.

Philip Dream.

All right, welcome to All Are Yours. We’re back. We’re here whether or not you want us to be.

Sean Where else would they rather have us be?

Philip That’s true. If you press play, it’s better that we’re actually here talking and doing something.

Sean Right? It’s their own culpability.

Philip You asked for it. Correct.

Sean It’s not like we have ads that you’ve got to skip through. We just get to the meat. Valuable insight and wisdom per —

Philip Per —

Sean — minute.

Philip Yes. I mean, if YouTube does play ads for you, we don’t get any of that cut. So that’s not happening for us.

Sean Maybe the only other podcast that is more meat per minute — MPM — is Business300. And that’s because you’ve got one guy who’s really worked to get it under 300 seconds. That is the whole point of that podcast, right?

Philip That’s right.

Sean But this could be, maybe in the world, the second-most MPMs, right after Business300.

Philip Yeah. I think we don’t like the fluff. Like —

Sean This. Right.

Philip This is the —

Sean — chit-chat.

Philip Nobody needs this.

Sean No.

Philip Exactly. So we just want to get right to it.

Sean What are we talking about today?

Philip We are talking about the internet. We did get a question a couple of months ago — and we had just mentioned that for us to get to a question in two months is pretty good. That’s progress. We have been accused of worse things, not getting to responses faster than that.

But we got a question about Christians and social media influencing. The specific question was for us to do an episode, a short video, on Christians and social media influencing culture. And we did think that was a good idea. We had a few other topics we wanted to talk about before that, but now we are here.

Sean So: Christians and social media influencing, or being influenced by social media. The too-long-didn’t-watch-or-listen answer is yes.

Philip Correct.

Sean Christians could use social media to give a good influence. Christians can be influenced by social media for good or bad. The end. That is a true thing. It totally happens.

Philip That’s right. Well, I think there are maybe two approaches, kind of what you talked about. One is Christians being the audience of that — on the receiving end of social media influencing culture.

And it is a culture. There is a script that influencers follow, the way they present certain things. And maybe it’s a range as well. There’s a certain kind of celebrity influencing that is more of a podcast or a show, that is more instructive — some kind of course, a person with a big platform who is actually trying to teach you something. Or there are also just Instagram-type influencers, lifestyle influencers, where you’re following the gym bros, or home decor, or parenting, or whatever it is.

Sean Look, I run a TikTok.

Philip That’s right.

Sean I have —

Philip You are one of these people.

Sean I am such a TikTok influencer. I haven’t quite hit the levels of, you know, where they’re paying me. But someday, it’s something to shoot for.

Philip Dream. That’s right.

Sean No, I think it is significant and should not be missed that literally — and this is a bad filler word for podcasts, so I’m sorry that I used the word “literally” — but it is true that the word that’s used is actually influencer. That is the name of a category of person: a social media influencer.

These days you can actually watch certain reality shows where the people they invite on, their label, their title, why they got included or invited to be on the show, is because they’re a social media influencer.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So that’s a thing. You can actually have that be your job, not just a supplement or a side hustle or whatever. The fact that it’s recognized even in the word means that it means something.

And when you combine a Psalm 1 sort of influencing idea, it’s inevitable that there will be influence. There’s one sort of influence that makes a man blessed and fruitful. There’s another kind of influence, that has a few different networks to it, that makes a man like chaff — easily blown around. Not stable, not really even living, but just easily blown around like chaff, or like parts of dead leaves in the fall when a windstorm comes along.

Your life can be like a tree planted by streams of living water, whose leaves are green in season and which bears fruit when it’s time. Or you can be like chaff. And what makes the difference there are your influences — what you’re thinking about, what you’re meditating on.

Romans 12, with the not being conformed to this world but being transformed by the renewal of your mind, means that what we read, think, listen to, watch — all those kinds of things our mind is immediately involved in. It can either be conformed to the world, or it can be conformed to God’s word. It can be conformed to something else: truth, goodness, and beauty, whatever virtuous sort of thing it is, so that you can test what is good and perfect and acceptable to God.

And there are influencers — I mean, it’s billions of dollars. The big social media networks are glad to pay out the nose to buy a new network, to be part of their thing, to pay the people who are participating in it to whatever degree.

Are you big into the bot farms, where they show videos of there being a hundred phones, or a thousand phones, or whatever it is, all hooked into a main terminal, and all the different phones are acting like human beings on these social media networks?

Philip I have not seen that.

Sean Yeah, they’re bot farms. Somebody buys a hundred cheap phones, gives them a hundred different accounts — or I suppose it’d be possible to give the same phone different accounts even for the same service. So they’re out there. It’s not just a computer running these bots, but actual different phones with different IP addresses that they’re signing on from.

And people are paying big money to do this kind of propaganda, to be this kind of influence. So we’d better take that seriously if we’re going to consider what the Bible says about our minds, loving God with all of our minds, and thinking correctly. How we are influenced is apparently a big deal to the world. So we’re going to be influenced whether we’re thinking about it or not. We might as well be conscious of it.

