emerging adults: online community is not what you want

introduction to online community

Vibely has been great especially during this year when a lot of social connections have to be virtual. In 2020 especially it’s been hard to build communities and meet new people, and Vibely has bridged that gap.”

~Brenda, a Vibely user posting an online rating

I first came across the online community platform Vibely around January of 2021 through a down-to-earth, twenty-one-year-old, productivity-lifestyle vlogger who frequented my email inbox. Leaders of any niche subject can use this platform to start their own interactive, online, member-based community and lead thoughtful conversations, active challenges for those who are signed up to join. The company website not only resonates with the aesthetic eye, but colorful text draws the browsing human in closer: 

“Join thousands of leaders starting vibrant and intimate communities”

“Challenge your community to take action #together” 

“Keep motivated with group accountability” 

This media-converged approach utilizes the opportunities of the vast online forums and the power of social motivation via the internet with the goals of real-life impact and helping thought leaders monetize along the way. Vibely is just one platform primarily reaching women of Gen-Z, but there are also a number of major social gaming communities, millions of public and private FaceBook communities, and countless other websites, apps, and social media pages that link up users with endless things in common. Craving community will happen as naturally as craving food when fasting, such as this study showed. A community actually forms naturally when people find others with whom they share a common center, and when they get together to affirm and communicate that meaning in tangible ways.

the rising iGeneration

Where does one find this said phenomenon of “community?” The Western-raised young adults of the 2020s have now been accustomed to the internet for all their lives, following suit the Generation-Y that some say were “pioneers” of the reality of growing up “online.” This generation does not question the online environment as much as their immediate generation ancestors.  Just like the speedy and efficient technology that is demanded (just stick around a college campus when the wifi bandwidth is momentarily throttled), the adoption of digital methods for all aspects of life may be adopted without a second thought. This reactionary acceptance, however, does not rightly consider how communities thrive, what meaning is communicated in the nature of the communing, and how the sense of identity for the personal user is impacted respectively. The future of every community in this society depends on a deep, slow consideration of these matters. 

The entire population cannot be discussed through one undergraduate thesis, so this analysis will focus on the generation right on the cusp of leading this country’s society and future of communications: humans emerging into adulthood. Since the stage of life in between adolescence and adulthood is a unique one, they will be referred to with a certain psychology term called “emerging adults,” with the most focused ages being 18-25 years old.  Qualities of this in-between life stage will be addressed next in this essay. All community influencers should consider the future implications for young people they are inviting into their spheres. Churches who care about young people knowing Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life definitely need to consider this matter because it relates to identity and relationships.  The concerning truth is that digital communing does not support emerging adults in a healthy exploration of identity and in obtaining the true reality of relationships.  

a careful consideration is necessary

The nature of the online is a matter that not only affects how free time is filled and entertainment industries are fueled. This matter is confronting actual communities where real humans find, develop, and sustain their God-given desire for a sense of belonging. At the real, beating heart of the matter is people who are genuinely seeking an answer to understand who they are, laying awake at late hours of the night wondering about their true purpose in the world. This discussion is vital to struggle into, and so, may you read this slowly and considerably. May it not remain on the screen and in your internal mind; may you speak your reaction to a friend or co-worker, voicing the ruminations, feelings, and wrestlings with other people in your world who, for the sake of all, desperately need to be considering the same matters. 

am i an emerging adult?

Emerging adulthood, like adolescence, is a stage that is distinguished in light of cultural constructs, rather than fixed, universal laws that can translate through cultures and eras (Arnett 470). Referencing this stage of life is helpful, then, for those who share in common experiences and subjective perceptions rather than rigid age markers.

For the American society of the twenty-first century, the period before fully settling into adulthood is actually viewed by many as worth its own unique consideration. For a helpful discourse on the concept of digital community and emerging adults, a brief defense of the relatively-new term will be helpful. The term “emerging adults” was proposed in the year 2000 as a separate life stage because of three significant factors: 1) a high degree of demographic instability and diversity, 2) subjective perception (i.e. not “adolescent” but not yet “adult”), and 3) heightened identity exploration (Arnett, 470-474). 

If the reader still needs an age range in order to continue, the focus ages tend to be late teens (18 years old) to mid-twenties. But as alluded to already, depending on circumstances, a person may enter this stage earlier or remain in it longer. 

