What's the Church to do?

Polarization, Social Media, & Orthodox Social Witness

The Polarization Spiral

Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff recently examined “the polarization spiral between the left and the right.” They begin by observing that American political divisions have “only gotten more intense in the last three years.”

Most alarming is the growing acceptance of political violence as a justifiable method for achieving political goals. A survey in 2019 found that approximately one-fifth of partisans in both parties believed that violence against the opposing party would be at least “a little” justified if their party lost the 2020 election. Between 2020 and 2021 the share of students surveyed who said violent protest was “never acceptable” dropped from 82% to 76% and at most elite schools it was even lower.

They go on to argue (and document empirically) that this polarization is the result of several factors. Primarily though it seems that much of the blame rests with changes in social media.

Specifically, they identify the addition of the “like” button on Facebook and Twitter. Add to this the ability to easily share other people’s posts and algorithms that give the people what they want (or “like” and share) and, POOF! polarization!

They write:

It was the introduction of the “like” button, by Facebook, in 2009, which Twitter promptly copied, combined with the introduction of the “retweet” button by Twitter that same year, which Facebook copied in 2011. Before 2009, social media feeds were almost entirely chronological—content was mostly personal (rather than political) and social media was not particularly polarizing. But once users had two super-fast ways to say what they liked, and could do so many times a minute, the social media companies had vastly more information on each user’s behavior, and they began to optimize people’s newsfeeds using algorithms that continuously improved the platform’s ability to engage users and keep them clicking.

This all plays out on both the political Left (“The Great Awokening” and the Right (“Monomania and Trumpism”). Maybe, more importantly, activists on BOTH sides feed and exploit these divisions for their own self-interest even as they further tear apart the nation.

There is no question that social media can—and often is—a force for good. A “Facebook page in 2011 helped to start a revolution in Egypt that brought down a corrupt and brutal dictator in just a few weeks.” Add to this the number of people who use social media to stay in contact with family and friends and, gosh, what’s not to love? A lot, actually because there is a dark side to all this.

Like conjugal intimacy, an otherwise good thing can be taken out of its proper context, and when it is, great harm ensues.

And so

…the rapid increase in public expressions of outrage—not just at murderous dictators but at young adult fiction writers, people who accidentally make the “OK” sign, fellow employees, fellow students who said something, professors who said something—at pretty much anyone at any time for almost any reason—this was the planetary change.

One of the hardest lessons of the spiritual life—and so one of the greatest challenges in the Church’s social witness—is good intentions are not sufficient. Context matters.

To do a good thing at the wrong time or in the wrong way can do as much harm as actively and intentionally sinning. In fact, the harm can be greater precisely if (as we often do) we limit our moral analysis to intention and actions (or what classical moral theology ends and means). There is necessarily a situational aspect to our actions and so necessarily the Church’s witness.

Let me offer what might be a controversial illustration.

I am pro-life. I hold without reservation or doubt to the Church’s moral witness on abortion. But unlike other life issues—say capital punishment or war—the central moral concern is to convince a particular woman to not have an abortion.

Policy considerations of course matter. But especially in a social context in which abortion is not only legal but seen as a woman’s right (even if the exercise of which is tragic), we can win the policy argument but not prevent the evil. And in fact, making the policy argument might result in our losing not just the cultural argument (I’m looking at you Kansas¹) but the woman considering abortion.

As with other aspects of OST, our pro-life witness as Orthodox Christians is offered within at least three, nested contexts: personal, legal, and cultural. While all matter, the prudential question is which context will we prioritize? Choose imprudently, and we may very well win the argument but lose the soul.

Asking Facebook & Twitter to Do What They Can't

Back to social media and our culturally and politically polarized context, let me suggest the moral problem of social media—and so the Church’s response to it—is less that we use it for malicious purposes (though we do) or in malicious ways (ditto) and more that we ask it to do what it can’t do. But even when only asking social media to serve as something like a public photo album, the lack of a larger context to posts tends to cause emotional harm not only to others but to ourselves as well.²

So What Can We Do?

Let me, first of all, suggest that we shouldn’t uncritically condemn or embrace social media. Like any other technology, social media is a mixed moral blessing,

Nevertheless, we need to take seriously that social media—not only Facebook and Twitter but other social media platforms as well as, gulp! things like blogs and podcasts—all tend to have negative consequences that defy our best intentions and careful use.

The reason for this, and this is my second point, social media tends to erode people’s privacy making us privy to information about them that really isn’t our business. They also tend to erode our own privacy exposing the intimate details of family life, friendships, and work but also of our interiority to the gaze of strangers.

It is this last point that I think is more critical.

The polarization we see around us is a symptom of a culture that has ceased to value and protect the privacy of the heart. Even if unintentionally, social media encourages us to ignore the soul’s natural reticence to admit strangers. When I reveal my inner life to another, I am inviting them to an intimacy that can, if we are careful, blossom into a moment of communion.

The cost of this, however, is the pain that comes from rejection, indifference, or even misunderstanding. When that happens we naturally withdraw and reconsider the offer we have only recently made.

Now imagine this done not simply with one or two friends or family members, but hundreds even thousands of others most of whom even if they are not enemies are strangers. Intimate hurt is not just likely but all but assured.

Learning to Guard the Heart

The Church’s moral witness in these social media fed polarized times is this: We must help the faithful and others of goodwill to cultivate a sense of the sacred quality of our inner lives. We must, in other words, encourage people to love the privacy that makes our inner life possible and, only then, teach them to reveal that interiority wisely, that is in a way that is respectful of the limits of self and others.

In classical Christian language, this wise revelation of the heart is called chastity.

1. NPR, “Voters in Kansas decide to keep abortion legal in the state, rejecting an amendment.”

2. This is the argument Haidt and Lukianoff (2021) make in The Coddling of the American Mind.