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All Things Considered

Discussion & Talk

Religion & Ethics

Religious affairs programme, tackling thorny issues in a thought-provoking manner

Religious affairs programme, tackling the thornier issues of the day in a thought-provoking manner

All Things Considered: Social Media

Social Media

BBC Radio Wales - All Things Considered, Social Media

Roy Jenkins examines the relationship between faith and social media.

Social media: a phenomenon which just keeps on growing. It’s a familiar sight: pedestrians navigating a busy street while they check their emails, a room in which no one speaks, but everyone has a phone or tablet, sending tweets, catching up on the news or listening to their favourite music.  

It’s reckoned that four billion people use social media worldwide, in the UK two-thirds of all adults, and almost everyone between 16 and 24. It can build relationships, keep people connected, support learning, create valuable opportunities for self-expression.  It can also isolate people from the real world, damage vulnerable young minds, feed loneliness, foster self-harm and give bullies a platform.  Terrorists use it for propaganda - the Christchurch attacker live-streamed his atrocity -  and charities need it to raise huge sums of money for good causes.

What are we to make of it?  What do faith groups bring to the debate?   And how are they themselves being changed by social media?

Joining Roy to discuss this are Dr Susanna Davies – part time GP and founder of organisation PAPAYA (Parents against phone addiction in young adolescents); digital strategist Nick Burne - founder in 2017 of Raisethru, a company which has helped leading charities worldwide raise more than $100M through Facebook; Rev Dr Peter Phillips, Director, CODEC Research Centre for Digital Theology; and Dr Faraz Ali, a Cardiff dermatologist who describes himself as an “average Muslim Joe” but has more than 22,000 followers on twitter and nearly 30,000 on Facebook.

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