The Digital Exodus

Or How Social Media Keeps Us from Worship

When I announced my decision to leave Instagram, I got more than a few questions as to why–mostly from people who have considered leaving themselves. Truth be told, it had been a question on my mind for some time and I always found a reason to stay.

I could get into all of the “whys” behind my decision but I think

Tsh Oxenreider

and Katie Marquette at

Born of Wonder

, among others, have summed most of them up nicely. 

Really, the continuous tug on my heart had become hard to ignore. Gently but firmly told me it was time to go. It had become an idol in my life and a temporary hiatus wouldn’t bring the golden calf toppling down–I needed to smash it. 

And maybe you do too.

Social media, in many ways, keeps us, like the Isrealites in Egypt, from our ultimate end–authentic, whole-hearted worship of God.

The Adoration of the Golden Calf, Nicolas Poussin (1633)

By making us in His Image and Likeness, God gives us a different nature than the rest of creation. We are not mere creatures, we are children created us to partake in His Divine Life. We were made for communion with God. 

Before the Fall, this communion was effortless. God walked among the Garden and our first parents knew the sound of His footsteps. In their work and their play, humanity’s souls were rightly ordered toward loving and serving God alone. They gave themselves freely and wholly to God, and He to them.

But of course, we know how the story goes. After the fruit had been eaten and the Garden lost, so was communion with God. Our little crooked hearts now looked away from God to satisfy its deepest longings. Our freedom has been compromised and we attempt to retrain it toward virtue so we can truly choose what is Good— a task that often feels like pushing the same rock up the same hill day in and day out.

But we sabotage even our best attempts at regaining our freedom when we allow weeds to make themselves at home in our garden. What’s one little weed to my bountiful garden?, we wonder. But that innocent mistake, that one little weed, can spread quietly and quickly choke our fruit before we even notice how it's grown. 

When I really stepped back, I found that social media is the weed. And its roots are deep, y’all. What started out as a fun website or app to connect with family and friends, share silly pictures of our lunches, proms, or trips to the beach, somehow managed to rewire our brains and reshape our view of the world in just a few years. 

Social Media is addictive and it’s meant to be. These companies need you to keep coming back. Your eyes, your attention–YOU–are the product being sold to advertisers. But unlike other addictions where addicts are encouraged to cut off the source, people are often encouraged to find ways to simply “moderate” their social media usage. 

Now, maybe some people can use social media virtuously instead of white-knuckling it like the rest of us (or without having their spouse change their screen time password to keep them honest). But for the most part, social media and moderation are incompatible. It is intended to keep us enslaved, responding to the phone’ ping when a notification arrives the way Dwight would hold his hand out to Jim for an Altoid every time the computer restarted.

It is akin to the spiritual bondage of the Israelites in the Book of Exodus. God had sworn to deliver them from their slavery and bring them into the land He promised to Abraham. However, before He could give them their physical freedom, the Lord needed to erase the Egyptian influence and liberate their hearts from the spiritual slavery that held them captive. To do that, He called them into the wilderness to worship. 

The Promised Land could not be a properly sacred land if God did not reign in it. Their freedom was nothing if they did not use it to obtain their rightful end–the worship of God. However, spiritual freedom, though even more vital than their physical freedom, is much harder to obtain. 

Despite having the appearance of freedom after God brought them safely out of Egypt, drowned their captors in the Red Sea, and gave them clear instructions for living a life pleasing to God, the Israelites choose still to worship a golden calf. 

When was the last time you really listened to the homily at mass? Or spent time with Jesus in the Eucharist? Now look at your screen time summary from the past week. Are our hearts and minds truly free to worship as God desires? Or are we offering ourselves at the altar of alternate reality? 

When we recognize the ways in which social media has rewired our brains to crave it or to fear losing it and rendering ourselves obsolete, we allow its hold on us to grow more and more powerful. When we acknowledge the harm it's doing in our life and then choose to stay, we willingly relinquish our freedom, which is far worse than having it unwittingly taken from us. 

But it feels easier, right? 

For most of us, social media feeds our vanity, our gluttony, our sloth, our lust, our rage; the creators know this, these are things that keep users coming back. But a part of us likes it that way. Feeding our vices feels good, especially when you’re trained to expect instant gratification for your cravings. (In this area, I think you’ll agree social media and smartphones don’t do us any favors). We begin to resist grace because, in the words of Flannery O’Connor “...grace changes us and the change is painful.” 

We lose sight of our call to virtue, forgetting that making ourselves a pleasing offering is an indispensable aspect of our worship. 

We make a Faustian bargain for another refresh of the newsfeed. 

Instead of wrestling with the hard stuff and asking the tough questions, we reach for our phones to fill the “void” of silence or stillness. We want an excuse (any excuse at all—lip syncing TikToks included!) to not think about the fact that one day everything will pass away and we will stand naked before our Creator, our Father, our God. We give away the very thing that makes us human because we fear what that freedom will demand of us. 

No servant can serve two masters. You cannot worship with both God and mammon. 

I know many writers and creators use the internet to offer beautiful, spiritually edifying, and humanizing resources that can actually aid in worship. I’ve found them and I sincerely hope that some of my words both on this substack or for another past blog/publication may offer you encouragement on your pilgrimage. 

But I just found that the content I was consuming in bite-sized blurbs and reels with nothing more than a quick double tap of my thumb always left me achingly hungry. Consumption is not communion and the deepest yearnings of our heart will never be satisfied by anything but God.

I’m not saying you need to leave social media. I just want to invite you to consider if it’s really serving you in a way that is bringing you closer to God, or if, like me, it has become a detriment to your worship.

We could continue to consume, and consume, and consume until Judgement Day but will God be able to recognize our face buried in our phone screen? Would we really be able to look back up at Him in return? 

If not, join in the Exodus.