That was a big rant. So you could turn the podcast off right now and have gotten an immediate one-word answer — and rants with Bible verses.

Philip It’s true. Right. So it’s not whether but which. It’s not if you’re going to be influenced, it’s who you’re going to be influenced by. What circles are you putting yourself into?

And in this time and age, it’s not even physical circles. It’s easy to step into these rooms. These rooms are very accessible, and they’re very inviting. They want you to be there. They are incentivized to get your attention and to hold it, for you to spend a lot of time giving them your attention — so, receiving that influence.

So in that framework — and I said there are kind of two parts of it. One is Christians as receivers, and maybe then in the second half we could talk a little bit about Christians as the influencers.

But just to hone in on the receiving side: there’s a way to go about deciding who you’re receiving from. And I do think that “receiving” — I at least like that word a little bit better than “consuming.” Just consuming content, consuming whatever they’re giving you, puts you in that frame of mind of empty consumption. It’s going in, and it’s not ineffective — it’s producing some kind of effect — but having that consumptive mindset is more passive.

Whereas “receiving,” when you think about it more that way, you have more of a choice. Do I want to receive this? They are giving it to me — do I want to receive it? Do I want to take this? Do I want to accept it?

And so thinking about yourself as that receiver: okay, so who am I following? Who am I being influenced by? How do I decide that, as I’m building up my arsenal, my toolbox, of people who are giving me that information? So: Christians as receivers, even more so than just as consumers.

Sean Yeah. Mortimer Adler is the guy’s name who wrote How to Read a Book, and there’s obviously some receiving kind of application that comes along with reading — or whatever it is from our phones, not just between two covers of a book.

He uses the idea of playing catch. When you’re catching a ball, you’re receiving the ball. You have to be active in that. It’s a different motion, a different outcome obviously than throwing the ball, but catching or receiving does actually require attention and effort and intentionality. Keep your eye on the ball to catch it, otherwise it might hurt you.

So sure, there is definitely an active, a good way to receive what is good. And probably the way people talk about consuming is dangerous, because they do more turn off their minds. They are, like you’re saying, more passive in that.

And probably, in light of how much information there is out there today that can just be consumed passively, the lesson is: well, don’t take anything seriously. If that is, on one end of the spectrum, a really bad way to not attend to what you’re taking in — it actually just teaches you that everything is at the same level of unimportance. Or, I suppose, the same level of “everything is on fire.” But even that provokes a different kind of response.

So I think that the receiving — if I am going to open the app, I should think about it as, what am I going to go receive? As opposed to, what am I just going to let scroll by?

Philip Right. And it has a certain kind of responsibility that you own, that is put on you.

There’s some lawsuit where parents are suing Facebook, or Meta, or whatever, about how their whole platform is set up to have teenagers be addicted to the social media. So again, it’s that sort of approach where it’s the influencers’ fault that I am stuck here. It’s your fault that my kids are addicted, that they can’t let go, can’t put their phone down. Where again, it’s that mindset of consuming: we’re just passive consumers, there’s nothing we could do about it.

And even —

Sean Yeah, go for it.

Philip No — even in that parenting approach, knowing that whatever age your kids are, at some age you are responsible as the parent for what your kids are receiving, and then also to train them to be responsible to choose what to receive. Again, as opposed to just being that helpless, passive victim of the world.

Sean Yeah, even what kind — because I think you and I would actually rather read words to consume.

Philip Right.

Sean I don’t actually prefer oral or even video consuming as much. To learn something, or to receive in a way that gets in easier, I prefer to get the other thing.

Philip We don’t watch the All Are Yours YouTube videos. We don’t listen to this podcast.

Sean I mean, not for very long, on purpose. That’s definitely correct.

I’m not an expert on the different social media sites. They’re not all exactly the same, even though they’re all under the banner of social media. So, I joked about my TikTok. I don’t currently have it installed on my phone, because you have to make an account from your phone. Once you get an account you can use it in a browser. But they mean for you to have it on your phone.

And TikTok is completely relentless. Have you ever done TikTok on your phone? Ever given the Chinese, or whoever it is, access?

Philip No. I’m Russian.

Sean Yeah, exactly.

So it is one of the most — “scary” is too dramatic — unnerving. And it could be because of my age, could be because of my personality, could be because I’m a Christian and it’s the Holy Spirit inside of me, any number of these things. But you open TikTok and there is video playing. And when you swipe, it is another video. Even if they have text overlaid on top of it, whether subtitles or some kind of image, it is video.

It took me a while to actually find where the “open the app muted” setting was, because otherwise, as soon as you open the app, its default is video playing, with the noise. And there’s no figuring out how to just pause what you’re watching. Even if you pause it, the next thing you’re going to need to do is either go into your settings, or you’re going to have another video that you’re going to have to pause. You can’t make it so that you have to press play. It is playing in your face, period.

So imagine then whatever the content is — if it is inappropriate content. Or if you think you’re going to get a recipe for how to make a meal; some of them have been entertaining. But it’s relentless, pushing stuff right at you.

