Let Digital Glory Die: Escaping the Online Inner Ring by Samuel James
Escaping the Online Inner Ring
"Few of us would willingly repeat our middle and high school years. For many, the span from age twelve to seventeen held insecurities, fears, disappointments, and maybe even intense suffering that we would not want to relive.
Part of our trouble came from the adolescent tendency to filter everything, even our deepest joys and triumphs, through peers. If you’re like me, you can instantly recall moments when people you thought were friends turned on you or when nothing you did seemed enough for those whose affection and friendship you desired most. In those years, the pressure of vying for the approval of others could burden even our happiest moments.
Several years ago, I read a pundit who pointed out that social media is a lot like high school. I think he’s right. As much as we might reassure ourselves that we aren’t the same clique-ambitious, relationally anxious people we were in our teens, isn’t it often true that we feel similar emotions and make decisions for similar reasons online?
C.S. Lewis famously observed that “the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things” (The Weight of Glory, 154). Lewis had a more traditional idea of an “inner ring” in mind: groups of embodied persons, enticing and excluding others in schools and offices and communities. But what if the inner rings that sway our loyalties are digital?
I submit that one of the biggest challenges to Christian faithfulness today is the way our technology has empowered us to create a near infinite network of inner rings..." from the article: Let Digital Glory Die
Samuel James serves as developmental and acquisitions editor at Crossway Books. He is the author of Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age (Crossway, 2023). He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife Emily and their three children.
This article is from desiringgod.org
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