An emerging adult is experiencing major life decisions:

Will I go to college? What higher education do I want to pursue?

What job and career and I meant to spend the rest of my life doing?

In addition to the crucial challenge of career and calling, one is “managing the transformations that occur in one’s relationships and in one’s own personality and well-being, before the transition to full adulthood is completed” (Bjornsen 224-225). These years are widely varied and unstable, which is why there needs to be as much surrounding support from a community for these individuals as possible.

how is the nature of the digital community any different?

Online communities were designed differently and they are shaped ongoingly in ways that distinguish their essence from traditional communities. The new media landscape regards all communications online, from interpersonal messaging to the creations made and shared. The rigid implications of these communications mediums directly press upon users who make up a community.

At best, the nature of digital communities is performance-based and highly individualized. At all times, the nature of digital communities can perpetuate isolation and bombard with distraction, and at any given time, a member of the community can be unnaturally cut off from the people with whom this common identity is shared. These various characteristics have direct interrelationships with adults who are emerging out of adolescence as they explore their identity and form relationship bonds with others.

1. digital communities drive performative meaning

“After all,” says Turkle in Alone Together, “our online lives are all about performance” (26). Helene, Co-Leader of a completely-virtual religious community, responded to an inquisitive comment with this “warm” welcome: 

I think you would find that if you asked anyone who had attended our events they would attest to the authentic nature of what we offer. I don’t know if you are a member of our community yet, but I do warmly encourage you to come and join us if you are not and then you can see what you think.

(Milena, see works cited)

This “welcome” message, while well-intended, shows the reality of a digital community: members belong in essence as much as they are immediately and incessantly participatory, and the practical participation that is perceived as most engaging is performative.  Online communities “exist as loose social networks” with transactional levels of affiliation and commitment, which is different from traditional communities which had tightly bound gatherings with slow-forming, durable affiliation and steady rituals overseen by family and institutional ties (Campbell and Garner 65).  Digital communities consist of activity-based interactions, primarily verbal and instantaneous “like” reactions, putting a high-pressure and exhausting expectation on each individual user to be “on” all the time and perpetually interacting in order to be seen, felt, known, and contributing to the community. As a communing practice, this encourages performance and technique over genuine communication, the oftentimes mundane or even nonverbal. Also diminished is the privacy of any interrelationships that exist within a greater community body, which is an organic aspect of groups communing together. 

Performance-based belonging poses an immediate threat to individuals who are exploring their identity in the emerging years because it encourages an unhealthy effort for public perception over the private development of character and intimacy of relationships.

For an American culture that has groomed the value of instantaneous measures of performance over the richness of lifelong relationships, online communities seem like the perfect place to explore who one can be by sheer willpower, skill, and communication skill. Emerging adulthood in this culture is a life stage posing the challenge for the young person to “prove oneself” whether in terms of completing a level of education or training, launching successfully on a career path, or attaining financial independence. The nature of a digital community can provide an amount of instant affirmation for the user and perceived social support, but this shifts the young person’s focus from authentic character development to performing, even by public shows of personal commitment. Ask a teenager who frequently socializes on social media about “birthday shoutouts” to learn more about public displays of personal relational commitment (or read an article about this trend here). Belonging to a community is meant for much more than instant affirmation for performance. 

2. digital communities are highly individualized

A perceived strength to some of the nature of digital communities is hyper-individualization. With what feels like endless possibilities through numerous online communities to meet new connections, a user can either find a highly-personalized, niche group fixed on their particular common interest, and new groups are being built every minute.  The user is in full control of the extent of their interaction, and many online networks converge multiple dynamic, social, and interest contexts into one, highly-customized feed of new posts and suggestions (Campbell and Garner 66).  Going back to the example of the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life, the user has a high level of control for the “environment” of the virtual space and for the extent of their social engagement, far more than is true of online churches (Campbell and Garner 66). 

what occurs if i only see posts i want to see, listen to updates i want to hear, and engage with users i want to associate with?

