Social Media Bonus: 4 Great Ways To Use Social Media Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura Wifler: Hey guys, Em and Laura here, and this is a bonus episode for our Social Media series. We wanted to put this out because we know that we've been a little bit hard on social media throughout the series, but we do not think social media is all bad. It actually has amazing benefits, and it has been a gift to both Emily and I, personally and in our professional lives as well. It is an amazing mechanism to be able to share Risen Motherhood and get gospel hope into the hands of moms.
Today, we are going to talk real quickly here about ways that it can be used redemptively. When we live as Christian women on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Youtube—all the social media platforms—we carry Christ with us. We carry his ways with us wherever we go. Here are four ideas for what this might look like. I'm going to pass it off for Em to just rip through these real fast.
Emily Jensen: All right. The first thing we can do is be salt and light. This is what Laura was mentioning earlier with the way that we've been able to use the Risen Motherhood platform to share gospel hope and truth. We know that moms are scrolling on their phones, and our hope is that every time they come across Risen Motherhood, they see some truth and some hope there.
That's just one example how all of us can do that in small ways. It doesn't have to be overtly talking about Christ on your platform. It could just be in the beauty and the truth and the joy with which you communicate or the excellence with which you run your platform and the great ethics that you use. Or it can be literally using social media to share the good news of Jesus Christ in more overt ways—to talk boldly about who he is and what he's done in your life so we can be a light in a dark place.
The second thing is: we can use social media to get what we need for real life. We all need help with things. We need recipes for dinner, we need hacks for how to organize things. Some of us would even love to connect with parents who perhaps— Laura and I both have children with special needs. We've been able to connect with other moms and dads online who have children with similar diagnoses.
There is a broad spectrum of ways that social media can actually help us. Perhaps it's just taking a moment to look at who you're following and say, "Hey, is a lot of this just like junk that I don't really need, that's not really helping me?" Or "How can I curate my feed to follow accounts, follow people, who are actually helping me and giving me information that I can use to be faithful in my real life, in my home, in my workplace—whatever that looks like?"
Number three is: we can use social media to build relationships. We all know that that is one of the great things about social media. We can stay connected to family who lives far away or maybe friends that live back in the town we used to live in. We can follow people after meeting them in real life, and sometimes we can even build relationships with people we never even interact with in real life. This is such a great thing. As we like things and comment and engage with different people's profiles, we can do that in a way that builds up those relationships and strengthens those relationships and doesn't tear them down.
The fourth great way we can use social media is just to be kind. We can be a Christian on social media. This is true in our interactions, in the way that we speak, in the way that we send DMs, in what we share. And in that as well, with kindness, that can also include generosity—sharing other people's content, being willing to cheer other people on, being willing to say, "Hey, that was helpful to me," or "That was encouraging to me."
We can use it as a tool to build other people up and to support people who are creating good, godly, life-giving, great content. We hope that this gives you some really good ideas. Of course, there are so many more ways that you can use social media redemptively.
Laura: Thanks, Em. That was really helpful, and hopefully that gets the ball rolling for some of you guys. Thanks for tuning in to our entire series. If you haven't listened to all of the episodes, be sure to go back and tune in. Thanks for listening.
