In this all-encompassing digital age, the work of the believer is making a shift in thinking between utilizing technology and the internet as tools, and seeing it as a social milieu. There must be a “cultural shift which promotes creativity and critical thinking, so that future generations will not just be consumers of information but have the cognitive abilities to shape their world” (Portaro, 2018). Without recognizing the digital age as a new environment, people will continue to try and justify their lack of integrity and virtues while engaging with it.
Campbell and Garner (2016) discuss Paul Tillich’s 1953 work, Systematic Theology, where Tillich explains the process of focusing “our attention on how technology and media are being engaged and viewed in wider society. Then [frames] the issues and concerns that theological insight and worldviews bring to our attention” (p. 116) entitling it “method of correction” (Tillich, 1964). Believers cannot turn their brain off when interacting with the internet. Simply because there are more podcasts, sermons, commentaries, bible studies, etc. at our fingertips, does not negate the fact that the ethical landscape is void of pitfalls. It is important that citizens of this new environment (new social construct) be purposeful in their use and critical in their thinking.
Critical thinking skills and education of thus needs to begin with young people, and it needs to begin now. Zhu and Dong (2020) expand on the importance of critical thinking for college students while using the search engines in college. What was found, was that “the learning style under the network situation is not conducive to the formation of independent thinking and deep critical thinking of college students” (p. 4). This is a dilemma when we read that there is a loss of solid faith beliefs of emerging adults due to the many interferences in young adults’ lives, including, but not merely because of, the internet (Barry and Abo-Zena, 2014).
Looking deeper, we see the fabric of religious beliefs fracturing because families are becoming less and less enamored with faith and tradition. Studies are beginning to show that “Intergenerational retention of nonreligion among families where both parents are nonreligious are especially high among Millennials in both [the United States and Canada], a characteristic of this generation’s much more secular social milieu (Wilkins-Laflamme, 2020). Because of this, emphasizing the importance and necessity of faith values and ethics and how to retain them in an online environment is imperative. There needs to be a focus on how to keep wrong and right, good and bad, valuable and expendable clear to the youth and young adults we have within our influence.
As an educator in the public school system, it is very difficult for me to express my faith values; however, I am taking the time necessary to ask the difficult questions to my students about why they believe what they believe. Why they trust the sources in which they research and then cite. How can they prove that what they do is ethical? And what is right and wrong in society. It is an interesting point in history where all these questions are so relevant, even when we are studying literature from the American 18th Century.
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References:
Barry, C. M., & Abo-Zena, M. M. (2014). Emerging Adults’ Religiousness and Spirituality Meaning-Making in an Age of Transition (Emerging Adulthood Series). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, H., & Garner, S. (2016). Chapter 6: Engaging appropriately with technology and media. In Networked theology: Negotiating faith in digital culture (pp. 115-148). Grand Rapids, MI, MI: Baker Academic.
Council of Europe. (2020, August 30). Council of Europe gives recommendations to member States on children’s rights in the digital environment. Retrieved September 27, 2020, from https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/council-of-europe-gives-recommendations-to-member-states-on-children-s-rights-in-the-digital-environment
Cox, D., & Jones, R. P., PhD. (2017). America’s Changing Religious Identity. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-landscape-christian-religiously-unaffiliated/
Li, J. (2020). Research Status of International Intelligence Education. Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities – Philosophy of Being Human as the Core of Interdisciplinary Research (ICCESSH 2020), 468, advances in social science, education and humanities research, 1-4. doi:10.2991/assehr.k.200901.054
Portaro, R. (2018, May 01). Crticall Thinking and the Digital Age. Retrieved September 27, 2020, from https://www.concordia.ca/cunews/offices/vprgs/sgs/public-scholars/2018/05/01/critical-thinking-and-the-digital-age.html
Tillich, P. (1953). Vol. 1 (Nisbet, J., 1964). Systematic Theology (pp. 67-73). London, England.
Wilkins-Laflamme, S. (2020). Like Parent, Like Millennial: Inherited and Switched (Non)Religion among Young Adults in the U.S. and Canada [Abstract]. Journal of Religion and Demography, 7(1), 123-149. doi:10.1163/2589742x-12347103