The communication gets so technically optional for one online user, that the communication messages can instantly lose their grounding in the actual common identity of the group as a whole. The messages can be filtered by preference-based options, or even by engagement and automatic algorithms, and instead of the messages of the community being prophetic in the sense that they speak the truth as it is, there can be a convolution of shared meaning. In the years of emerging adulthood for some, there is no stage of life that reflects a wider range of individual volition (Arnett 471). This could lead people to praise digitized community specifically for those in this life stage, but not if communities are meant to bring people into a belonging that is ultimately greater than oneself.

Preferring the individualized reality available online will feed into relativism, diminishing that people–especially young people–actually need to be reminded of truth from a perspective outside their own. Continuing to develop messages in digital contexts will continue to reinforce that to a high degree, truth is determinable by self. People are not meant to play God and attempt to determine what is true or good. Even those who claim there is no God must accept the meaning of community as being a people who can remind the individual of the truth, even when the forces of life make remembrance and realization extremely difficult.  and realities fragmented per member of the community. 

3. challenges of constant distractedness and actual presence

What kind of person do I want to be?  This is a question emerging adults are grappling with. Shallow experiences and relationships are familiar in today’s society, but God made each person with a depth in his or her soul capable of an unfathomable depth of discovery, intimacy, and transformation if he or she will spend this life seeking to go there.  Distractions spread attention wider and farther but they hinder any type of focus from going deeper. Distracted people can be together, and still completely miss the opportunities to see each other, to listen well, to respond purposefully, and to do things that matter to them. When people have control over how they respond to distractions, they can give one another greater focus and fulfill this sense of “actual presence” while being together.  

Digital communities, for as long as they partake online, will have to battle the internet dizzying disease of constant distractedness.  Nicholas Carr, in his bestseller The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, differentiated the distraction of the internet from a refreshing distraction that sets the mind at ease: “The Net’s cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brains turn into simple signal-processing units, quickly shepherding information into consciousness and then back out again,” (119).

This not only affects how internet users interact with aspects of thought, learning, and creativity, it also encourages users into a distraction that integrates with social loneliness and isolation. 

Presence is an element of community that cannot be easily drawn on a transmission model of communication between persons. A healthy, flourishing community needs a quality of selfless presence from all who are involved, both the individual and the surrounding members. When individuals are distracted, not only in the topic of the mind but also in the stillness of the spirit, they create a rupture between the community fellowship awaiting them. Christian minister and seminary professor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this:

The person who comes into a fellowship because he is running away from himself is misusing it for the sake of diversion, no matter how spiritual this diversion may appear. He is really not seeking community at all, but only distraction which will allow him to forget his loneliness for a brief time, the very alienation that creates the deadly isolation of man. The disintegration of communication and all genuine experience, and finally resignation and spiritual death are the result of such attempts to find a cure.

Life Together, 77

Layers of this complex life transition are difficult enough for an emerging adult. Encouraging a hyper-circuited, compounded-distraction recipe for the context of communications is unhelpful for those who are already faced with a decision of remaining within a community.  The internet environment will proliferate becoming distracted, it will water down relationships in progress, and it will weaken personal development of presence. 

4. at the end of online: caution for cessation.

Digital communication is fine for some purposes like sending reminders for the next meeting, but the digital media ecosystem is weak as an environment in which communities may fully exist.  If you recall the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life from earlier, you may wonder what is happening with this “church” now. As of the end of 2021, it is over a year inactive and “under repair.” (Perhaps the community of about four hundred weekly gatherers is all communicating via email list or another private form of communication!) The ghosting online presence of this once-lively digital community’s website seemed to be stuck in time as it remains like a digital-lifeless-vegetable, date stamps only getting older. There was no “goodbye” post, no updates on the linked Twitter or Facebook page, not a single word that communicated to outside viewers why they could not join a null community. 

When communities fully form, gather, exist, and remain in the nature of the digital world, members unknowingly exist at risk of this unnatural separation.

True life-giving communities yearn to be formed with a long-standing vision for the future. The online digital medium here sits at the sad implication of what McLuhan implied when he said “The medium is the message.” Beyond performance, individualization, distraction, constancy, disembodiment and other complex issues, there is unpredictable cessation. In an instant, disconnect an entire community with the crash of a system or the touch of a button. A spurt of five hours without Facebook gathering platforms caused a minor ripple for businesses worldwide, would it not knock out a group of common-interest online buddies without remorse?