Whereas you open up Instagram, and Instagram a lot of times at least defaults just to an image. So that is somewhat more restful. But again, even assuming the image isn’t inappropriate, isn’t some kind of porn or soft-porn kind of image itself — even if it is of a sunrise or sunset, you at least get some sense of pause. You can wait before you just immediately scroll to see another picture.

Philip Right.

Sean But it’s still — what are you learning from that? You’re learning that something is pretty, maybe, or beautiful. You can be thankful for a God’s-creation kind of image; those are fine. But even with Instagram, it’s much more “here is a produced image.” That’s why Instagram is so famous for their filters, where it’s trying to make it appear better than it is.

Facebook has tried to learn — and Facebook bought Instagram, because they recognized that the kids were going to Instagram. So Facebook is like an amalgamation of “hey, you can do some short videos, hey, you can post some text” — but they punished just text. They want you to have some kind of image at least to go along with it.

So, have I named four? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Those are maybe the big four called social media. Though I think people would call podcasts, they’d call YouTube — there’s a sense in which Pinterest is a social media sort of thing.

So even underneath social media, thinking about what kind of stream you’re trying to get influenced by is already different. I think some of them are okay for different kinds of people. But again, the TikTok relentlessness continues to bug me, and is a reason why I don’t like it.

Philip You’re just a legalist.

Sean How old—? Look at all the gray in the beard. I don’t know what generation I am. I’m not the TikTok generation.

Philip So — I don’t know, and on Instagram there’s a way where you go to somebody’s profile and it’s just the different posts that they have. You could see them in a thumbnail view.

Sean Okay.

Philip TikTok does not have any of that. It’s just reel after reel after reel. That’s the only way to see something.

Sean There has got to be a way to go to an individual’s account and just see the things that they have posted. But that was not obvious to me, how to see that.

There is a search button. I’m not sure that I ever searched for anything. I think you can definitely like things, and you must be able to go to your account and see the things that you’ve liked, sort of as a bookmark.

There’s a young lady I know who — this was a few months ago — had over fifty thousand likes on TikTok. And I have done a little bit of that math: just the amount of time, if it was one second per video, still, to get 50,000 one-second videos. You’re not even caring what it is; you’re just liking it every time a new one comes through. That is a crazy amount of time.

Philip Right.

Sean And presumably this person was not liking everything that they watched. So that’s a small percent of how much time they’re actually spending on it.

So you’ve got what that content is aimed at stimulating. You’ve got the actual content, whatever it is you’re consuming, in whatever style or format. And then you’ve got the amount of time that you’re giving to it. These are all actually major, different, unique parts that require some thoughtfulness.

Philip Right.

Sean And, like you said, intentionality — rather than just, “oh, this is fun.”

Philip Right. There’s a trade-off in each one of those. You’re spending time doing this, or spending time doing something else. You’re watching this, or watching something else.

And you mentioned this before, but there’s a lot of money behind this. It is a business model designed to grab and hold your attention. That is the entire thing. If you log off, they’re not making any money. So everything there is incentivized and built to keep you there.

So even the strategy of entering that room — do you even have a strategy? Why are you in this room? What are you trying to get out of it? And when will you get out of it? It’s not to say don’t go in the room, but: okay, why are you going in there? What’s the purpose? Have some kind of strategy, because they definitely have a strategy — and you’re the sucker. They have you.

Sean Especially — and I don’t remember who should get credited with this observation first — but if the product is free, then you are actually the product. They’re getting information about you, your data, what you like, how they could sell things to you. Which is true of almost every Google product, let alone — Facebook is free, TikTok is free, Twitter you can use for free.

It used to be, at least with Twitter — and I just hate calling it X. I know that that’s its name. I just don’t like it.

Philip I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore.

Sean It used to be that Twitter had a whole bunch of different apps you could use to connect to the service. Different app makers could focus on making tweets look a particular way, instead of just the way Twitter itself was doing it.

And one of the things they used to let you do was have apps that only posted. You could write in the app, you could save drafts in the app, and then you could publish from the app without ever opening the stream. So, using the going-into-the-room analogy, you could open the door, yell in there, but you didn’t have to hear anything.

But all of these other companies realize — even though they should recognize, “Hey, thank you, Sean, for posting on my platform. Thank you for that attention, I appreciate that, we’ll let other people’s time be sucked away by what you said” — no, they don’t even like you to do that. They want to make you go in and get bombarded by the stream, even if you only want to post something.

Now there are some other services that you can pay, that then pay into the Twitter API, so you can just post for yourself rather than needing to see the whole stream. But even that is a decision they’ve intentionally made, to try to make it hard to ignore diving into what everybody else has said.

Philip Right. Because they’re selling something.

The advertisement and marketing industry — that is what social media is. That’s how they’re making their money. And if there’s an audience there, it’s effective.

