The gospel antidote to teens' belief others are more popular

Belief Others are More Popular (BOMP) is one of the unintended consequences of social media

I am not a quiet person, which means, as a teacher, my high school SRE classrooms are not quiet places. That is, unless, we finish our lesson early and I let my students have ‘free time’. Then you can hear the proverbial pin drop.

Why? Because to this generation of teenagers, ‘free time’ is a synonym for ‘time to check social media’.

You may be familiar with FOMO—Fear of Missing Out—but have you heard of what Noreena Hertz calls BOMP—Belief that Others are More Popular than you[1]?

BOMP is one of the unintended consequences of the Like system built into social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.

We all had this feeling when we were teenagers, an acute awareness of where we fell in the social pecking order. The only difference now is that through Facebook likes, Instagram hearts and Snap-streaks, young people now have concrete data that they can use to compare themselves to their friends.

If my friend’s post gets 100 likes, and my post gets only 20, the contrast is clear.

The anxiety caused by social media popularity rankings is just one of many reasons that once teenage smartphone use reached critical mass (around 2010), teen anxiety and depression rates skyrocketed.

So prevalent is BOMP among teens, and so damaging, that psychologists are starting to study its impact.

What might BOMP look like in your churches? Do you have young people who are struggling with depression and anxiety? Or, on the flip side, have you seen examples of those who are believing their own online hype and its manifesting in narcissistic behaviours (as Marshall Ballantine-Jones has observed in his recent research into teenagers and online influences).

How can we help the youth in our churches in this area? What hope can God’s word give?

The young people in our church are of innate value
Genesis 1:27 makes this clear, but do we model this? Or, to update some teaching from the book of James:

Suppose one of you has 1,000 Instagram followers, and another has five followers. If you show special attention to the one with lots of followers and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the unpopular one, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Are we encouraging the youth in our churches not to make distinctions between each other based on such worldly reasoning?

The young people in our church are saved by grace not works
In Galatians, Paul laments on how quickly the church has abandoned the gospel of grace and turned back to works. It can be tempting to sit on the sideline of Paul’s argument, tutting our fingers at the silly Galatians, but how often are we tempted by works ourselves?

Maybe we’re clear that works play no role in our salvation, but not as clear that works don’t play a role in our social circles. Do the young people you know feel the need to perform a version of themselves online to be accepted? Are we reminding them that just as Jesus accepts us, so too we don’t need to perform works (or posts) in order to be valued and accepted?

The young people in our church are called to honour Christ
I remember when I was in a youth Bible study and I was taught for the first time about being a slave to Christ Jesus – the concept was so foreign to me! In fact, I was a little horrified to learn that according to Romans 6, I’m destined to be a slave – the only difference is if I was going to be a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness.

As I’ve gotten older, I have found much joy in the idea that, as Paul puts it, “You are not your own;  you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:20)

Are we encouraging the young people in our churches to honour and serve God with their time and talents, rather than themselves through their social-media metrics?

Navigating rough online waters with teens will always be tricky. But thanks be to God that we have a much better story to offer than anything ever posted on Instagram.

 [1] The Lonely Century, p107