Emerging adults may not have the longest sense of commitment out of all the adults in society, but the looming potential for immediate remission from the primary source of a community should rightfully be terrifying.  This is not intended to be an argument to scare, instead, it is a call to realize how mediated gathering always agrees to play by the rules of the game at hand.

Emerging adults should not just realize, they should strive to live by practices that align with the desire they have for any substantial fellowship, one which goes beyond instant nullification at a “delete page forever” button.

if not online, then how?

prioritizing the powers of local community

Normative rituals are shifting out of place, and well-considered decisions must be brewed. This rising generation has the opportunity to dive below the flashy waves of the surface, processing how the nature of digital communities affects those who develop into it. Could this generation see the end of classrooms filled with steadfast, warm-bodied people, or miss the chance for a longstanding mentoring relationship with the gentleman who takes the garbage out at work.

The local community is necessary for this functioning society. This truth will be forgotten by some as technology innovations become accessible and marketed on every newsfeed. For every momentary flashy message that implies humans should all bring their lives online, there is power in making active, not merely reactive, decisions to prioritize embodied fellowship. As much as for a person in any life stage, emerging adults must get their priorities straight, knowing that for their own sakes, in-person fellowship is better. Two essential elements that exist in-person and not online are physical touch and organic mentorship.

the power of physical touch

Has there been a lapse of remembering what it means to be human? God made mankind to be a specific way–with arms and legs and eyes and hands and feet and backs. Ignoring those bodily implications for a facade of limitlessness will result in great loss of the way humans thrive. Human beings are embodied, proven to suffer emotionally and physically when lacking physical touch. Touch starvation is a real condition that causes anxiety, stress, depression, and other factors that critically must not be added to young people. In an article by TIME Magazine, writer Nicole Chung said this about grieving the loss of her mother during the worldwide pandemic lockdown:

After she died, I was incredibly fortunate in the support I had from loved ones near and far. Friends sent food and flowers, cards and video messages. … But none of them could come into the house, sit beside me and listen to a story or give me a hug, and this felt like its own kind of loss.

(“I’m Grateful for the Hugs I Can Now Share–and Haunted by the Ones I Can’t”)

In the very way that humans are, people need to be together. It is clear from conception and birth that being human is not some machine-activated instrumental process, creating life and cultivating more meaningful living.  At that, when saving all believers, Jesus Christ affirmed that no matter how lowly it feels sometimes to be human: even He would be born in a way that abided with physical touch–and it was for the sake of restored relationship and community, being together truly and fully. A community can help meet those needs or an emerging adult who may be separated from their nuclear family and yet to start a family of his own— a handshake, hug, a group huddle— these are fulfillments to real physical needs that will never truly exist online.

the power of organic mentorship

While prioritizing local presence to the digital kind, emerging adults and those who care for them can recapture the untapped potential of the counsel of older, wiser people in the everyday gatherings of those exploring the trajectory of their lives. Mentoring relationships develop when one person has more experience, knowledge, development in a certain quality or field than another person. Mentorship is a key for life, and it goes far beyond a transfer of information which can be obtained through a book or online article easily. Within this apprenticeship, whether rigorous or casual, the younger mentee is guided and assisted not only in doing something, but in becoming someone they want to be. Author of Spiritual Mentoring and president of The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology in Seattle, Keith R. Anderson, said this while recounting his college experience with a mentor:

 His name was Chuck, and we were as different in background as two men could be. … He was the custodian whose job all day was to empty the baskets of “important” people and to throw out the trash for these busy and influential people… He was a sage, a seer, a wise man who could see more deeply into life than most I have ever known since that time. In time we opened to one another, and he taught me much as we met on the dock for my “lessons” in wisdom. He didn’t set out to teach me, much less to mentor me, but he did both because, in his soul, he was a teacher and a mentor whose wisdom was given voice in a southern accent spoken in a northern city. His words didn’t add much information to my own ongoing education in theology, but they continue to shape me as a person to this day. (21-22)

Voice, character, diligence, heart: these elements of a role model that do not transfer fully through online mediums, even through books. Since the years of emerging are stuffed with options, ambiguity, and exploration, let this generation be alongside real, wise people who can model what a young person wants to become.

next steps for a local community

If you have a friend or relative who lives day and night on the internet, do not come running at them with this theoretical hammer. The point is not to chastise anyone who has invested their time and resources into online relationships. Ditching digital technology would not solve anything if communities did not intentionally seek to patch the holes in the fellowship that people fell through in the early days of the new media era.  As our individual members of society are encouraged to show up, may the communities that exist seek to be better, meeting the needs that drive some people to go online in the first place.

