Does Your Online Life Leave You Too Depleted for Local Community?
Why you should take inventory of your online groups and chats.
A few days before a funeral for a loved one, I got a message from an Instagram follower asking for prayer about her work. Caring for my grieving husband, arranging childcare, and discerning ways to help the other members of our family were my number one priority in those few days, and I left the message read but unanswered. A few days after the funeral, I received an angry message. How could I call myself a Christian and leave a fellow believer hanging like that? Imagine if she had been in the middle of a panic attack or even contemplating suicide, and I had just ignored her!
I blinked as I stared at the screen. It almost didn’t seem serious—but sadly, it was.
I am far from being a Christian influencer, so I can only imagine the amount of messages others in that world receive like this on a regular basis. A close writing friend of mine has had several followers reach out to her over the years, asking her to mentor them in the faith. One of the editors I work with told me she has people regularly reach out to their publication on social media with specific questions for wisdom in their personal lives and confess their sins to her.
This kind of confession or desperate reaching out for help online doesn’t just happen in personal messages but also in our feeds. We post extremely raw, vulnerable words about our personal lives: the explicit details of our fight with someone, the catty words a friend recently said behind our backs, the embarrassing thing our child is doing, a despairing thought from the depths of our souls, or just about any unfiltered thought that pops into our heads. Some people prefer a bit more “privacy” and dump these explicit stories about their sex lives, raising children, and disrespectful words against their parents and in-laws in Facebook groups or other similar mediums.
These practices stem from the same problem: we seek discipleship primarily from someone online rather than our local church, which isn’t impossible.
A quick bit of nuance: I know there are people in the world who do not have the same privileges as me, such as the ability to go to a public church and connect with believers in person. Some people live in secluded communities or countries that don’t allow public Christian worship. There is a place for seeking online relationships and even discipleship in these contexts. These are not the kinds of situations I’m addressing. Rather, I’m considering people in situations like mine still look primarily to the internet for godly fellowship.
Zapped by Online “Communities”
How many online groups, communities, or social media platforms are you a part of? According to Facebook, you can join up to 6000 groups—after that, you’ll have to leave some if you want to join more. Perhaps your online group isn’t on Facebook; maybe it’s through Voxer, WhatsApp, Marco Polo, or Signal. Are you a part of a Mighty Network, an online forum, or another social network?
Now consider: how many of those are truly meaningful to you?
I participated in a group chat with several women I had connected with online (never in person), and my phone buzzed literally hundreds of times in the course of a day. After a while, I got tired of the constant notifications and silenced them, but whenever I opened the app twenty-four hours later, 200–999 unread messages awaited me.
Many of the messages were simply funny stories and memes. Another big portion of the messages were discussing intimate, painful suffering the others were going through. Every day, new prayer requests chimed in along with difficult stories that grieved me. Meanwhile, my own trials left me exhausted and worn, and I knew I didn’t have the capacity for it all. I deleted the app and left the chat.
I’m not against group chats—I have a chat to stay connected with distant family members, a chat with a few local women that I meet with regularly, and a Voxer chat with writing friends who live far away from me (who have become even more than just “writing friends”). I’m in various online communities through my work as a writer. I prioritize these chats. These chats aren’t draining but life-giving, important for local ministry, and keep me connected to the people I have a real relationship with.
I realized the former group chat met none of those criteria. While at times it provided a laugh, it wasn’t edifying me. Rather, it distracted me from my local communities and immediate family. It left me without the mental and emotional capacity to be there for those who suffered in my local church because I poured all my prayers and encouragement into that chat with women I barely knew. I found the same problem with Facebook groups; they provided this sense of community while never actually being the kind of community we’re created for, and they often left me depleted by all the grievous stories I read in them.
Online Community is Easier, but Not Better
These online communities—whether chats, groups, or social media in general—give me a place to create a community to my liking: one that doesn’t see my in-real-life sins and struggles, never requires real sacrifice from me, is formed with people of my choosing, and can be silenced whenever I like. They’re convenient. I can find a niche Facebook group for whatever I like and surround myself with people who look, act, and think just like me. They’ll never push back against my ideas because they have the exact same ideas. We can build a shelter around ourselves so that we never have to interact with someone who may strive to change or stretch our minds beyond our own experiences.
Real-life communities are the exact opposite, which makes them sanctifying. You will find several people you disagree with in your local church. In your small group, people who don’t make the same decisions as you and come from different backgrounds will attend. Real community is inconvenient and requires more sacrifice, which often means slowing down and being less productive. That’s why we choose online groups over real-life relationships.
, host of the Commonplace Podcast, likewise points out that we’ve grown to love machines over people because of how inconvenient real people are. We prefer texting over going to someone’s house because it’s on our time and doesn’t require as much from us. We rather drive-thru pickup because we don’t want to accidentally bump into another human being and need to converse with them. Interacting with real people takes longer and requires more of us. But what if that’s the point?1Online communities left me striving to be God: Omnipresent, available at any time, and sovereignly orchestrating communities for myself. They also made me appear more productive—of seeming omnipotence. When I finally realized this and submitted myself to God’s ways (not my own), a weight lifted. It was a more vulnerable experience, but a better one nonetheless.
As I poured myself out into the truer communities around me, I found real help and encouragement—friends who pray for me in person; loved ones who bring meals and watch my kids; siblings in Christ who truly keep me accountable; local friends who have gone through the exact same struggles as me. I also find more opportunities to truly sacrifice myself to be there for the local people around me.
You can’t create this online. You were created for something better—to be a living member of the local church.
Next time an influencer you messaged ignores you, remember it’s not that those of us with an online presence are cold-hearted or lazy. Rather, we know that we have nothing to offer you besides the words we publish online, and even those fail compared to what the people in your local church can offer you. Our words are a supplement to theirs, not the other way around. We want you to look at them, not us, even if it means our stats go down.
As for your online chats and groups, don’t necessarily cut them all out of life. There are likely some that exist in your life that are truly beneficial. But don’t refuse to assess their worth in your life or question if they are why you constantly feel depleted. If you find yourself too weary for your local community, perhaps it’s because you’ve given too much of yourself to your online one.
Autumn Kern, “Your Smartphone Might Be Making Life Harder...in the Wrong Way | Dumb Phone: 2 Months | COMMON MOM,” YouTube, January 30, 2023.
"Our words are a supplement to theirs, not the other way around. We want you to look at them, not us, even if it means our stats go down." Yes, yes, YES. I've gotten so much pushback over the past few years when I make the argument that online communities aren't actually real communities — "But, but but... This X group I'm part of has been so good for me!" Yes, that's great. But that's not the kind of community you were made for. You were made for an embodied community because you are an embodied person. Online communities scratch that itch just enough to make us feel like we've connected with people, when in reality, they usually leave us even lonelier than before (even if we don't want to admit it, or more realistically, even if we don't notice it because we've long forgotten what real community is like).
Great words here; thanks for writing them!
Bravo! This is so wonderfully true, thank you for articulating it so well. So many things in life are like this, which means you’ve hit upon a true principle here. Everything that gives us life and restores and refreshes and uplifts us takes work on our end. For example, spending time in nature takes effort and even some risk: we might get rained on or be uncomfortable or encounter poison ivy or snakes. But we also might encounter the astonishing glory of God as well.