I think this is a very good take on this week’s blog post prompt. I especially liked how you supported your view by using the way that people use social media throughout their daily tasks and how their lives seem to revolve around it. I also thought it was clever that you incorporated the God is Not One reading to support that religion is not limited to “worshipping a higher power.” My only query would stem from equating social media to Christianity when it comes to discussing what parts of the world it is practiced in because Christianity is just one group in the whole of religion. So, what would you claim to be the alternatives to social media as a group of religion?

I really liked this post! It is very creative and thinking outside of the box, but also is true. So many people’s lives are consumed by social media whether it is posting, checking, or anything of the sorts. Some people make their life seem better than it is on social media, some live through other people’s lives, or use it was a way to pass time or avoid actual social interaction in public. The map that you presented in your post is extremely interesting. I enjoyed where you talked about how “a religion can have bad aspects and be used as a tool for harm, it can also has many aspects that spread peace and love.” You mention Christianity specifically and how some say it allowed slavery to spread, but was it the religion and its beliefs or the followers and what they interpreted Christian beliefs to be? So can we say that social media is a problem in our society, or is it the users? Are people allowing social media to rule their lives?

This was a really unique idea! I really liked the way you discussed the routine of checking social media in our free time, like when we wake up, or even when we need to pass time. This sense of routine reminds me of certain religious practices, such as prayer five times per day in Islam. However, it also reminds me of the summary of Kulie’s novel, “The Power of Ritual”: those daily activities become “sacred rituals that can heal our crisis of social isolation and struggle to find purpose.” However, this daily scroll could become toxic if the “terms” you mentioned aren’t followed correctly. Like Appiah said in his TEDTalk, “Is Religion Good or Bad?”, we based our judgement of a religion on how much it looks like the others. In a similar fashion, we judge everyone’s social media lives based on how they compare to what society has deemed to be acceptable.