Compared to marketing how it was before social media — commercials, ads on TV — who knows if you’re hitting the right audience for your product when you’re buying ad time on a TV channel, or billboards, or even Google ads when it first started, which were more arbitrary. Now, with all of the tracking they’re doing, they know exactly what kind of product would interest which person, and so that advertisement is much more directed. They want your attention there.

So there’s a lot of money involved. And the other part of it is just the explosion of content production with AI. All of that introduction has flooded the social media space with —

Sean We should say that you and I, right now, are actually us.

Philip We are real.

Sean It is true that we are really where we’re at while we’re talking.

Philip It’s true.

Sean So we have not trained our own bots to play us.

Philip We don’t even have a fake background. This is the background.

Sean It is so true. Because why would I have the background that I have if I was making something up? I wouldn’t be off center. It’d be more colorful and make me look smarter, or whatever.

Yours is pretty good in the back. It looks sufficient. Whatever that one right above you is, that looks like a whole series of books — that’s volumes’ worth of wisdom and information that you’re able to show.

So I just wanted to confirm: we have not used any AI in our thoughts so far.

Philip We do use some AI when we do the shorts and the little clip editing. The software we use, AI helps us edit that.

Sean So what I understand is that so far, AI is helping us say less, and quicker.

Philip Correct. Get to the point.

Sean AI is only editing us out, not actually creating for us.

Philip That’s true.

Sean So maybe that is better. Like if you talk to somebody who said, “No, just shut up about this thing” — that’s kind of what we let AI do, so we don’t get our feelings hurt. Because the algorithm said they didn’t need to say this, that was a waste of time.

Philip — like more wild-out-there sort of thing. So there’s much more.

And so the amount of wisdom that people needed even five years ago, ten years ago — today it’s so much more. Again, we talked about this a little bit on the AI and technology episode we had: yeah, it’s scary, and that doesn’t mean we should bunker down and hide. We should engage. How do we then use this to our advantage?

Sean I feel good about this, because since you and I are generally more of the Platonic, abstract-ideas persons, I do feel good that I think there are some very concrete, practical tips, hacks, for parents — for parents in their own consumption, or receiving, as well as then as they think about it for their kids.

So, I think it actually is a really good rule that you don’t wake up — generally. Not saying this is every person, every day, all the time. But generally speaking, it is good if you don’t wake up and immediately open social media to see whatever. Do some other things first. Potentially Bible first; as Christians, that seems reasonable, if you’re going to let an input in right away.

And sometimes that’s another person, that you’ve actually got up to, that you need to talk to and help. That’s different. But in terms of what you are going to try to receive immediately — why not try to receive something that you know is true, that is intended to bless you, make you flourish? So in general, Bible first seems good.

Philip Right.

Sean It also seems like using some of the technology to fight the technology is reasonable. And there are some really good technological helps.

Parents paying attention to their kids’ screen time: setting not just app but even device usage hours. Or setting app limits — you get five minutes on this, or you have access to this app but you can’t even open it unless I give you permission.

There are times where, as a parent, that is annoying to me — I’m trying to do something else and a kid asks for permission to do whatever the thing is, even for their homework. “Well, I’m busy.” And also, I’d much rather have that annoyance to me, knowing what it is helping protect them from.

I wouldn’t give young kids a device anyway. Definitely not one that is their own. As they start getting to the point where they could use a device even for producing things, like school papers, or doing research — okay, well, now we’ve moved into a different level. At ECS at least, I don’t think we require too many typing assignments until around sixth grade and then into junior high. Then you’re supposed to start typing things. So we make it through most of grammar school where you don’t really need to type things. So you probably don’t need your own device.

Then when they do get a device, or get access to a device, parents need to take the time to lock it down, to make it so that you can’t use it unless I’m there. That’s a reasonable rule, the younger they are especially. And you have to ask for permission to use certain apps, or you don’t even install certain apps. When our kids first get things in junior high, we don’t even let them have access to any of the browser kind of apps, where then they could search or do whatever.

There are device limits, there are app limits, or even categories — social media is a category in Screen Time. If you’ve given them access, you can see how much they use it. Or you can say, don’t even allow any of these kinds of apps for now. That’s totally reasonable.

Even just at Christmas time, Mo got our families a thing called Brick, which is an actual hard device. Have you heard about Brick?

Philip Only from you.

Sean Okay. And actually, it’s great. It’s the right kind of friction.

So you decide, you know, I’m going to brick my phone right now. And you can choose whatever modes you want to choose. I’ve actually only got one social media app on my phone currently at all. I have a brick mode where the only thing I can’t do on my phone is look at that app. And that is running almost all the time. So you have to actually go to that device again to unbrick, to then be able to use those apps.

So you can choose whichever ones are most distracting to you, the most temptations, and you can set that up. Parents can set that up for their kids.

There’s also one that we used called Canopy, which is a different kind of service. It claims — and it’s hard to prove that this works, because of what it’s supposed to do — but Canopy claims that in real time, once you get it installed on a device, it will make it so you can’t actually go to certain websites, and you can’t actually see certain sorts of unclothed levels of photos, no matter who is posting them.

Philip Okay.

