Catholic social media is killing your Catholicism

A guide for busy Catholics to take back their time from algorithms

In 2018, my wife (then girlfriend) and I boarded a Metro to go visit a bunch of strangers.

We were in D.C. to go to the March For Life and some friends from Catholic Twitter invited us to their house for dinner with a bunch of other Catholic Twitter people. I was excited to introduce my wife to my online friends.

Our host picked us up from the Metro station and it felt like seeing an old friend. We chatted the whole way. The rest of the evening, however, was nothing like the car ride.

When we got to the house I said hi, sat down, and introduced myself and my girlfriend. The conversation was about the latest Twitter controversy. I think it was Taylor Marshall and gingerbread houses, or maybe the “30-50 feral hogs” guy I don’t remember exactly.

My wife is not on social media so she had nothing to contribute to the conversation. But I figured eventually the topic would change to something else.

It didn’t.

One Catholic Twitter controversy turned into another. I kept leaning over to my wife, explaining what was going on, what they were talking about. She had no idea. Controversies all night. The topic never r

eally changed. No one addressed her the entire evening. The only thing she said all night was her name when she introduced herself.

Eventually, my wife gave up and left the couches to sit in the dining room and play with the host’s kid.

To be fair, the host was very nice. He sat with my wife and talked to her—it was a kind gesture. But I quickly realized nobody else really cared. They were so absorbed in their conversation about Catholic Twitter controversies that they didn’t notice someone was being left out.

Even if they wanted her to join the conversation, she would not have been able to. The controversies online make little sense to an outsider. If you spend too much time online you become unintelligible to “real people.”

Conversations and community are built on common ground. If you have nothing in common with the other person you can’t build relationships.

When you’re too online (even on Catholic social media) it makes it harder to build community and harder to evangelize.

This is the trap many young devout Catholics are falling into.

Most of their interaction with Catholicism is online.

Whats worse is online Catholicism is customizable. So, even when they meet another online Catholic, they still might not have anything in common. This person’s Catholicism is lived through posting on Reddit. This person’s through Discord voice chats. This person prays the rosary on X Spaces. Etc.

When your faith remains online, it makes you impossible to talk to. It makes your Catholicism disembodied like Pope Leo said.

And it feels fine because it’s Catholic. You feel like you’re doing good. You feel like you’re growing in your faith. But you’re actually hurting yourself.

Fortunately, the problem is easy to fix

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How to log off

I did a few things to help myself get offline, and I listed them below. Hopefully if you find yourself using social media too much you can use one of these tactics.