Monday, 11 March 2013

Will you be my Facebook friend?


If you use Facebook or other social networks even a little bit, then I strongly recommend you read this this terrific little book  by Tim Chester.  We're discussing it this week in our women's book group. At 48 pages, it won't take you long! Despite the size of the book I could quote many helpful passages but I’ll confine myself to these 12 guidelines for social networking with which the author closes the book:
1.       Don’t say anything on line that you wouldn’t say were the people concerned in the room

2.       Don’t say anything on line that you wouldn’t share publicly with your Christian community

3.       Ensure your online world is visible to your offline Christian community

4.       Challenge one another if you think someone’s online self reflects a self-created identity rather than identity in Christ

5.       Challenge one another if you think someone’s online self doesn’t match their offline self

6.       Use social networking to enhance offline relationships, not replace them

7.       Don’t let children have unsupervised internet access or accept as online friends people you don’t know offline

8.       Set limits for the time you spend online and ask someone to hold you accountable to these

9.       Set aside a day a week as a technology ‘Sabbath’ or fast.

10.   Avoid alerts (emails, tweets, texts and so on) that interrupt other activities, especially reading, praying, worshipping and relating

11.   Ban mobiles from the meal table and the bedroom

12.   Look for opportunities to replace disembodied (online or phone) communication with embodied (face-to-face) communication

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