Church says social media risks making people more stupid
by Craig Simpson
Social media risks making people stupid, according to a Church of England report.
It claims the public are increasingly “trigger happy” online, and less discerning about the information they share.
Church leaders are concerned that the public is becoming “deluded” about how well informed they are and “are in danger of becoming stupid”.
The report, ‘Trust and Trustworthiness in the Church of England’, summarised a review launched in 2022 to judge public trust in the institution.
One experiment suggested in commentary contained within the report images what it would be like for a “keyboard warrior” to have to explain their social media posts “to Christ”.
One of the barriers to trust in general, the report states, are social media sites which “give us the illusion of having access to reliable information” and that the public, while stuck in echo chambers, are “becoming less, not more, informed”.
The report adds: “We delude ourselves into thinking we are more informed because of the ease of access to volumes of information.
“However, through our indiscriminate use of social media we are in danger of becoming stupid in our judgement of where to place our trust.”
The report, overseen by the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, the Right Rev Martin Seeley, said this view of the facts has resulted in the public being “trigger happy in our amplification, pace and tone of judgement on our individual leaders”.
The report states: “The use of social media by some has become a pervasive and corrosive dimension of our society and the Church.”
