"Novel" approaches to social media

 

Here at the church we have been talking a lot about how we are communicating. In addition to working on upgrading the technology we use in the church office, we have been working on defining our social media strategies - specifically how we use our church's Facebook pages to share info and connect with each other.

I thank God all the time that I was a teenager and college student before the days of all this instant communication. (My hairstyles alone are enough cause for embarrassment :)

I can't imagine having to navigate the online world during those years. Most of youth and young people I work with today have always lived in a world where you can be "friends" with just about anyone anywhere and are not only figuring our who they are  - but also creating who they are online. 

Here are some fun and interesting novels that I have read recently that explore how social media works in our lives:

"Reconstructing Amelia"

This was a really good read from the perspective of the single parent of a teen-age girl.

This is a suspense novel about a busy single mother and New York lawyer who's daughter attends a very exclusive private school.  At the beginning of story, the mother is called to the school because her daughter is allegedly caught cheating. She goes to the school and faces every parent's worst fear. Her daughter is dead and it is understood that she has jumped from the school's roof.  The mystery about her daughter's death begins to unfold when she gets and anonymous text message that read "Amelia didn't jump." 

 The most intriguing part of the book for me was not the mystery of finding our what happened to Amelia - but was the way that Amelia's mother unraveled the answers by sorting through all her daughter's emails, text messages and Facebook posts.  She essentially reconstructs her daughter's life and gets to know her daughter and the people in her daughter's life in a way she was totally blind to otherwise.


"The Future of Us"

This is a young adult novel from 2012 that I read on the recommendation of a teen from church.  The setting of this book is 1996 when just about everyone was getting those America Online cds in the mail. The teen female main character has just gotten her first computer and she and her best male friend get online and find themselves already on Facebook - but fifteen years in the future. It's an implausible and pretty silly story for sure - but a really good read and a fascinating look and how Facebook can consume our lives if we let it. Anyone nostalgic for the 90's will get a kick out it.

Both of these books are available
at your local library!

Happy Reading.