March 8 – The Fake News on My Newsfeed


A friend recently shared an observation made by a college ministry worker and quoted in a Christianity Today article. The Intervarsity area director said, “There’s this new thing with Gen Zs I don’t know what to do with: The most important thing is not the experience; it’s that other people know you had that experience.”

We’ve been at this generational politics thing for a long time. “Don’t trust anyone over thirty,” my generation said when we were under thirty.  Author Tom Wolfe called the 1970s the “Me Decade” as the first Baby Boomers passed thirty. Twenty years ago Tom Brokaw named the Boomers’ parents the “Greatest Generation.” And ever since we’ve been picking on our own kids in the Millennial Generation.

Good news, Millennials, your younger siblings are old enough for their generation to be studied and have their collective psyche spread on a microscope slide for further examination.  Welcome, Generation Z, kids born in the mid-90s and later – now in high school, college, and early young adulthood.

Yes, a disclaimer on the broad and often simplistic generalizations generational studies make of all of us.  Becky and I like to think of ourselves as not all that Boomerish, and our children as exceptions to the Millennial stereotype.

But generations do have tendencies and ways of looking at things shaped by their experience of the culture and the world around them. Disasters and tragedies, recessions and technologies, can have huge influence on how we live in the world we’ve inherited.

If generations have general characteristics, there are no firm boundaries between generations. Characteristics and attitudes wick back and forth between the generations.

“There’s this new thing with Gen Zs I don’t know what to do with: The most important thing is not the experience; it’s that other people know you had that experience.” As Pogo said a couple of generations ago, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.” (Earth Day, 1971)

Up and down the generational ladder social media use continues to rise. 88% of the members of Gen Z use social media, but so do nearly 40% of their Boomer and older grandparents.  Some of us may be stalkers, some there to pick a political fight, but a whole lot of us simply seem to want other people to know we had the experience.

I use social media.  I want my friends acquaintances contacts to know about the experiences I had.  I like it when they “like” what I’ve done. Yeah, it’s nice.

But some things you just don’t need to know and I just don’t need to tell you.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us “when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” And for sure, don’t post a comment about it on Facebook or a photo of it on Instagram.  He goes on to tell us to fake it when we are fasting, “when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others.”

I’ll keep posting photos from our mission trips.  And you’ll figure out pretty quickly that I love being a grandfather. Please send those occasional “likes.” They make me feel good.  But don’t think you know me very well at all just because you’re a social media contact.  Remember, Jesus told us to fake it.

Gen Zers.  Welcome to adulthood.  We ought to get to know each other.  Face to face, not on Facebook or via FaceTime.

See you Sunday