It is a known fact that we live in a digital age, where everything is at the tip of our fingers. A friend or family relative that was once miles away, is now just a phone call or a chat away. Markets that were in distant China and the United States are now just a click away. These are some of the uses or benefits of the technological advancements of the 21st Century. But how about its abuses? How much has technology, especially social media, taken from us? Or, rather, how much of us have we allowed it to possess? This paper seeks to examine the adverse effects of social media on one’s identity or image and on our insecurities. 
In an interview with a woman called Jennifer, where she was asked what she has learned from her use of social media, this is what she had to say, “What I have learned is that I was far more needy than I ever imagined.”
“Needy. Needy for what exactly?” she was asked.
Jennifer: “Well, it seems for everything,” she said, offering a list. “Needy for personal affirmation. The approval of man. Constant social connection. Fear of missing out. Needy for distraction from life. Needy for constant entertainment. Needy for knowledge to puff me up. It seems like my list of needs is endless.”
When asked further, “What is at the heart of this struggle? Why are you so needy for these things?”
“I think that at the heart of my social-media struggle,” she said, “is that I am always seeking after my own glory, and that self-glory never is enough. It doesn’t last. Each time I mindlessly
scroll through my social-media feed, or check to see if my friends have texted me back, it all just proves again how much I continue to lack. I can never get enough of something.”
“Now,” she said, “there’s nothing inherently wrong with social media, texting friends, taking pictures of your kids, or pictures of yourself for that matter, or enjoying online video. But technology makes all of this immediately accessible in the palm of your hand. And all of our social-media platforms are designed to deliver us instant gratification. So that’s what I have discovered. I have endless needs that are not satisfied by my phone.”
That’s sharp. Do you understand what Jennifer is saying here? She’s saying there are legitimate needs that we have, real needs we seek to feed with candy substitutes that will never satisfy us. She’s saying if you send two hundred throwaway selfies today on Snapchat, you’re not simply broadcasting your attempt to be seen and loved by your peers. No. You are, more essentially, broadcasting the vastness of your inner neediness to the world. And those needs are not satisfied with just a little more Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Tik Tok — nor with a little more self-affirmation and self-praise. It all exposes a need.
Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok elicit from them something of a digital beauty pageant, a race to impress with wit (humour), or confidence, or sex appeal, or wealth. But under these ambitious impulses to share at any moment of the day or night remains a low-grade insecurity. When something you have posted fails to impress, and an image or selfie or video sits out there in the digital ether unliked and unloved and unshared, it casts self-doubt. And behind all the digital disillusionment is the false promise that a device will make me more impressive in the eyes of my peers.
And so we all continue to create this unending digital presence before others. We are all needy. And time and time again, our phone does not deliver on these promises. In the wake of smartphone addiction, we are left with increasing anxiety, depression, and more loneliness. One would think that because we can instantly connect with friends and family, those longings for affection would immediately be satisfied. But more often than not, we find that to be a big fat lie.
Everybody feels these same tensions, lured to our phones by these same false promises. That something of my wit and creativity and brilliance will impress others. We never pause to consider other ways of addressing these tensions, more well-thought-out and more long lasting ways of quenching that thirst to entertain others and in turn get that vague gratification that we have added value.
Yet nothing is more vague than the extent of the emptiness; the insecurities; the neediness that this very habit of desiring self gratification reveals. We have created these miniature worlds of ours, where we think we are the supreme being; these soap operas, where we think ourselves the stars of the show. We no longer crave the peace and quiet of our aloneness, so we call it loneliness and are therefore always seeking to hear and be heard. To read and be read.
The soul is hungry, the vastness of the void deep within our hearts goes deeper than the oceans, but somehow we deceive ourselves into thinking that an endless scroll through the newsfeed will find us satisfaction; a random, or rather vulgar joke will fill the chasm. When these fail, we seek out companionship, even from men and women that do not know who they are, or what they want. When all these fails, we go back to social media and look for pity, albeit unknowingly, from people we barely know, and instead of getting loved, what we get is mere pity. And the circle continues.
But when would we learn? When would we learn that even though it can be so tempting to curate our online presence to impress others: nice meals we’re enjoying, exotic places we’re visiting, popular people we’re spending time with, Jesus didn’t say He would use our accomplishments to draw people to Himself? But that He said it would be our love (John 13:35)?
When would we learn that that neediness we feel; that emptiness inside of us that drives us to want to seek short-lived gratification from strangers who call themselves loved ones on social media; that insecurity that may have come about by tried and failed relationships, can all be filled by us filling our hearts with the only One who made us and who can fill us?
When will we stop trying to quench our thirst using baskets and broken cisterns? (Jeremiah 2:13). For how long shall we continue to seek for happiness from a people who do not know what it means to be happy?
When will you stop trying to find your identity from platforms that do not have names of their own?
Today, if there be any among you here who have tried but failed in trying to fill that longing inside; that search for identity; that desire to be seen and heard, Christ offers a way out. He commands, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” (John 7:37). The Samaritan woman at the well had this same void inside of her, and because there was no social media in her day, she sought for her identity in marriage. She thought that if she could just hold down a marriage, and have a man whose name she could bear, she would be fulfilled. But she later learned, after five failed marriages, that only Christ was and is big enough to fill that empty vacuum inside of her. That day, she found her identity, not in marriage, not in a well curated social media timeline, not in seeking self gratification, but in meeting the One who made her, and in Whose image she was made.
May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the satisfaction he brings all those who thirst, abound richly to you all. Amen!