Sean So it’s like a device-level filter. Whatever app you’re in, if you’re using it on that device, it claims that it will actually limit what is available to that person. And then parents have control of the kids’ accounts to be able to filter those things.

Obviously that’s not the ultimate goal. Parents want to get their kids to the point where the kid is the adult and the kid is making his or her own decisions. We’re not trying to be perpetual filters for our kids. And at the same time, you wouldn’t give your four-year-old the biggest knife in the drawer. You’d teach them with a smaller knife. You’d show them, you’d work through it with them, you’d give them a tool that was appropriate to their level of coordination. Same kind of thing when it comes to receiving all these things.

So: setting up very practical limits. I think no device in a kid’s room. In our family, typically once you get your driver’s license, you are ready to have a phone. This has practical benefits, but it’s also a rite of passage sort of thing. It’s all made up — that’s just what we made up. Seems right.

Philip That’s right.

Sean But then there can be the other tools you use to help protect the phone — including, it charges in a separate room than your bedroom. And in the beginning years, you don’t get to have it in your room by yourself unless you’ve asked for permission and we know what you’re doing with it. So you want to play music — okay, that’s an allowable thing while you’re doing homework.

These are actual practical things that do take some time to decide. But parents need to be intentional about what their kids are receiving, what their kids are consuming. So that parents can see for themselves.

We know the challenges of distractions, temptations. We know that. Our kids need to know that we know that.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So, going back to even the knife illustration: showing them, sometimes. Okay, let’s spend some time going through Instagram together. This is my Instagram account. These are the kinds of things that it shows me. What do you think about that? And actually hear what they have to say. As opposed to, “ooh, all knives are always bad, they could cut you.”

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Because that’s also true, that they could cut you. But showing how to use it, talking through it — and then when the kid does potentially get into a bad spot, they see something they shouldn’t see, not freaking out when the kid comes and talks about it. Okay, well, this is an example of why it’s dangerous. This is a significant thing. So let’s talk about how we can avoid that in the future. And actually showing them a model of how to handle it.

There are technology tools. There’s actually not even giving them devices for however long as possible, being slow to introduce them to even some of the social media things. There are some really convenient group messaging opportunities that students can have — and wow, those can go bad super fast. So, occasionally even doing an audit of your kids’ messages, let alone their social media, posting, and things like that.

Philip Right.

Sean So it actually requires a lot of effort to train. And one of the particular incipient — that’s probably too big of a word — one of the inherent, built-in challenges with this particular topic is that so many people want to use social media as a way to relax and not have to think.

Philip Right.

Sean When in fact it’s one of the biggest places where we need to make sure that we’re thinking, and helping our kids think through that as well.

That was a lot, but it was practical. That was Aristotelian.

Philip Some hot tips. That’s right.

Yeah, I think specifically, parents to kids, the key word is training. That is what you’re doing the entire time that they are under your domain, under your roof, your responsibility. You are training them up. And specifically with social media, with the internet, with all of that — this is not a place where that is not needed. This is a place where it is needed even more.

So I think when parents do it wrong, they are not providing any training. That looks like, I think, either opening all the gates to everything, so that there’s no obstruction, no limits, no boundary — whether that is done actively or whether it’s done negligently, where you just aren’t paying attention and so everything is open, but there is no training.

Sean And the kind of community —

I forget — Abigail Shrier, I think, is the lady’s name. She’s written a couple of books; I started reading the second one. The first one is called Irreversible Damage, which is about, in particular, not letting young ladies just get affirmed in their desire to turn into a boy.

The reason I’m bringing it up right now is because, generally speaking, most kids don’t have parents who would affirm gender transition feelings. Generally, most kids don’t have that. It seems scary, and maybe more parents today are open to that, or even desiring that, pushing their kids into it. But generally, most aren’t.

However, the online community is completely affirmative. If you find the right group on whatever social media app it is, they’re only going to give positive hooks to try to suck you in. They only get mean and belligerent when you try to get out of the group. When you’re detransitioning is when you become the enemy.

Philip Right.

Sean And so if you’re a kid who is feeling any kind of insecure — and some types of insecurity while you’re growing up are a temptation that everybody goes through, some more severe than others — but if you’re looking for identity, well, people online are going to give it to you. You can find people who can tell you who you should be, or who you really are deep down inside. And they’re not going to confront you about that.

Now, you and I probably spend more time on Twitter, where everybody likes to tell everybody that they’re wrong. But that’s how they keep people like us engaged. They keep young kids engaged by affirmative things, and pointing them down paths where they can feel better about themselves for whatever reason.

So those online communities — in a gender confusion or sexual confusion sense, there are lots of people who are glad to get their hooks into young people in that particular sphere.

So in addition to just paying attention to what your kid is consuming, making sure that they also feel secure as part of your family — who they are as Christians, and then who they are as part of your family — so that they don’t need to go looking for digital strangers to give them affirmation.

Philip Well, I think a lot of the identity crises come about even from social media. So it’s not just that they are affirming some kind of misapplied identity, or a twist that the kid might have. They are the ones who are creating that crisis.

