Page 14 - Digital Church in a Lonely World
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GEN Z & LONELINESS
How often do you feel lonely?
A lot Some A little Not at all
20% 24% 30% 26%
n=1,503 U.S. teens and young adults ages 13–21; June 15–July 17, 2020.
You want to know a secret that
Millennials and Gen Z know
about the online world? We know
something is wrong. We actually
know we are missing something.
And the online world is meant to be a good for community?
Perhaps being online has created a debilitating void of community that the local church can fix by
stepping into and meeting that need.
In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle astutely asks use to consider “whether a technology expands
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our capacities and possibilities or exploits our vulnerabilities.” In other words, we must probe the virtue
and effect of new technology on our lives, not just naively embrace it.
As online social opportunities have increased, in-person social interactions have declined. I found it
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interesting to discover that even the number of picnics declined 60 percent from 1975 to 1999. We
know that online interaction doesn’t fill the social void. We long for physical friendship.
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