So now that Touchstone has made it available online (and since colleges are about to begin another academic year), I though I'd draw your attention to it for your own consideration. After providing thirteen reasons why he's not on Facebook, Baarendse draws the following conclusion:
You may think I’ve exaggerated some of these points. Perhaps I have. Yet I’m not trying to be mean-spirited or a fear-monger. I’m not even urging you to give up Facebook. I can see how an active Facebook account may be necessary for thriving in today’s world. No doubt it’s futile to wish our culture back to the technological simplicity of the Little House on the Prairie or Walden Pond. So be it. Then the question for Christians becomes: How do we use social media responsibly, especially in view of our calling as students? Answering this will require great discernment. At the very least, I would be especially wary of using it to air your personal laundry, or for chatting with a friend two rooms down the hall.
Given the ever-greater share of our waking moments that today’s virtual media demand, I think it’s important to discuss this issue as a learning community. Let’s agree that the danger doesn’t necessarily lie in our tools, but in our lack of self-control, which can make us the slave of our tools. Just as we can overeat in the cafeteria, so we can over-consume in our use of technology. Our hearts, Calvin helpfully reminds us, are idol-factories. Even good things can become addictive if not used in moderation. Here in college, you have a unique opportunity to focus your attention on learning. It’s a time for you to grow deep character roots and develop the resources of mind you will use for the rest of your life. But this kind of rich development might require that, for extended periods, you turn away from the 24/7 chatter that’s roaring down the Facebook pipe, clamoring for your attention.
[...]To read the entire letter, click here.
If Oxford’s halls had been rigged with Wi-Fi and Facebook sixty years ago, would we have Narnia or Middle Earth? Lewis and Tolkien had a wonderful social network: the Inklings. They had a chat room: the Eagle and Child, where you could run your finger along the wood grain of the benches, hear the tinkle of cutlery, smell the smoke from Jack’s pipe, and catch an elfin twinkle in Tollers’s eye as he clears his throat and reads: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” The Inklings were real friends with real faces discussing real books. Is it wrong to lament a human loss here?