Just a few ways that communities can learn from the bonded online communities that exist… 

• Make an effort to always have someone be available for social needs, as much as possible. Online spaces mean that a user can connect anytime one desires that connection. Local communities can also intentionally create margin in their lives and busy schedules, so that when a community member needs support, at least one of the members of the community is available to respond. When welcoming someone new to the community, give them phone numbers, email addresses, or other personalized ways to get in touch with others when apart.

• Affirm people as they are, and do not try to conform them. The best online communities are the ones where a user really can self-disclose who they say they are and the community accepts them, and even affirms them. Localized communities oftentimes struggle to embrace and encourage unique differences among one another, but with at least one person intentionally on board with this, local communities can do better at genuinely affirming that each person belongs here.

• Create and foster more welcomed and private avenues for members to seek help in various ways. Communities on the internet can be anonymous, and so it makes for an ideal place to ask a question that may be met with cultural stigma and reaction. Instead of being members of a local community who react volatilely, judgmentally, or who simply neglect to welcome this help-seeking, be a community that ushers in holistic aid in every area for every individual, especially for those that want to seek it.

• While gathering, seek ways to eliminate the spirit of distraction. Repeat the identity and mission of your community to one another. Encourage one another to quiet external communications at the meaningful moments of your gathering, putting away cell phones especially.

WORKS CITED

Anderson, Keith, and Randy D. Reese. Spiritual Mentoring : a Guide for Seeking and Giving Direction. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1999. Print.

Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55 (5), 469–480. http://www.jeffreyarnett.com/ARNETT_Emerging_Adulthood_theory.pdf

Bjornsen, C. A. “Social Media Use and Emerging Adults: Current Trends and Research” 2018. M. Zupančič and Puklek Levpušček, M. (Eds.), Prehod v odraslost: sodobni trendi in raziskave (pp. 223-261). Publisher: Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324542908_Social_Media_Use_and_Emerging_Adulthood 

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community. 1st  ed. New York: Harper, 1954. Print. 

Campbell, Heidi A., and Stephen Garner. Networked Theology: Negotiating Faith in Digital Culture. Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2016. Print. 

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Print. 

Chung, Nicole. “I’m Grateful for the Hugs I Can Now Share–and Haunted by the Ones I Can’t.” TIME Magazine, 05 July 2021 issue, 24 June 2021. Web. Last accessed 1 December 2021. 

Hagell, A., R. Shah, R. Viner, D. Hargreaves, M. Heys, and J. McGowan. “Young People’s Suggestions for the Assets. Needed in the Transition to Adulthood: Mapping the Research Evidence.” The Health Foundation Working no. 2.  Health Foundation, published March 2019, London UK, https://www.health.org.uk/sites/default/files/upload/publications/2019/Health%20Foundation%20working%20paper%20assets%20final_v3.pdf.  Last accessed 11 October 2021. 

Hammond, R., & Hui-Tzu, G. C. “Using Facebook: Good for friendship but not so good for intimate relationships.” The Psychology of Social Networking Vol.1: Personal Experience in Online Communities, G. Riva, B. Wiederhold, & P. Cipresso (Eds.),  (Vol. 1, pp. 41–52). De Gruyter Open, 2016. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giuseppe-Riva-2/publication/306323935_The_Psychology_of_Social_Networking_Vol1_Personal_Experience_in_Online_Communities/links/5ae1660a458515c60f65ff1c/The-Psychology-of-Social-Networking-Vol1-Personal-Experience-in-Online-Communities.pdf Last accessed 11 October 2021. 

Milena, Helene. Comment on “The Vision.” The Anglican Cathedral of Second Life, 23 October 2010, 

Smith, Elizabeth. God Never Changes … But My Family Always Does. Independently published, 2019. Print.

Tomova, Livia, et. al. “Acute social isolation evokes midbrain craving responses similar to hunger.” Nat Neurosci, 23, 23 November 2020, 1597–1605. Nature Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-00742-z  Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Each Other and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2017. Print.