Last week we talked about the mind of Christ versus the lies of the enemy and how those differentiated.
We talked about how the mind of Christ may be like faith and the lies of the enemy will be distrust.
An example of the lies of the enemy
The examples that we talked about had social media in the forefront: suicide rates, depression and social issues have risen because of social media usage.
Social media affects the dopamine in our brains. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that makes us feel happy. We get a sense of fulfillment from dopamine every time we get a notification that someone has responded to our message, liked our post, or otherwise interacted with us on social media. We learn to go to our phones or computers for fulfillment because it gives us a faster and easier sense of fulfillment than investing in a deeper in-person relationship.
What we learn while using social media is a false sense of relationships. People get caught up in seeing all the good things everyone else is doing even though their lives are pretty much like everyone else's.
The false sense of relationships that we have from social media affect our society. Sometimes people that would normally be polite in person can be vicious and nasty towards one another online because they're hiding behind their phone.
Protecting our minds
Some of the group members talked about how they felt they were positively affected by cutting out mobile use of social media as often trying to find ways to eliminate some of that unnecessary use in downtimes.