Christians, Social Media, and the Need for an Opportunity Cost Mindset
By: John Thomas
Tags: Spirituality, Books, Christianity, Religion, Social Media

Every yes to our screens is no to something greater.

Photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash

Opportunity cost is one of the foundational principles of economics, and for finite beings living in a world full of scarcity, a reality that is inescapable. Few of us regularly consider the litany of no’s that accompany our conscious and unconscious yeses. A yes to that vacation you’ve been planning might mean saying no to a new car. A yes to vacuuming could mean no to taking the dog for a walk.

Just as opportunity cost is at work in our everyday lives, it is at work in our digital lives as well. The attention economy is full of endless opportunities for us to watch, read, play, tweet, etc. But we are human, and while the opportunities might be functionally limitless, our attention is not. In his book, Competing Spectacles, Tony Reinke puts it bluntly, “human attention is a zero-sum game. At some point we must close our screens and fall asleep…”

We can’t have it all and we can’t watch it all. Every tweet we read is book we don’t. But do we ever consider that? Do we ever factor in the opportunity cost of our media consumption choices? What could I do instead of binging on Netflix for four hours?

Earlier this year Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri invoked opportunity cost language in regards to social media — though in a slightly different way. Hawley in a speech at the Hoover Institution on May 2nd, while objecting to the current state of Big Tech stated,

“…think for a second about the opportunity cost that this social media business model and these social media platforms — what you might call the social media economy — represents. For years now, this is what some of our brightest minds have been doing with their time: Designing these platforms, designing apps that integrate with them…What else might these bright minds, these talented women and men, have been doing that might have been truly productive for the American economy and for American consumers?”

Being a senator, it makes sense and is important for Hawley to address the opportunity cost of the social media economy at the macro level. What have we lost by devoting a generation of our brightest minds to creating algorithms and platforms in which the main purpose is to hold the attention of as many eyes as possible for as long as possible in order to be able to sell that attention in the form of advertising to the highest bidder?

But at a personal level we also need to begin to operate with an opportunity cost mindset when it comes to our own social media use and media consumption. Every yes to checking our email or seeing how many followers we have is a no to playing with our kids, doing the dishes, reading a book, or even praying.

It might sound surprising, but the concept of opportunity cost is addressed in the New Testament. Of course the term isn’t found anywhere, but the concept is vividly described in Matthew 16:26. Right after rebuking Peter and right before the transfiguration, Jesus explains the cost of discipleship. It is there that he says, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” The forfeiture of soul is a steep opportunity cost for gaining the world—and one we need to keep in mind.

On a daily basis, both in our real lives and our digital lives, we need to adopt an opportunity cost mindset. Every decision we make requires of us either time, attention, money, or all of the above. Because of our finite nature and the scarcity of goods in the world we can’t have it all, we can’t have the world and our souls. By keeping that in mind as we plop on the couch for another round of Netflix binging or mindless Facebook scrolling, we can remember this reality and choose soul instead of world. An opportunity cost mindset can be a tool we use to keep from succumbing to the attention merchants who want to monetize our eyes.

To be sure this is not a call to pharisaical judgementalism, which perhaps is the inherent danger of an opportunity cost mindset. In reminding ourselves that reading the Bible really would be better than checking Instagram, we need to beware of using this type of thinking with others, lest we point out the twitter addiction in our friend’s eye without noticing the Facebook addiction in our own (Matthew 7:3–5). But, rather than letting the potential for improper judgement of others keep us from considering adopting an opportunity cost mindset, we could see it as a call to apply it to ourselves all the more diligently, both for our own good, and for the good of our neighbor who will see our new found freedom from worthless things (Psalm 119:37) and eagerly ask how they too can be set free.

There is another compelling example of opportunity cost thinking I have come across a lately. In his book The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher spends time talking with monks who live according to the Benedictine Rule. One of those monks, Father Cassian, said of rejecting the world in order to live in the monastery, “there’s not just a no, there’s a yes too. It’s both that we reject what is not life-giving, and that we build something new.”

We might not be called to move out of the world into monasteries, but every one of us would do well to reject that which is not life-giving. To remember the high opportunity cost of our tweets, posts, and more and instead choose to “build something new.” To choose our souls instead of the world. SDG

John Thomas is a freelance writer. His writing has appeared at Christianity Today, The American Conservative, and The Federalist. He writes regularly at Soli Deo Gloria.