9 Questions and Answers About My Upcoming Book

Terms of Service the book releases February 1!

Hey there! My book, Terms of Service, will be published on February 1. I recently answered some questions about the book, explaining why I wrote it, why the term “social internet” is more commonly used in the book that “social media,” and other such matters.

If you’re not sure if the book is for you, read through some of the questions below, and maybe you’ll have a bit of a better idea.

If you already know you’d like to read it, you can preorder it here!

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Why did you write this book? What inspired you to write it?

A few years ago I read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Dr. Postman was a professor in the media studies department at New York University. The book was written in 1985 and focused heavily on how television and other forms of media were transforming the way people lived life in many ways they didn’t even notice, chiefly, they were more interested in being amused than anything else.

When I read Amusing, I was pretty amazed by how relevant it was today despite never talking about the internet or social media. I thought to myself, “We could really use someone writing like Dr. Postman but from a Christian perspective and in relation to our modern forms of media and technology.” So instead of wishing for that kind of person and writing, I decided to be the kind of person who did that kind of writing. I make no claims to be as insightful as Dr. Postman, but I do hope to steward some of his wealth of knowledge to a 21st century, Christian context.

I have spent almost my entire professional career working in social media for Christian organizations, so that led me to study more of the sociological and psychological effects of social media. Also having undergraduate and graduate degrees in biblical studies, I thought it would be good to examine our relationship with the social internet in terms of its effects on us spiritually, too.

For whom did you write this book?

When I first set out to write the book, I took intentional steps to make it accessible for Christians and non-Christians alike. Though the book is being published by a Christian publisher and my worldview is pretty clear, I was careful to not make this book “a theology of social media.” I avoided that angle because I think there are plenty of good books like that already, and because I think that a lot of what I write in the book is applicable to Christians and non-Christians alike.

The book is almost certainly helpful for pastors, church leaders, and other Christian leaders, but the book was really written for anyone, Christian or not, who thinks that we should examine our relationship with the social internet.

You start off the book by comparing social media use to fish swimming in water. Talk about this analogy and what you mean by it.  

In his 2005 commencement address to Kenyon College, eventually published as the book This Is Water, American author and thinker David Foster Wallace begins with a story about a couple of young fish and an older fish.

The younger fish are swimming along and are passed by an older fish swimming in the opposite direction. He says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?” The younger fish swim on and eventually one turns to the other and asks, “What the [heck] is water?”

I think this is an apt analogy for where we find ourselves in relation to the internet and what I hope the book accomplishes. We are fish. The social internet is the water in which we swim. Terms of Service is my attempt to be an older fish and call us to examine the water in which we swim, the water, I think, that most of us never even recognize we’re swimming in, let alone how it’s affecting our lives.

Wallace says of the fish story, “The point is that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” This, I think, describes the social internet and its impact in our everyday lives.

I think the water of the social internet is toxic. I think, however, like fish with water, it is impossible for us to live outside of the influence of the social internet. So, our best bet is to do all we can to learn to live in the water. Terms of Service is my attempt to provide some thought on how to do just that.

Why did you choose to use the term “social internet” in much of your book?

Media and technology are different. In a 1997 lecture at the College of DuPage in suburban Chicago, Neil Postman said it this way:

A technology is to a medium as the brain is to the mind. Like the brain, a technology is a physical apparatus. Like the mind, a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put….A technology, in other words, is a machine, a piece of hard wiring. A medium a social creation.

Social media is a “medium” built on a foundational “technology” that I (and others) like to call the “social internet.” To use an analogy: social media is the food, and the social internet is the plate, the fork, the knife, and whatever other kinds of tools you use to consume the food. We spend a lot of time thinking about the food, or content, we consume online, but I fear we don’t spend enough time thinking about the technology that delivers us the food, because it affects us just as much as the food does.

When I say the words “social media” its likely that a few app icons and logos pop into your head (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). But when I say the words “social internet” and when I write about the concept of the social internet, I am writing about the broader internet and all of the ways in which it is social. Google search results are social media—people created those web pages that appear as results. Yelp reviews are social media—people reviewed those restaurants and attractions. Podcasts are social media—people create and deliver that audio content.