Even looking at all of these lifestyle influencers: “This looks so cool. I want to have this kind of lifestyle. I want to have this kind of money, or drive this kind of car, or do this sort of thing for work.” It breeds a lot of discontent. It breeds a lot of ingratitude for what God has actually given that kid — in his own parents, in his own community, what he has, or what she has.

So a lot of the identity crises, I think, are cultivated, are nourished, are created even within these social media environments. And then they are affirmed. Then they are set up, and then slammed down.

So yeah, parents not being attentive — what you’re saying, having a sure and sound foundation for the kids’ identity, but then also making sure that you are protecting that identity from the outside, from what is coming in.

So: parents not training —

Sean Yeah, keep going.

Philip Well, I was going to say, one way of parents not providing the training is by having everything just open. The other way of parents not providing training is by having everything closed. So everything is just locked down and closed, and we don’t even go there. We don’t even talk about it. There’s no practice. There are no drills. There’s none of the “hey, look at my feed, what do you think about this?” We’re not doing any of that.

So that then, when the kids get out from the parents’ roof, all of a sudden everything is open and they have no idea what to do with it. They don’t know how to handle any of it.

So the lack of training, the absence of training — I think both ditches are a result of that, are different ways of not providing training. Either opening everything up or shutting everything down, and never having any kind of guidance in any of it. Two opposite ways of not training.

Sean You can use any knife you want to at any time. Or, we’re not even going to put butter on our bread, because a butter knife might hurt us.

Philip Exactly right.

Sean Yeah. Insecurity is big business.

Philip Right.

Sean Potentially insecurity is more business than anger. Because it seems like the way you get people engaged online is to show them things that would make them mad — I think we’ve talked about that before, even on the podcast. We probably make people mad. That’s why we talk about it: to keep them engaged.

Philip It’s big business.

Sean Yeah, we need them to watch all the way through to the end to see the ads.

So anger obviously keeps people engaged. But I do wonder if insecurity slash anxiety is bigger business — bigger identity-giving, comfort-giving, peace-giving, distraction-till-you-feel-sad-giving. Let alone the pharma and medicine for it, or the doctors who can help, or psychologists who make big bank when they have their meetings and that kind of thing.

So, knowing that insecurity is like that, our kids are meant to get security — and who they’re getting that from. That’s another “not whether but which.” Who are they getting it from? They’re going to get it from somebody. It should be from us, rather than from some stranger on TikTok.

Philip Right. So that’s maybe a little bit on Christians as receivers. So what about Christians —

Sean Before we move on to how awesome we are at publishing our things — I think I know, but what’s your social media of choice, and how do you decide who you are following?

Philip If I could only do what I would like to do —

Sean It can be ideal. Sure.

Philip I think I do like Twitter/X. But not everything on there.

There are maybe two types of influencers in the X community that I like, that I enjoy, that I choose to follow. One is people who are perceptive — they’re able to see through and call things out with a little bit more clarity through the noise than other people are. There’s a lot of noise everywhere, and especially when there’s hype and anger and all of that, people who are able to see certain things through. I like that.

The other kind are people who are building something, who are creating, making something real. I think there is a certain subculture within Twitter of that sort of thing. And that could span across different industries, different genres of building and creating — but people who don’t just have opinions, who aren’t just there to share their thoughts on the latest problem, but they’re building something, and their posts are kind of overflows of what they’re building.

I find Facebook, Instagram, all of that annoying. A lot more noise, a lot more mess. I have not done anything on TikTok, so I have no opinion on that — but from what you’re explaining, that sounds even worse.

Sean I’m making it sound so good, to get yourself a TikTok. I’m surprised you haven’t done it while I’ve just been ranting in my little sections here.

Philip Yeah. But overall, my approach to social media — and maybe that would be a segue, after I could ask you the same question — my approach is more work-related than consumption-related. I see it as a tool to help build, and so I’m trying to —

Hmm. That’s a lie. I’m not trying to. I intend to try to use it more to that end.

But if I were to relax, I would not log on. I would be logged off. That is not a place for me to decompress and relax.

Sean Okay.

Philip So in the mornings, I think after I wake up, maybe four hours, maybe five hours, until I actually check some kind of social media.

Sean When it hits 5:30 a.m. you’re like, okay, now I can check social media.

Philip That’s right.

So what about you? What is your palate for who you follow, and why?

Sean Platform-wise, I also prefer the place where very few of my closest people are. So, it is what it is. It’s not worth complaining about, but it is true that I don’t like it.

I like words. And I actually really liked when it was hard on Twitter to post more than 160 characters. Was it 160 or 150?

Philip 140. It was 140, and then they jumped to 280.

Sean Right. So I actually did not get excited when they went to 280, let alone now, where —

Philip It’s long form.

Sean Can you post as much as you want if you’re still on for free?

Philip I don’t think so.

Sean I’ve been paying to get fewer ads and to do some other things for a couple of years, so I haven’t looked into that.

