A Guide to Practicing Tolerance on Social Media

Bethany, a mother of three children under the age of four, gave up social media for Lent this year. She had done social media sabbaticals for a weekend or a few days, but staying off social media for 40 days was a whole new experience. After 40 days, Bethany felt that social media had a lot less power over her and she felt freed of the social obligations that comes with the territory.

When Lent was over, Bethany decided to return to social media. The world she was living in felt really different, with a global pandemic raging and lockdowns keeping Bethany from connecting with her community. It felt freeing to opt into social media when she wasn’t able to have in-person interactions.

But Bethany was also sick with anger. “After George Floyd’s murder,” she told me, “anger was everything. I lived and breathed anger.” She found that her anger was affecting the atmosphere in her home and realized that something needed to give. In parenting her children, Bethany works hard to validate their emotions and help them find healthy ways to express them. She decided to do to the same with her own emotions, and stewing in anger wasn’t it.

“I used to be part of a fear-induced faith community,” Bethany says, “but I’ve shifted to a faith based in love. I decided that I wanted love to drive my activism — not anger.”

After processing her anger, Bethany decided that she couldn’t live with integrity…