The following is an excerpt from my book Scroll Less, Live More: 10 Healthy Tech Habits for Teens. You can order the book from Amazon.
In the world of social media and internet influencers, it’s very hard to be wise about what to believe.
For one thing, the vast majority of what we see online comes from people we don’t know. But if we see something online, we tend to believe it. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been tricked by a phony news story, an edited photograph, or more recently, a video generated by artificial intelligence. Figuring out what is true and trustworthy online is a full-time job when we’re constantly taking in content from strangers.
Maybe you’ve noticed something interesting about online conversation. When you come across a post or a video or a podcast of someone making a claim—maybe it’s about politics, religion, or today’s latest and greatest celebrity—the comment section is often full of many people making the opposite claim. If someone posts, for example, that it’s not really important to go to church, then a bunch of people will start chiming in with reasons why they think it actually is important to go to church (and they would be right, by the way!). People like to argue with any claims to truth.
But when you come across a post or a video or a podcast of someone telling a story, it doesn’t get nearly as much pushback. For example, what if instead of posting that going to church isn’t important, a man recorded a video in which he told a story about how badly he was treated by the church? Instead of making a claim, he told a story from his own life and shared it as a reason for why people shouldn’t go to church if they don’t want to. In that case, you almost certainly would not see as many critical comments on the video. Why? Personal stories are different; it feels wrong to push back against someone’s experience.
This is why determining the trustworthiness and reliability of a source matters so much. In the world of the internet, where everybody’s opinions and stories are just a click away and it’s common to see content from people we don’t know, the truth is not easy to determine. Any time you’re on Instagram, YouTube, or any other platform, you’re only a click or two away from just about any idea.
Maybe on Tuesday afternoon you’ll hear a content creator say that the best way to be happy and healthy is to go to therapy. Then on Wednesday morning you’ll read a blog post about how the world is going to end if a particular political candidate loses. On Thursday night you may see a post about the cure for cancer that nobody, and I mean nobody, has known about until now. Everyone sounds convincing. Everybody seems genuine. So how do you determine what’s true?
Three Tests
Let me offer three ways to test the validity of everything you see and hear online. But first, you must understand that these tests are not foolproof. Wise safeguards won’t always protect against every danger, but they do provide some defense. Think about it this way: A shark net in the ocean won’t stop people from getting sunburned at the beach, but it will help them not get eaten! The plain truth is that in many cases, it is impossible, given our limitations as human beings, to know for sure whether a particular claim is true. We can have good reasons to believe something and still be wrong. But we can use the following tests that are rooted in biblical truths to help us evaluate a statement to the best of our ability.
Test 1: Does This Statement or Idea Sound like Something the Bible Says or Would Agree With?
You may have expected this question to be worded a little differently. Why not ask, “Is this statement or idea something that the Bible says?” Obviously, that is a good question! We shouldn’t believe anything that goes against what the Bible says.
But I’ve phrased the question in this way because most of the information that we will encounter online won’t directly contradict Scripture. Sometimes it will, and in those cases we should clearly reject that information. But most times viral posts, compelling podcasts, and the like contain ideas and stories that the Bible doesn’t speak specifically about.
So what we have to do as people of wisdom is decide whether what we’re being told sounds like something the Bible tells us or would agree with. How do we do that? First, we have to really know what the Bible says. This goes beyond memorizing a couple of favorite verses or knowing whom God used to lead the Israelites out of slavery and from which country they fled (Moses led them out of Egypt, by the way). We must pay close attention to the beliefs, key principles, commands, and promises of the Bible to develop an ear for its sound.
Think of the Bible like the collected works of a great musician. Great musicians write a lot of different songs, and those songs don’t all sound exactly alike. Nevertheless, every great musician has a certain kind of “voice” or style that marks their songs.
My favorite example is the legendary movie composer John Williams. Williams has had one of the greatest careers of any musician, winning over twenty Grammy Awards and several Academy Awards (among many others). If you listen to Williams’s soundtracks for the movies Jurassic Park, Hook, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, you’ll understand my point. Even though the movies are very different and their soundtracks have a lot of variety, all it takes is a couple of listens to be able to pick up on certain things that each soundtrack has in common. The soundtracks all contain the “John Williams sound.”
