In Defense of Social Media

In Defense of Social Media

 

 

Social media and the Internet in general is maligned as much as the printing press at the times of Guttenberg, as much as Socrates was condemned for corruption of youth.  “Internet destroys lives.” “Facebook generates cyberbullying”.  And before Facebook there was no bullying?  Was there no physical abuse, no rape, no beatings, no spitting, no gossip, no boycotts, no insults, and no humiliation?  I have some news for all social media haters and concerned parties: the first and second world wars and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened before the invention of Internet!  The cannibalism, the Crusades, the genocides happened before the invention of printed press.  Facebook makes people lonely and increases suicide rates?  Millions of Indian women, forced into arranged marriages, locked at the mercy of abusive in-laws, jumped into family wells for centuries before the invention of the first computer.   

A high-school girl posted on Facebook a picture with her father who passed away four days after her first homecoming party, with a caption “Love you, Dad”, and hundreds of people came to the shiva.  A friend posted a rhetorical question and a live person showed up at the door with a tray of food.  Yes, privacy is a concern, and ease of contact creates high expectations to get a birthday greeting etc... but banning and ostracizing the media is not a solution.  Don’t blame the messenger.  Guns don’t kill – people do!  What matters is what is in people’s minds, the content of what is being said, not the media that was used.  No one can stop human intellect from growing and reaching for the stars.  No one can prevent the rising power of the mind.  But the power can be channeled, educated, shaped.  There are laws of the proper speech, shmirat haloshon, there are norms of ethical behavior between ben adam v’haveiro, between a man and his neighbor, and people can be taught to practice these laws before they learn how to use a computer.  The widespread concerns about the dangers of social media highlight the necessity of early and constantly ongoing ethical education of children from infancy all the way through graduate school.  People should not wait to sign up for management sensitivity training and say “why I was not taught this before?”

Not every child has a good fortune to attend a religious day school, like Solomon Schechter, where children are taught morality along with science, and where every secular subject is infused with Torah values, where teachers care about the child’s well-being and his or her relationship with the world.  But the secular world has its own wisdom teachings.  The Almighty G-d in his infinity mercy granted wise people of many nations great insights on how to live good life in peace and harmony.  This wisdom, the ethics, can and must be taught in public and private schools.  The ethical education must become part of mandatory elementary school education, and if parents and teachers are concerned about internet, social media, possession of firearms, or anything whatever may come next (and new more powerful and dangerous things will come next without a doubt!), then they have to lobby the government and congress and raise funds to provide children with mandatory ethical education.  Not once a year workshop- retreat – fun games – friendship exercise, but daily lessons and drills every morning before opening math textbooks. 

Of course for a Jewish child Aristotle and Gandhi can never replace Torah.  But we, educated Jewish adults, cannot shut ourselves from the world.  We can select the aspects of secular teaching that is compatible with Torah values and teach them to the world, deliver the knowledge of G-d in a form that is acceptable to the nations.  Ethical philosophy does not replace religion, but it does open a human heart to awareness of something greater, it elevates and refines the mind, it creates an opening, a possibility for moral growth. This was already being done in U.K. - there were experimental philosophy courses for high-school students that had huge success – what is a better time to think of the meaning of life and relationship between a man and the world than when one is seventeen?   But I believe that to teach experimental philosophy classes in high-school is too little and too late.  Children have to be taught Ethics from preschool, in whatever form it could be absorbed – with bright pictures, emotional stories, fun games, music, every form of media that we are all so concerned about.

Yaphet, the progenitor of the nation of Greece, has his name derived from the root “y-ph-t” which means “open” - he will open the hearts. G-d will open the hearts to Yaphet; He will give him influence over the human heart. (Rav Shimshon R. Hirsh, commentary on Bereishit 9:27)