But I don’t like the articles that get published — and now they’re actually called articles, you can make a separate thing called articles. I don’t like that. I liked when people had blogs and they would put a link to their blog, and I’d go read that if I wanted to. So I really liked it when everybody had to compress their observation, their pithy thought — like you were saying, the people who could give some signal in the noise. I really enjoyed that.

And I had more friends who were also using Twitter in those days, maybe ten years ago. I was a pretty early adopter.

Interestingly enough, I think a bunch of tech things are kind of fun. If I had a hobby, it’d probably be more on the techie side. So I follow some people who are more techie. I do also try to follow some things that are more news, that would highlight news things, because I’m not watching cable news. I don’t subscribe to CNN or Fox; even in the browser, I only go to those when I see them on Twitter, when they’ve written something longer about it.

So I get some fun techie things. I get some news highlights, or something that points out that I need to go read some more about a big event. I do like to follow some people that I really know. And then there are some businesses that I’m kind of interested in, whether it’s because they’re building, like you’re talking about — they’re trying to establish a thing — or I just like their product. I’m not opposed to giving follows to those.

But most of the people I know are on Facebook, and so that’s where they post their things. If I post the same information on Twitter and on Facebook, I almost get ten times the responses on Facebook as I do on Twitter. That is not something that I enjoy. I still post ten times more on Twitter, but I get ten times more interaction on Facebook. So I try to be attentive to that.

But if I was just doing my preference — I have a personal Instagram account. I tried TikTok for the sake of the Marysville Sun.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And I mostly did it kind of as a dare to myself, because it’s just so outside of my wheelhouse. So I haven’t yet shut it down. I still think — lots of people — I see a place for a short little video that would point to something else.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean But it just wears me out to try to think about making a short little video. So I haven’t done one in a while. But I’ve at least tried it.

Philip Yeah. Well, I do think there is a place, for sure, for Christians to be in the position of influence. That’s what we want. We want to be the influencer. We want to be the salt of the earth, to add flavor, to add taste. We want to be the light set on a hill — not to cover the light under a basket. We’re supposed to be doing this. This is part of the calling.

And the people are online. That is where the people are. So we should also be there, speaking. And not necessarily explicitly just the message of the gospel, but speaking all truth, all goodness, all beauty — all things that Jesus is Lord over. We should be seeking to actively be effective in presenting that, showing what that kind of life looks like.

So yes: not only should Christians be intentional about what they receive, but also about what they produce, what they create, and how they influence.

Sean And how they respond when they post something and someone freaks out about it. How they respond to that is also a follow-up part to it.

One of my favorite Twitter accounts ever was Ben Sasse’s personal account — right at the beginning, maybe when he was running to be senator in Nebraska, and then I think he kept his personal account even after he won his Senate seat.

And he was clever. He’s a Christian. He was clever, pithy, and he was super excellent at responding to annoying trolls. I forget how many years ago this was — it was probably close to eight-plus years ago. Pre-COVID, and pre-AI, and pre- a bunch of bots. So I do think at that time it was more that you knew you were responding to an individual, even if they were anonymous. And I suppose that’s even its own discussion: should you post anonymously, or care about what anonymous accounts say?

But back in the day, when it was less likely that you were responding to a computer and more likely a real person — he didn’t take himself too seriously. He’d respond playfully, but also without compromising and just rolling over to whatever criticism or complaint they would give, whether it was an ad hominem attack against him personally for some dumb reason, or it was against a policy he was talking about.

I actually really appreciated his kind of public openness, to put things out there and then to respond when people said dumb things back. Let’s see what it looks like to answer a fool according to his folly. Let’s see what it’s like to not answer a fool according to his folly. So, people who can do that really well — Ben Sasse was one of my favorite ones, a long time ago, to see that happen.

But yeah, we have opportunity to be salt and light, to make the gospel look good — to adorn the gospel. If slaves could do it in Titus 2:10, adorn the doctrine of God our Savior, then there are ways to make it show that it’s tasty, that it is good, that it’s firm when it needs to be, that it’s food when it can be, that it’s fun.

And I don’t mean to just alliterate, but my day job is a pastor, so of course I —

Philip You went to seminary.

Sean Right. It’s natural. I was influenced.

Philip Yeah.

Sean There’s a whole — I alliterate my thoughts off the top of my head, whatever.

But being able to — I mean, would Martin Luther be using Twitter? Yeah, he would be.

Philip He’d be publishing little cartoons.

Sean It’d be delightful.

So, following Trump is — I’m not really sure what it would be if I had to select only one adjective. But following Trump is at least not boring.

Philip Right.

Sean And he clearly is effective, whether or not we would want to be effective toward the same ends as him. In lots of cases, not. In some cases, definitely, for sure.

So it’s at least instructive. It’s bordering on entertainment a lot of the time, no matter what. Even if it’s foolish, it’s still interesting that this guy thought that was the right thing for him as president of the United States — that that needed to be said, that he felt like that on whatever afternoon. So that’s instructive.

