Family before Facebook

The appeal of Facebook may be incomprehensible to some — the quick effortless way it sheds light on people’s personal lives; the claims of connecting people but the impersonal way it accomplishes this.

A teenager declared, “Don’t you know that Facebook gives us a sense of self-worth?…I have 1,000 friends on Facebook and because of my posts, I get plenty ‘likes’ every day. It makes me feel good.”

Facebook serves a need: to be liked; to be known; to be popular and accepted. It meets the need to belong to a community—even one as abstract as cyberspace where you can hide behind a veil of anonymity if you wish. Like the sons of Zebedee in today’s Gospel, Facebook fills the need to be recognised, visible, possibly assume status, and, through association, share in someone else’s glory.

Subscribe or login below to view the rest of this story.

Subscribe to the Digital Archive | Log-In to Catholic News.