The Wedge of Social Media: Formation, Humility, and the Test of Community

Tested by the Stream

It has become harder to tell whether we are simply overwhelmed with information or quietly being tested by it. Social media has given unprecedented access to ideas, perspectives, and communities, but it has also blurred the lines between wisdom and confidence, truth and popularity. Every belief now finds reinforcement somewhere, every doubt an echo, every opinion a following. In such an environment, what matters most is not how loudly something is said, but what kind of foundation it rests upon. Children grow up immersed in this landscape, but adults are not immune to its pull. Families feel the strain. Churches feel it as well. And it raises an uncomfortable question: if constant exposure reveals what we as adults are built on, what is being exposed within the youth—those still in the process of being formed?

Parenting and Formation: Building a Strong Foundation

Parenting in this environment requires a level of intentionality that many of us were never prepared for. In previous generations, families were reinforced—sometimes imperfectly—by shared norms, limited influences, and clear boundaries imposed by reality itself. Today, those guardrails are weaker, while the volume and intensity of outside voices have multiplied. Children are no longer formed primarily by the rhythms of home and community, but by a constant stream of content designed to capture attention and reward emotional response.

Guidance and correction are often reframed as harmful, boundaries as oppressive, and discipline as a failure of empathy. In an effort to be tolerant, affirming, or non-confrontational, many parents step back at the very moment formation is most needed. Yet children are not equipped to interpret the world on their own. They are still learning how to regulate emotion, weigh truth, and understand consequence. When structure is absent, something else supplies it, and that something is rarely neutral.

Social media excels at identifying the places where formation is incomplete. A child searching for belonging will find it. A child struggling with identity will encounter endless frameworks for self-definition. Doubts that once passed quietly through adolescence are now met with confident explanations and communities that reinforce them. What once might have been a phase becomes a position; what was uncertainty becomes identity. In this way, social media does not simply influence children—it settles questions for them before they are mature enough to wrestle with them honestly.

The result is not greater freedom, but greater fragility. Without guidance, children learn to prioritize expression over restraint, affirmation over accountability, and escape over endurance. Conflict becomes something to avoid rather than work through. Discomfort becomes a signal to withdraw rather than grow. These patterns do not emerge because children are failing, but because they are being formed in an environment that rewards immediacy and emotional intensity over patience and self-control.

Formation requires presence, consistency, and the willingness to be misunderstood in the short term; meaning: to accept the role of authority, even when it is perceived as harsh or restrictive, while remaining an unwavering source of support and foundation. In a world that constantly tests foundations, parenting can no longer be passive. What is left unformed will not remain neutral—it will be shaped by whatever voice is loudest and most persistent.

Adults and Community: Vulnerability in a Connected World

The challenge does not end when children grow older; adults are equally vulnerable, though in different ways. Exposure to social media, endless opinions, and ideological communities tests the stability of belief and character just as it tests children’s formation. Adults are expected to navigate complexity, but few are equipped to resist the constant pull of affirmation, outrage, and certainty offered online. Even the most thoughtful among us can find ourselves caught in echo chambers, chasing answers, or defending positions more than seeking truth.

Church communities, meant to be places of shared wisdom and unity, are not immune. Theology, once handed down and wrestled with communally, is now accessible in fragmentary, competing pieces. Scripture can be interpreted in any direction, and someone will always offer a convincing argument for the opposite. Opinions become identity, disagreements feel personal, and humility—once a cornerstone of spiritual formation—grows rare. The very structures designed to guide, support, and correct are strained by the expectation that every individual must be both judge and teacher, often without the grounding to do so.

In such an environment, social media does not merely present ideas; it amplifies divisions. It identifies the weak points in our convictions, the unresolved questions, the prideful certainties, and the areas where we are least prepared to be challenged, and it gives them a voice. What might once have been healthy debate, tested in community with patience and accountability, now becomes fragmentation. Communities fracture not because faith itself is failing, but because the formative work of humility, discipline, and mutual submission has not been nurtured—or has been overshadowed by the louder, faster, more persistent messages that circulate online.

For the adult and spiritual community alike, the lesson echoes that of parenting: without deliberate reflection, accountability, and grounding in what is enduring rather than popular, the cracks in our foundation widen. We are tested not only by information but by our willingness, or unwillingness, to measure our beliefs against something greater than opinion, to submit personal preference to truth, and to embrace humility even when it is uncomfortable.

The Exposed Cracks

Whether in the home or the wider community, the pattern is the same: exposure magnifies what is already present. Weaknesses, doubts, unresolved questions, and unexamined assumptions—whether in children, adults, or entire communities—are brought into focus, often before they have been tested or strengthened. Social media accelerates this process, offering immediate validation, endless voices, and the illusion of clarity where none exists. The lesson is unavoidable: formation cannot be outsourced, understanding cannot be assumed, and unity cannot be achieved without deliberate grounding. In every sphere of life, we are confronted with the choice to examine ourselves honestly, to wrestle with what is foundational, and to measure our beliefs and actions against something enduring, rather than the transient noise surrounding us.

The Wedge

What social media seems to do best is not persuasion, but exploitation. It finds the smallest weakness—the unresolved question, the unexamined belief, a quiet doubt, the insecurity of a child, the pride of an adult—and gives it presence. It gives it a platform. It expands it, deepens it, and places a wedge there. In every aspect of life: parenting, thinking, theology, relationships—it presses on whatever cracks already exist and gives them life. The danger, then, is not merely “out there” in the algorithms but more importantly in what they expose within us. If there is any safeguard, it is not found in better platforms or louder opinions, but in a long, honest, and humbling look at self—measuring our assumptions, our habits, and our beliefs against God’s word rather than the endless voices competing for our attention. Without that humility, no amount of information will steady us; with it, even a fractured world may yet find firm footing.