Overuse of social media leaves individuals ‘in peril of turning into silly’, CofE says
Church boffins reckon social media use makes people stupid.
Clergy say online users posting abuse on social networking websites and apps based on unreliable information had become immensely destructive.
A top Church of England bishop says sites such as Facebook and X have made Brits “trigger happy” in passing judgement on celebrities without checking the source of negative information.
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The shock report claims: “We delude ourselves into thinking we are more informed because of the ease of access to volumes of information.
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“However, through our indiscriminate use of social media we are in danger of becoming stupid in our judgment of where to place our trust.”
The God followers want people to imagine all their tweets are printed out in a single document and they are “asked to sit down with Christ and read it”.
But the review, led by the Right Rev Martin Seeley, the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, also warned church chiefs more needed to be done on gay rights and the handling of abuse cases.
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Several priests have been critical of the report.
Rev Marcus Walker, rector at St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, reckons bishops had sought to avoid blame for their own part in the breakdown of trust within the church.
He said: “This report … is so painfully bad. Everyone is blamed apart from the leadership, especially social media.”
Andrew Graystone, who has campaigned for justice for abuse victims in the church, called it “unbelievably weak” on the subject.
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