I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point we all began to talk about “content.” Together we began to refer to the massive deluge of articles, podcasts, videos, and other media being uploaded to the internet as “content” and to the ones who make it as “content creators.” And you don’t need me to tell you that these days we are drowning in content. In fact, we are creating so much of it that it becomes almost impossible to quantify or to wrap our minds around what the numbers mean. I’ve heard it said that we are creating nearly 500 million terabytes of data per day, but that figure means little to me. Whatever the actual number is, and whatever it means, it is accelerating rapidly so that 90% of the data humanity has ever created has been created in just the past couple of years. The trends suggest the pace will increase exponentially in the years ahead.
When it comes to the content Christians create and consume, I often find myself dividing it into two categories. Admittedly, the categories are artificial, sometimes difficult to assign, and occasionally overlap, but I find them useful nonetheless. I divide it into content that exists primarily to serve others and content that exists primarily to serve the one who created it. I think it’s helpful to distinguish between the two and then to be mindful of the kind we tend to consume the most.
Some content is created to make other people’s lives better. I trust you find such content day by day as you click the links in my daily A La Carte feature, where I carefully curate articles by other writers that share wisdom to help you live more nobly, columns that explain current events to inform your mind, videos that help you marvel at God’s creation, songs that give expression to your heart, and so on. We are blessed to have so many writers, filmmakers, musicians, and others who express their gifts by creating such content and making it available, often completely free. I trust you also find such content in the articles I write, for that is very much my passion.
Yet there is another kind of content, and it is created not so much to serve others as to serve the one who makes it. A ready example is the classic BuzzFeed-style article that is created to be almost irresistible, but is also completely insipid. It does nothing to help you, bless you, or make your life better, but it does do a lot to help the organization that wrote it. Another example is the endless videos on YouTube that are simply responses to other videos—content that perpetuates a cycle of vapidity that brings nothing good to those who watch it. YouTubers manufacture outrageous situations so others will create response videos that, in turn, generate more response videos. None of this brings any benefit to the ones who watch them, but they do bring subscriptions and sponsorship fees to the ones who create them. The content exists to benefit its creators.
In the Christian world, it is in this category that you may find self-styled experts in discernment who write articles or create videos that are essentially clickbait meant to lead you to view ads. You may find writers or YouTubers who respond and react to every possible situation and controversy, regardless of whether they understand it or have anything useful to say about it. Though they claim to function like reporters, they are more like gossip columnists. They don’t serve you, the viewer. They don’t make your faith stronger, your heart braver, or your life better. They just funnel power and money from the content consumers to the content creators, often through content sponsors.
When you become aware of these categories of content, you can begin to ask yourself questions like these: Does this content exist to make my life better? Does it give me a sharper mind? Does it give me a stronger faith? Does it give me a deeper love for Christ, his people, and the lost? In short, is it clear that this content was created by a Christian who is eager to serve and bless other Christians?
Or, negatively, you can ask yourself questions like these: Can I only understand this content if I watch and read previous content? Does it appear to exist primarily for the purpose of perpetuating more like it? Do the title and thumbnail deceptively overpromise and underdeliver? In short, does it seem likely that this content was created to leverage the attention of Christians in a way that primarily benefits the one who created it?
I do not mean to indicate that everything we read or watch has to be of great spiritual benefit. We are free to enjoy entertainment, though obviously all things must be enjoyed in appropriate moderation. Yet we are inundated with content today and need to be disciplined in what we give our attention to. When we consume content, we are tacitly supporting the ones who created it, giving credence to their efforts, and training the algorithm so it provides more of that content not only to us, but to people like us. There are consequences to what we read, watch, click, listen to, and consume. Hence, it is wise for us to continually apply a filter like this: Does this content exist to bless me, or does it exist primarily to serve the one who created it? The more of our attention we give to content that falls into the first category and the less we give to the latter, the better off we will all be.
