Wake Up, Look Up

[Music]

hello everyone thanks for listening to

Wake Up, Look Up a podcast where we

connect events happening in real time to

the Gospel of Jesus Christ I'm Zach

Weihrauch and in today's episode we're

asking the question do you control the

internet this is prompted by an article

in the Washington Post this week called

Dark and strange content is slipping

through social media's Cracks by Heather

Kelly and I give you the title of the

article because it captures the essence

and the idea here is that increasingly

social media companies are struggling to

keep dark content from your feed you

might have known noticed this disturbing

content takes a lot of different forms

graphic violence including actual and

real crimes being perpetrated a bizarre

videos I mean there are things with

humans nursing ba animal infants and all

kinds of weird things and then AI

generated stuff as well as things like

surgeries and medical procedures I me

the internet is of course a dark and

scary places on the corners on the

fringes at least that's what we thought

but increasingly the corners and fringes

are encroaching on our territory so you

might be on Instagram to share pictures

of your trips and those kinds of things

with friends but you're seeing content

you never thought you would which also

is breaking a myth because I think what

we all think about social media is that

I control my content that if I curate

who I follow and what I want to see I'll

only get the internet that I want which

means then of course I can ensure for

myself a kind of safe bubble that I can

exist in within the larger internet but

that isn't true anymore because

overwhelmingly social media companies

like meta Instagram Tik Tok are

struggling to keep out this content

which is troubling for me and for you

but even more troubling for young people

in fact increasingly there are court

cases where families are saying that

their child's uh pursuit of self harm or

development of an eating disorder

actually came from content they stumbled

into or you might even say stumbled into

them on their social media feed the

truth is that social media companies are

run by algorithms we all know that and

algorithms reward content that gets

clicks and as much as I hate to admit it

dark and scary content moves the needle

so while social media companies are

trying to use filters their own

algorithms are self-defeating by the way

the court cases I mentioned earlier were

were children on social media with

parental filters in place that's right

the filters you think are doing the job

you've asked them to do aren't working

anymore so where does that leave us well

a couple of things from the Bible should

inform us here uh number one we must

guard our hearts from dark and scary

content a couple of passages here in the

Bible Proverbs 4 says to guard your

heart for from it flow the Springs of

Life Philippians 4 says whatever is

Noble pure uh just honorable that's what

we should be thinking about there's a

battle for our minds and that battle is

external companies looking to put

content in front of us that makes us

spin frivolously or act frivolously

turning us away from God but that

struggle is internal too the truth is

that dark and strange content hooks into

different things in me whether that is

my own sinfulness or my fear and my

anxiety either way it is causing me to

go down a road that I do not want to go

down look Ephesians tells us to be

mindful of the fact that we live in a

spiritual World there are spiritual

forces seeking to destroy nowadays they

don't even have to leave the house to do

that they just make sure we see the

wrong content on the internet listen you

are responsible for what you doom scroll

you are responsible for the companies

whose apps you choose to have on your

phone are you being careful and is it

worth it anymore I told you about a year

ago because of this podcast I deleted my

Twitter account because increasingly

Twitter was bringing pornography to its

users whether they went looking for it

or not I am not bulletproof and neither

are you and if you continue to exist in

spaces that can get content in in front

of you that you might not be able to

unsee or that you might not be able to

stop thinking about then you are the one

making the choice that puts you or your

children at risk do you control the

internet no not in the way you think you

do they control it question is of course

do you trust them with your soul hey

thanks so much for watching this episode

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Have an article you’d like Pastor Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!