Part of the goal of Terms of Service is to help us broaden our understanding of the internet. Social media is so much broader than the apps we spend hours scrolling every day, and the best way to make that clear is to use a broader term. So that’s why “the social internet” is much more common in the book than simply “social media.”

In your book, Terms of Service, you write much about how the social internet has and is shaping us. Will you share a few ways we are "servants of the social internet that was originally marketed as something that would serve us"?

When social media first started coming onto the scene it was promoted as a way to connect with others, even old classmates or friends from other parts of the world. It’s still promoted this way today. The whole pitch is that social media is a tool to make our lives better in one way or another. The idea is that social media is a tool to serve us. But, in reality, we have come to serve social media. How?

We are hopelessly addicted to them. I’ve been in countless conversations over the years with people who feel like they couldn’t quit social media even if they tried.

We provide social media platforms with our data, and our data is what makes them billions of dollars. “If it’s free, you’re the product,” applies to Facebook, Google, and any other social internet platform that doesn’t charge you any money. Facebook takes your clicks and scrolls and interests and sells them to advertisers for billions of dollars per year.

We try to earn others’ attention at all costs. Attention is the currency of the social internet. It’s how we feel good. When people pay us attention online we feel most alive. Some of us are willing to do anything from arguing about politics to posting suggestive images of ourselves in order to accumulate as much attention as possible.

Those are just a few ways we’ve become servants of the technology that was proposed as a tool to serve us.

What makes us continue to log on despite emerging research of the social internet's negative effects on us mentally and emotionally?

We’re addicted to what it provides for us. Even though social media makes us feel bad at times, there is always that chance that it will make us feel good. Like a dog who hears a bell is conditioned to believe that the bell will lead to a treat, even when it doesn’t, we have come to believe that a little red notification badge or a new message will deliver us a good feeling even if it doesn’t. Maybe someone will recognize our existence. Maybe someone will pay me the attention I so desperately want.

We want to be loved, but we’re afraid of being known. Building deep friendships with people in close proximity to us can seem scary and vulnerable when we have the opportunity to earn affection, even hollow affection, from people on the internet who don’t know the worst parts about us.

How can the message of the gospel help us to manage the way we interact with and on the social internet?

In so many ways, but briefly, the gospel should remind us that who we are and what we’re made for are safely kept in an unshakeable, eternal reality. For those of us who trust in Jesus Christ and know that we will spend eternity in the presence of our God, the hollow promises of the social internet should not lure us away from the deep, foundational truths of the gospel. If we know that we are forever accepted and loved because of the completed, past action of Christ and the future we have in his promises, the Siren calls of the social internet and its fancies are much more easily ignored.

When we know that we are accepted and loved by God, the fleeting, shallow affection promised by the clicks and taps of social media followers becomes strangely dim.

What advice would you give to those who see that social media is affecting them, but are struggling to set limits?

Set screen time limits on your phone and give someone else the password to unlock them. Find an accountability partner or group of people who have permission to call you out on anything, including your internet activity. Spend as much time reading as you spend scrolling your favorite social media apps. Go for a walk without your phone and without headphones in. Those are just a few pieces of advice.

What do you hope readers will do or take away after reading this book?

My biggest hope, honestly, is that people will step back and examine their relationship with the social internet. I hope the book leaves people with more questions than answers. The entire last part of Terms is full of ways to unshackle ourselves from the social internet, but even if readers totally ignored the end of the book, my hope is that they would think twice about posting everything they post online. My hope is that readers would take the steps they need to take to restrict the amount of personal data these apps can harvest from them. My hope is that readers realize that they’re swimming in water, and that the water is toxic. We cannot escape the water, but if we at least recognize its toxicity, maybe we can do something to clean it up a bit.

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If, after learning more about the book, you’d like to pre-order it. You can do so here, or from wherever you like to purchase your books.