Christians have the spot, like you said, because other people are there consuming.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean You don’t want to just give them perpetual reasons to stay online. But also, we have better things than the world does, than those who are in the dark do.

Even one of the reasons for apologetics is not necessarily to convince the unbelievers, but to show the believers that there are reasons believers have that the unbeliever can’t answer. So you try to answer the unbeliever, and it might actually be somebody else who’s watching who really gets the benefit from it.

So I find it helpful to try to put into — whatever clever or pithy thing it is — to make a bullet point out of a big thing.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And sometimes, for me, that seems like it takes too much effort, and so I just move on. But I kind of enjoy it as well. So — what’s wrong with that? I don’t think anything is wrong with trying to figure out what little seeds you could sow that might be an encouragement or a challenge, or be an example to somebody else to do the same thing.

When there are things going around about getting rid of abortion — well, sure, I’m going to retweet that. I’m going to like that. I’m going to jump on that. I’m happy to participate in the swell of attention on some of the big issues, when those come through their cycles. Is that guaranteeing that the goal is going to be accomplished, because we were on social media altogether about it? No. But is that a place to get a good thing into people’s minds? That seems appropriate.

So it would require — going back to the original question for why we’re talking about this: should a Christian be influenced? Yes, they’re going to be in some way, and so they should be wise about it. Can a Christian provide influence? Also, let’s do it. But that requires attentiveness to not getting consumed by it.

You used the word “tool” before. When you are a servant of the tool, that’s the wrong relationship.

Philip Right.

Sean When the tool is a servant to you — well, then that’s exactly how it should be. And some of these are really amazing tools.

Philip Right.

Sean For trying to communicate your idea. Or even — this isn’t as much my way of rolling as it is some other people’s, but sometimes I do put things out there to see what sort of criticisms they might draw. Not because I’m trying to trap anybody else into finding out who they really are, but because I’d like to work on sharpening my own argument. Okay, so what is wrong in this particular thing? Well, I throw it out there, because I don’t have a live-in editor. I don’t have people who are immediately available to tell me how dumb the things I’m thinking are. You throw it out on the internet, and somebody’s probably going to tell you whether they think it’s dumb or not.

So maybe I still don’t agree with what they complain about. Fine. But I learned some more from throwing it out there to see what they think.

And different people have different giftedness and different time constraints, so all of these are true things. But I’m not really convinced that I want to take the role of perpetual provocateur, saying the most outrageous things I can just to try to get more attention. Those accounts I typically unfollow, because it’s like they need to say the most outrageous thing, and that seems to get more and more intense.

I’m not saying there’s no place for outrageous statements. I just like the idea of sowing good seeds for fruit, and the building idea, better. Even if that doesn’t attract as quick attention, or is less likely to go viral, I’m kind of more okay with that — even though, obviously, I don’t have huge accounts. So there are probably reasons for that.

Philip Yeah. I think there’s a place for provocation, even in the way that Jesus used it, Paul used it.

I think that when provocation is a bait and switch, that is clearly annoying — when the person cannot defend the way it was meant to come across. So the person would say it one way, and then would kind of back out of it. I think that is not helpful.

But when a person is able to defend it, and it’s provocative not because of what he said but because of where the culture is at — the culture is at a place of crazy, so the person who’s saying something normal sounds provocative, sounds crazy.

And I do think that the bait and switch makes it more fake. That’s where it’s annoying: what it sounds like he’s saying is not actually what he’s saying, and then he backs out.

Maybe if I were to have a summary principle of Christians as influencers, what would be the banner on top of it — I think I’d say: be real. Be real in the place of fakeness, whether it’s AI or whether it’s just showcasing some kind of lifestyle, showcasing some kind of influence. There’s so much posing, so much posturing. And for a Christian to show something that is real is refreshing.

So maybe three approaches to that. One would be: instead of focusing on promotion, or marketing yourself, focus on the actual product — the value that you’re providing. Whether your product is some kind of thought, so your product is the thought, is the message; or whether it’s a product you’re selling. Instead of trying to fake the promotion, create better value. If people are not responding to the value you’re providing, that means your value is weak. Your value is not good enough.

Then also: instead of trying to show something, actually have more substance. A lot of times the face that people are presenting online is much further out than they actually have. It’s well edited and it’s well posed, when in reality it’s not like that. What you would want is to be more of the tip of the iceberg — so that what you’re showing is just the tip, and there’s much more substance underneath that nobody gets to see. So, focusing on substance over show.

And then the third part would be focusing on building over brand. Instead of just trying to build a brand, build something real, build an actual thing. And then let the brand come out of that, or point to that.

So: Christians as influencers. Maybe that summary tag is to be real, as opposed to being fake or showy.

Sean Mm-hmm. Yeah — salt and light are real influences.

Philip Right.

Sean Light is a real influence in the darkness. Salt is a real influence on the taste. So, be light and salt, actually, wherever you’re at — including online.

Philip Right. There you go. All right. Well —

Sean This was the short video answering the question.

Philip There you go. Social media, the influencer lifestyle. Get some. There you go.