The Bible has a “sound” too. To get to know that sound, we have to read the Bible closely, paying attention to its stories, songs, parables, and promises. We do this by studying the Bible, not just reading it passively, to learn what it says and why it says it. Good theology helps us learn not just the words of Scripture but the logic and unity of it as well. By studying the Bible theologically (and ideally, with a mentor or two and a good book to help us), we can become more skilled students of truth. As we do this, we’ll pick up the sound of the Bible.
When you encounter claims or ideas online that you’re not sure about, ask yourself, “Does this sound like truth in or supported by the Bible?”
Test 2: Is This Statement or Idea Shared or Confirmed by the People in My Life Whom I Know and Trust the Most?
One major way the internet can shape us is by isolating us. Most of our devices are big enough for only one person. Our online lives are guarded by passwords that we’re told not to share with anyone. Privacy can be a blessing, but it comes with a high cost, especially in the world of the internet. Lies can sound true when we don’t have anyone else’s help pointing out the facts. Foolish or harmful suggestions can sound reasonable when there’s nobody around to tell us otherwise. Not having another pair of eyes reading over our shoulder also means that we don’t have any other voices in our ears.
This is a problem because Scripture makes it clear that human beings should not be left to themselves. Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!”
God designed life in such a way that we need the wisdom of other trustworthy people in our lives to help us learn and correct us when we need guidance. This seems natural when we’re children; our parents, grandparents, other relatives, teachers, and coaches give us instruction that we need and could not possibly discover on our own.
As we get older and become more independent, we feel our need for others a little bit less. But the Bible reminds us that Christians need one another. God calls us to be part of communities of faith to encourage, care for, and challenge one another. The most important community we can be a part of is our local church. Being part of a local church is how God’s people live out their lives together as the body of Christ.
When an online influencer who doesn’t know you or care for you speaks about your parents or mentors in a way that makes you want to trust those people less and the influencer more, that’s a massive sign that what you’re listening to is false. It’s not that our parents and leaders are always right; it’s that the people who actually know us in real life—who know our full names, who see our faces, who give us hugs when we win and pick us up when we fail—are the ones we should trust most.
Remember: God is caring for you through the care of others, and “in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Prov. 11:14).
Test 3: Does Listening to or Believing This Statement or Idea Result in Me Thinking, Speaking, and Living in a Godly Way?
Perhaps you’ve heard about how police officers and government agents can identify fake money, often referred to as counterfeits. False one-hundred-dollar bills can look very realistic; most people could never tell the difference between real ones and fake ones. So how do the professionals learn how to spot the fakes?
Rather than studying the counterfeits, they spend most of their time studying real money. They become experts at knowing what the genuine bills look like in every amount. They become intimately familiar with the thickness of the paper, the shading of the colors, and the precise size and spacing of even the smallest numbers and letters. Knowing what real money looks like is the best way to recognize fake money. A similar principle can help us understand another way to test the validity of a statement or idea. The Bible says, “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit” (Luke 6:43–44). What does this mean? The fruit we bear—how we think, feel, speak, and act—is directly impacted by our roots—what we believe. When we root ourselves in truth, we will bear the good fruit of those beliefs. When we root ourselves in lies, those beliefs will result in rotten fruit. So we must understand what a heart that believes truth is supposed to look like—the kind of fruit it should bear—to help us discern whether we’re believing truthful claims or claims of lies and foolishness.
So what are wise, truth-filled people of God supposed to be like? The Bible doesn’t leave us without answers. Let’s look at a few helpful passages.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Gal. 5:22–23)
When we are growing in godly wisdom, we are growing in love for others. We find joy even when our circumstances get hard. We have peace even in the face of trouble and confusion. We are patient and kind even when life is not going our way. And this is all possible by the work of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus has given to all who trust in him.
Does what you’re listening to online make love for others feel stupid or pointless? Does it make you feel anxious and impatient, as if you need to protect yourself because no one else is looking out for you? Does it tell you that self-control is punishment and that you’ll be happier if you just satisfy all your desires? If so, these ideas do not produce biblical fruit or godly living, so they are not rooted in truth and wisdom.