On average, most of us spend somewhere around 2.5 hours a day on social media (11). Given the sheer amount of time we spend online, we’re right to wonder whether the social internet is shaping the people we lead more than we are. The Wolf in Their Pockets answers the question: what should we do about it? How do pastors and Christian leaders disciple their congregations when many individuals in their churches are being shaped by daily exposure to negative facets of social media? How do parents disciple and lead their children who are being influenced by the social internet? Martin takes a look at thirteen ways the social internet shapes those we love and lead, and offers advice for leadership and discipleship in our social media age (22).

Martin calls Christian leaders and parents to start by engaging intentionally with social media, recognizing how it shapes the way we think, feel, and behave (16). We need to see how our relationship with the social internet shapes us to prize entertainment above all, value what gets the most attention, and find our identity in what the online world says is valuable (17).

The Negative Effects of the Social Internet and Our Response to Them

Several recurring negative effects of social media pop up throughout the book:

Our relationship with social media can distort our understanding of identity and purpose. The social internet gives the illusion that we can be whoever and whatever we want (42). At the end of the day, “social media platforms are just mass behavior modification platforms designed to sell us advertisements” (73). As these platforms consume our attention, our sense of self can constantly change, and we often feel like we don’t measure up to the lives of those the algorithms put before us. Other people always seem to be living more interesting and valuable lives. We compare ourselves with others and lose sense of our true purpose as image-bearers of God made to live for his glory.

Social media also reinforces the idea that we are the hero, the main character of the story. It lures us into thinking that life is all about being entertained and living a comfortable lifestyle where everything is instantaneous. Life becomes about expressing ourselves, trusting ourselves, always feeling the need to perform, and thinking that we’re always right and everybody else is wrong. When we come to believe that we’re the main character of our story, we are shaped toward pride, led down the road to anxiety, and give in to the worship of self. We are already by nature self-centered and drawn to comfort and ease, and social media simply plays on these sinful tendencies.

Truth can be hard to discern on social media. Martin reminds us that social media isn’t really designed to be a trusted source of truth. He writes in a chapter on discernment:

“When we let social media take an inappropriate seat of authority in our lives, we let it define truth for us rather than deliver truth to us. We forget, or maybe we never even knew, that our feeds are designed to keep our attention, not inform us. Unfortunately, the kind of content that keeps our attention best is often the opposite of truth, or at least a gross distortion of it.” (84, emphasis added)

Social media is all about our attention, not truth. Sure, there are many true posts, articles, and videos in our news feeds. But the algorithms that determine what we see on social media promote what they think will get our attention, not necessarily what is true. Both truth and error pass before our eyeballs as we scroll our ever-interesting news feeds or recommended videos. Social media makes discernment more difficult and can draw us to believe lies and half-truths and unfounded conspiracy theories.

These are just a few of the major ways social media can have a negative effect on us. The big question of the book, however, is: what are we as Christian leaders or parents supposed to do about it?

Martin offers no quick fixes. Most of his advice is simply basic Christian discipleship. He calls pastors, Christian leaders, and parents to fend off the wolf of the social internet by pressing on in true, biblical discipleship that cherishes real community and Christ-like character.

Leaders and parents must start by leading by example. We can’t defend those we love from the wolves if we’re caught in their jaws too. Parents who are constantly scrolling or pastors who are posting for likes won’t make much headway in leading people toward a more positive relationship with the social internet. The principles Martin offers throughout the book apply to leaders just as much as those they lead.

Leaders in the church must pursue faithfulness, not flashiness. Churches must not give in to the brand-building model of social media platforms. The mission of the church is not entertaining the sheep in hopes of bringing more into the fold. The mission is making disciples of Jesus as we walk in faith, hope, and love (33). Pastors and leaders must remind their congregations that life isn’t about comfort and entertainment, but about following Jesus in the way of the cross.

Leaders and parents must celebrate and promote real, embodied community. Social media offers us the relationships we crave without much of the awkwardness and difficulties that they entail. Yet, this is just another way the social internet plays off our desires for ease and comfort. We must point those we lead to the value of true community. Christian discipleship requires genuine Christian community in the context of a faithful local church.

Alongside genuine community, we must promote the everyday worship of God. Our devices consume so much of our time, and we must fight time with time. As Martin puts it, “Daily discipleship by social media is best fought with daily time with God,” (205). We need to encourage those we lead to put down their screens and pick up God’s Word and read it, pray it, and live it.

Ultimately, leaders and parents must pray often and rely on the Holy Spirit. We may feel powerless to disciple those we lead. It may seem that the wolf in their pockets is shaping them far more than we ever could and that there’s little we can do about it. We need to let this feeling of weakness drive us to our knees in humble, prayerful reliance on the Spirit of God to work in their hearts.

