Four Responses to a Media Saturated Society

I am speaking at the Word of Life Snow Camp several times this season and one of my topics is Textual Purity. No I am not talking about the exegeting of the scriptures; I am going to be addressing the use of media in our lives. I am not asking the students to abstain from using social media or smartphones; I am just asking them to practice safe-text.

We live in a Technology Saturated Society:

• Internet data flow¹

• Eight years ago there were only around 5 exabytes of data online.
• Two years ago, that amount passed over the internet in one month.
• Recent estimates say monthly internet data flow will be 21 exabytes.

• Cell phone use – ages 12-17²

• 75% own a phone (up 45% from 2004)
• 72% text (some sources say 88%)
• 11% send 200+ texts per day
• 54% text daily
• 23% of teens use social networks on phone

• Over 1/3 of 10 to 11 year olds in the USA own mobile phones.³

• Nearly 16 million children ages 2 to 11 are online.⁴

• Youtube⁵

• 2 billion views a day
• 24 hours of video uploaded every minute
• More video is uploaded in 60 days than all 3 major US networks created in 60 year

• Facebook – over 500 million users⁶

• Twitter – over 50 million tweets per day⁷

•  294 billion emails per day, 2.8 million per second, 90 trillion per year⁸

• 2.5 billion texts per day in USA alone⁹

• 3,339 average texts per month by teens¹⁰

Four responses of believers living in a technology saturated society:

1.       Avoid it – declaring it a useless trend.  If you are in this group then you probably don’t have electricity either.

2.      Condemn it – viewing it as evil.  If you are in this group, then you also need to burn your books and sell your cars.

3.      Obsess over it – defining your life by it.  If you are in this group, you need to join a self-help group or just get a grip.

4.      Harness it – using it for good.  If you are in this group then you can be part of the solution!

In a future post, I will be addressing my advice to students concerning taking charge of their digital world. I would enjoy hearing your suggestions also.

Follow these links to download a copy of the notes or audio of this seminar: 

Textual Purity Notes / Textual Purity Audio

Footnotes:

1. Read Write Web, The Age of Exabytes: Tools & Approaches for Managing Big Data
2. Flowtown 2010 Pew Internet Research
3. Emarketer.com
4. Emarketer.com
5. Viralblog.com/research
6. Mashable 7/21/10
7. Mashable 2/22/2010
8. About.com
9. Text Message Blog – Advance Telecom Services
10. Mashable 10/2/2010