What we see on social media cannot be construed as what is broadly true, sociologically speaking. However, social media can be incredibly insightful, as it allows us to encounter people who are different than us and challenge our preconceived notions about a people, group, or subject. It enables us to connect with people we normally wouldn’t in our local communities who have the potential to positively impact our view of the world.

It’s worth asking: What is social media good for? It’s not good for everything, and in many ways, it is, in fact, bad for us. I think it’s important that we continue to sound the alarm about the problems social media (and technology, more broadly) poses to our flourishing as we continue to progress further and further into the digital age and more generations are raised with devices. That said, social media isn’t all bad. There are things that it is good for. I thought it would be worth mentioning a few of those things.
Networking
David Fincher’s 2010 Oscar-winning movie isn’t called The Social Media; it’s called The Social Network. It wasn’t that long ago that we referred to these social websites as networks rather than media. That’s because their primary function wasn’t to mediate content to us, but to connect us with other people. To this day, this remains the best use of the social internet.
Patrick and I first met over Twitter (ummm, X) and worked together for six months before we ever met in person. I’ve made many other meaningful relationships because of social media, but that’s mainly because social media was the starting point, not the ending point. The relationships that have been the most meaningful have progressed from tweets to texts to calls to Zoom calls, and sometimes meeting in person. Some of these relationships have had a tremendous impact on my life, leading to job opportunities, significant worldview shifts, and just general encouragement and helpful feedback. The best reason to be on social media remains connecting with actual people.
Exposure
If you’re an artist, activist, writer, or any other kind of content creator, you no longer have to wait for the gatekeepers to choose you. You can find an audience and speak directly to them. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. With consistency, determination, and skill, you can bypass the traditional avenues of being discovered and have your voice heard by those who want to hear it. It doesn’t take that many, either.
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This new paganism seems to be an enterprise that traffics in terms emptied of all meaning. Soul, sacred, holiness, all are just a veneer on a sort of inescapable nothingness. This void is not well covered by jargon, regardless of how well-intended or articulate. It cannot be papered over. It can only be traversed by a transcendent love bright enough to outshine all our worldly aspirations and close enough to whisper to our broken hearts in all their futile grasping. 

The Apostle Paul tells us we’re all going to worship one of two things. We will either worship the Creator, or we will worship the creation (See Romans 1). It’s pretty simple. We will either allow the world to point us beyond itself to its source, as King David does in Psalm 19, or we will suppress the truth of God’s existence, that we all know deep down, and, in his absence worship some created thing, be it ourselves, someone else, or nature itself.
Christian author Peter Jones describes these options as oneism and twoism. Either all of reality is one thing, the Cosmos, hence oneism. Or, reality is accurately represented in the categories Paul gives us of Creator and creation, twoism. Every way of seeing reality can be boiled down to these options. Reality is either one or two. Choose wisely.
A magazine I regularly read is Aeon, a thoughtful online resource about ideas, philosophy, and culture. Earlier this month they published the article “A New Paganism: Now is the Time to Revitalise our Relationship with Nature and Immerse Ourselves in the Little Wonders of the Universe” by Ed Simon, an author who regularly writes about beliefs about God. Simon argues, in the absence of God, we need to turn our attention to the natural world to find a new expression of the sacred. This is the worldview of oneism.
Simon refernces an often quoted passage from the influential twentieth-century philosopher Bertrand Russell in which Russell says it is only upon the firm foundation of unyielding despair that anyone can hope to find safe haven for their souls. Put aside for the moment the fact that Russell didn’t believe in any such thing as a soul, an immaterial part of the human personality that survives the grave. Simon quotes him to disagree with him. Though Simon describes himself as post-Christian, he rejects the idea that a world without God need be described as nihilistic. Simon writes:
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We must all decide how far our collective moral consciousness will allow the social justice movement to go in its exploitation of our boundaries. I suggest that we have allowed it to go quite far enough. The sexualization of children has no place in schools or in our society. It is simply one boundary that should not be exploited.

Allyn Walker, a former professor at Old Dominion University who identifies as non-binary, resigned last month following criticism stemming from Walker’s views on pedophilia. Walker argued that pedophiles should be destigmatized by identifying them as “minor-attracted persons” (“MAPs”) rather than the pejorative term “pedophile,” because attraction to children is a sexual orientation and not immoral.
The pretense is that pedophiles are more likely to seek treatment if their sexual proclivities are destigmatized. Instead of relying on empirical evidence to determine the reasons for those proclivities or strategies that will keep children safe, Walker relies on queer theoretical tools to argue that pedophiles are wrongly oppressed by society’s power structures as a group of the most “hated folk devils of our time.”
What Is Queer Theory?
Walker is a queer sociologist and criminologist who uses the lens of queer theory to explain human society and crime. Like other critical theories, queer theory seeks a collective critical consciousness that will identify and dismantle identity power structures and dynamics.
Queer theory seeks to unite oppressed groups that fall outside the privileged normative language categories of sex (male or female) and sexuality (straight, gay, bisexual) into a single, oppressed banner of queer. To do this, it relies on the postmodern knowledge principle, which rejects objective knowledge and favors “knowledges” that arise from the lived experiences of individuals of certain identity groups.
Queer Theory’s Application to Pedophilia
Walker uses theoretical tools to problematize the treatment of pedophilia as a sexual perversion to achieve her agenda. She uses the power of language to advocate for the new acronym “MAP” and blurs boundaries of sexuality. The focus is on the collective oppression of pedophiles.
Using a “deconstructionist” perspective, Walker argues that pedophilia is a “social construct.” She boldly concludes that sexual attraction to minors is not morally offensive and claims that the vilification of pedophilia is more about control of sexual minorities than it is about the health or safety of children.
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