Reading · Patrick Madrid · RSS Amplifier

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Audio segment produced with AI narration summarizing Patrick Madrid’s written content.

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I USE THE WORD “you” here rhetorically, of course. You yourself may not fall prey to the inherent pitfalls of the Internet, especially social media, about which I’ll elaborate in a moment. And if that’s the case, congratulations!

If you are genuinely impervious to the temptations lurking on X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Telegram, YouTube, and the rest of the Internet, you are an exceedingly rare person. Or perhaps you simply never venture into Social Media Land. Either way, this article isn’t really intended for you.

But if you’re like the rest of us, for whom social media can become the devil’s playground, a never-ending source of temptations to pride, envy, lust, anger, gossip, curiosity, detraction, rash judgment, vainglory, and wasted time, read on.

Of course, there are also those who are foolishly wise in their own eyes and fail to see, or admit to, their own hubris-driven sinful behavior on social media, even though everyone else can see it a mile away in their snark, defensiveness, insults, quarreling, preening, and posturing.

These and other dangerous tendencies are brought out and effortlessly reinforced by social media, which is intentionally designed to capture and hold your attention. And human nature is all too susceptible to it. Just ask St. John Henry Newman.

In “Surrender to God,” a sermon he preached in 1848, Newman warned with uncanny accuracy about the very moral dangers social media poses today, as if he could see the future.

But seeing the future wasn’t necessary. He understood the past and human nature, as we all can, if we have eyes to see. He knew what the long lesson of history reveals about the human heart and the temptations and vices into which it so easily falls.

This is why Newman’s warning against our “curious prying into the private history of people” is every bit as relevant today as it was in his own day nearly two centuries ago. The temptations to sin that abound on social media today are no different from those he warned about when people still traveled in horse-drawn carriages and household electricity was decades away.

Here are some of his timeless cautions:

“[I]n respect to curiosity. What a deal of time is lost, to say nothing else, in this day by curiosity about things which in no ways concern us. I am not speaking against interest in the news of the day altogether, for the course of the world must ever be interesting to a Christian from its bearing upon the fortunes of the Church, but I speak of vain curiosity, love of scandal, love of idle tales, curious prying into the private history of people, curiosity about trials and offences, and personal matters, nay often what is much worse than this, curiosity into sin.
“What strange, diseased curiosity is sometimes felt about the history of murders, and of the malefactors themselves! Worse still, it is shocking to say, but there is so much evil curiosity to know about deeds of darkness, of which the Apostle says that it is shameful to speak. . . .
“Hence this is the way in which we are called upon, with this Lent we now begin, to mortify ourselves. Let us mortify our curiosity (emphasis added).”

“Many a person, who has no intention of doing the like, from an evil curiosity reads what he ought not to read. This is in one shape or other very much the sin of boys, and they suffer for it. The knowledge of what is evil is the first step in their case to the commission of it.”

“Again, the desire of knowledge is in itself praiseworthy, but it may be excessive; it may take us from higher things, it may take up too much of our time—it is a vanity. . . . ‘Of making many books [and social media posts] there is no end, and much study’ (that is, poring over secular subjects,) ‘is affliction of the flesh. Let us one and all have an end of the discourse: fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man.’ . . .”
“Knowledge is very well in its place, but it is like flowers without fruit. We cannot feed on knowledge, we cannot thrive on knowledge. Just as the leaves of the grove are very beautiful but would make a bad meal, so we shall ever be hungry and never be satisfied if we think to take knowledge for our food. Knowledge is no food. Religion is our only food.
“Here then is another mortification. Mortify your desire of knowledge. Do not go into excess in seeking after truths which are not religious. Again, mortify your reason. . . . Bring your proud intellect into subjection.”

This echoes a wise observation by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), who, more than two centuries before Newman, described countless people today who do themselves great spiritual harm by wasting time online, indulging their curiosity, arguing, sniping, criticizing, nitpicking, and gossiping about others:

“It is the part of a futile soul to busy herself with examining the lives of others.”

Honestly evaluate how you spend time on social media, and watch for these telltale red flags:

Doomscrolling
Viewing pornography of any kind, whether explicit or so-called “mild”
Feeling the need to correct others and comment negatively about them, especially people you don’t know
Wasting time endlessly grazing on the details of other people’s lives and actions
Pointing out, arguing about, and dwelling on the real and imagined faults of others
Attacking others
Flirting with someone other than your spouse or seeking flirtatious attention online
Presenting yourself online as an authority on subjects you haven’t mastered
Posturing for attention and to inflate your own sense of self-importance
Feeling compelled to have an opinion on practically everything and making sure everyone knows it
And, as Newman put it, feeding on scandal and idle tales, and prying curiously into others’ personal lives.

Avoid these things on social media, and you will do well.

Long before St. Francis de Sales and St. John Henry Newman, St. Paul himself warned:

“Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels” (2 Timothy 2:23).

In a single sentence, he summarized much of what countless people do online today: engaging in pointless controversies and feuding with others.

The solution is not to eschew social media altogether, although a case could certainly be made for that radical option. Those who abstain from it completely do at least seem largely free of the particular temptations of pornography, detraction and rash judgment, curiosity, gossip, vainglory, that so often accompany its use.

Rather, the solution lies in you (and me). We all have to be careful here.

Recognize that you too can, and perhaps do, fall into these addictive, time-wasting online traps if you’re not careful. Limit your time on social media, and consciously resist the urge to engage in the character-debasing activities described above.

And let’s never forget that human beings in every age are capable of the same greatness and susceptible to the same temptations.

The times change, the technology changes.

The human heart does not.

Social Media Is Not the Problem. You Are.

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