We must actively engage the social internet. There’s much we can do to promote healthy community, worship, discernment, encouragement, and humility in the lives of those we love and lead. But true change and growth comes from the work of the Spirit. So above all, we must lead and parent with persevering prayer.

Quantitative Hopelessness?

My one critique of the book is that at times it seems to fall into what John Piper has called quantitative hopelessness. This is the discouraging sense that Christian leaders can feel when they compare the half-hour of teaching or preaching time they get with people to the hours their congregations, small group, or Sunday School class spends consuming entertainment. How can we hope to compete with that? How can a forty minute sermon once a week hold a candle to the 2.5 hours spent each day on social media?

At a few points in the book, Martin suggests that the only hope we have of fighting the negative influence of the social internet is by fighting time with time (64). There is surely truth here. True discipleship takes time and effort, and we must encourage those we lead to spend time with God daily. Yet, I think The Wolf in Their Pockets would have been stronger with a richer theology of preaching and teaching God’s Word. Martin emphasizes that the Spirit alone can truly bring change in people. But what is the usual means the Spirit uses to change us? The Word of God.

So we might get discouraged by the sheer amount of time people we lead and love spend on the social internet compared to the time we get with them. But we can truly be hopeful that the Spirit can do much with the little we do have. We can trust that God’s Word does not return void even when we preach to people with a wolf in their pockets (Isa 55:10-11).

The social internet is a powerful discipleship force. But God’s Word is more powerful. We need to regain our faith in the power of the Word. God can use a thirty minute Bible lesson to bring someone from spiritual death to spiritual life. He can use a sermon or a Scripture-saturated conversation with your teenager to do more change in a heart than could be accomplished in fifty years of scrolling through Instagram.

We must fight time with time, yes. But we also need to make sure we’re putting our hope in the right source: not time but the living and active Word of God (Heb 4:12). Martin is right on that our faith must be in God to be strong and bring about growth and change in those we lead and love (209). I would just emphasize more the normal means God uses to bring about this change: his Word.

Conclusion

Throughout The Wolf in Their Pockets, it becomes clear that social media, while new, simply amplifies age-old problems like self-centeredness, idolatry, pride, cynicism, anxiety, and on and on. The social internet uniquely plays on these and amplifies them. Thus, the wolves in our pockets are not only false Christian teachers/influencers on Facebook or TikTok but the entire system that shapes us in ways away from Jesus.

Christian leaders, pastors, and parents will benefit from The Wolf in Their Pockets as they see exactly how the social internet shapes those we lead. Martin offers sound, biblical advice throughout the book that calls us to value difficult discipleship, in-person community, discernment and truth, humility and peace, and the true worship of God.

Yes, there’s probably a wolf in your pocket and in the pockets of those you’re responsible to lead. But we don’t need to despair. We need to recommit to the hard work of biblical discipleship and trust God’s Spirit to be strong where we are weak.

(Note: I was given an advance copy of this book by the publisher for review.)

Often some of the most relevant wisdom we find (outside the Bible) for living in our digital age comes from old works of timeless truth. I found this to be true as I recently finished reading The Godly Man’s Picture by 17th-century English pastor, Thomas Watson. In the book, Watson seeks to describe what a godly believer looks like and encourages and challenges those who desire to live godly lives in Christ.

In one section near the end of the book, Watson lays out eight ways believers should pursue godliness, answering the question, “What shall we do that we may be godly?” (chapter 7, pp. 223–27 in the Puritan Paperback edition). As I was reading this chapter, I was struck by how relevant Watson’s words are for believers today.

Here are five of Watson’s answers to the question about pursuing godliness, applied to how we can pursue godliness in our digital age:

1. “Accustom yourselves to holy thoughts.”

Watson writes: “If men would step aside a little out of the noise and hurry of business, and spend only half-an-hour every day thinking about their souls and eternity, it would produce a wonderful alteration in them and tend very much to a real and blessed conversion,” (p. 224).

Pursuing godliness will require deep work, “serious meditation” on God’s Word, our own souls, and the eternal age to come. And yet deep work is often what our digital devices war against. Digital technology thrives in the shallows. It promotes distraction and shapes us to value entertainment and quick content consumption.

The problems of distraction and shallow living are not new. People through the ages have tended to busy themselves with anything but serious reflection on our mortality and the eternal age to come. We struggle to spend thirty minutes a day simply thinking deeply about the things of God.

In our digital age, especially, we need to slow down and do the deep work of meditating on God’s Word and things of eternal significance. Our social media feeds promote entertainment and distraction and controversy. We need to break away from that daily, turn on “Do Not Disturb”, and think deeply about the things that really matter. We will struggle in our pursuit of godliness if we are constantly wading in the shallows and neglect to do the deep, hard work of diving into eternal truths everyday.

2. “Watch your hearts.”

Our hearts, according to the prophet Jeremiah, are more deceitful than anything else (Jer 17:9). If we are not watchful, our hearts will lead us into sinful thoughts and actions. But “watchfulness maintains godliness,” (p. 224). The New Testament is filled with the exhortation to believers: Be watchful (e.g., Mark 13:32-37; Luke 21:34-36; 1 Cor 16:13; Heb 2:1; 1 Pet 5:8).

We must watch both our inputs and outputs—what is coming into our hearts and what is coming out. What we take in through our eyes and ears affects our hearts. What we think about and dwell upon can direct our hearts to Jesus or to our sinful desires. At the same time, what spills forth in our words and actions reveals the state of our hearts. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” (Matt 12:34).

In our digital age, we should be especially alert to the content we view and listen to. We have unprecedented access to an unprecedented amount of inputs. We will never run out of YouTube videos to watch. There will always be new apps to download and podcasts to listen to. We are overloaded with inputs. But if we want to pursue godliness, we must remain watchful and alert to what we our setting our eyes upon and turning our ears to.

We should also ask ourselves: What is spilling out of my heart in how I engage with others online? Why am I posting what I am posting? What we post and how we engage with others online can be a window into our hearts. We must be watchful if we would be godly.

3. “Make spending your time a matter of conscience.”

Wasting time has always been a problem. Watson writes,

“Many people fool away their time, some in idle visits, others in recreations and pleasures which secretly bewitch the heart and take it away from better things. What are our golden hours for but to attend to our souls? Time misspent is not time lived but time lost. Time is a precious commodity.” (p. 224)

It has never been easier to pursue distraction and give in to procrastination. Our digital devices are designed to attract our eyeballs for hours a day. What social platforms, apps, video games, and streaming services want is our attention, and, thus, our time. That’s one reason why a former Netflix CEO once said the greatest enemy to their streaming platform was sleep.

These companies understand that our time is valuable. The question is: do we? Do we actually view our time as a “precious commodity”? Our time is one of the most valuable, limited things we have. What are we using our “golden hours” to pursue? How we spend our time reveals what we really value. So, what does your screen time say about what you value?

Let’s learn this lesson of godliness: we must pay attention to how we use our time. As Paul wrote in Ephesians, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil,” (Eph 5:15-16).

4. “Make this maxim your own: godliness is the purpose of your creation.”

We were made to live for God and his glory. Our purpose as creation is to bring glory to the Creator. True godliness, at its core, is living for God’s glory in every area of our lives. To be godly is to live for God’s glory in Christ as those filled with the Spirit.

Yet, as Chris Martin puts it in his book The Wolf in Their Pockets, “Our relationship with social media is a powerful factor in distorting our understanding of purpose,” (41). Social media especially puts forth a vision that our purpose is to gain the approval (likes) of others, to post and view content that is valuable according to the world’s standards. Our purpose according to the wisdom of our age is to make our own purpose, and nowhere is that promise held forth more than online where it seems like we can fashion ourselves in anyway we want (Martin, 43).

This maxim must become our own in this digital age: our purpose, the reason why we are here, is to live for the glory of God. We were made for godliness, bringing glory to him and enjoying him forever. We were not made to define our own purpose or to pursue the praise of the crowd. You will not find real purpose and meaning in worldliness or trendiness. You will find your true purpose in godliness. Don’t let our digital age distract you from your true purpose.

5. “Be often among the godly.”

We were made for community. As believers, we need each other. Watson quotes Proverbs 13:20, which says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” If we want to grow in godliness, we must spend time with those who are farther down the road of godliness than we are.

And this means real, face-to-face community. To be often among the godly means in-person community first and foremost, before online feeds, groups, and forums, etc. Godliness is not something that is really picked up all that well from tweets or YouTube sermon clips. Godliness is learned in community as we do life together and walk together through the ups and downs of life.

Being among the godly, then, means being a part of a true Jesus-exalting, Bible-believing-and-doing church. Livestreams, podcasts, blogs, and Instagram reels are great, but they are nothing compared to the force for godliness that is genuine, gospel-centered community, which should generally be found in the context of the local church. If we wish to be godly, we should seek godly community.

These timeless principles for godliness may seem somewhat basic. But in our digital age, as in all previous generations, we must be intentional about pursuing the end for which we were created: living for the glory of God as we find our joy in him and believe and obey his Word.