A communications expert who specializes in Generation Z and Christian communications is warning there’s an informational battle unfolding that believers must pay attention to — and that fears of new technologies must be tempered.
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“New media is something we shouldn’t be afraid of,” Bethany Miller, communications director for National Religious Broadcasters, told CBN News, explaining that people both young and old are relying on social media for information and news gathering. “We need to stay ahead of the curve and realize new media is the way. Social media is how we get our headlines.”
Miller knows the pitfalls that can come from getting news from Reels and short videos, discussing how younger people are even more tuned in to social media for these purposes.
“Today’s Gen Z’s … and … teenagers … are growing up without any form of separation between the digital and the physical,” she said. “And so information is being consumed … and then the tricky part is now we’re having the question of: ‘What is real and what is not real?'”
This complicates how people process information around war and major news events, and with artificial intelligence emerging it only adds to the chaos and confusion. As a result, there’s an “information warfare” of sorts taking form.
“We’re having a type of access that’s misinformation and we’re getting headlines that are not accurate,” she said. “We’re getting everyone’s opinion and … we don’t need everyone’s opinion because now we’re having both truth and untruth and now Gen Z has a barrage — the American public as a whole has a barrage — of headlines.”
Miller continued, “And now you have to do the discernment of what is true, what is not true, and my concern is that Gen Z has not grown up with that distance between what is reality and what is not reality.”
The assumption that random videos and AI-generated content are true is creating a plethora of confusion, she said.
“Gen Z doesn’t have that type of discernment that they need to realize whether or not something is true, whether something is biblical, whether something is true, good and beautiful,” Miller said.
Despite this dynamic, she described being encouraged by how Christians are stepping into social media, film, TV, and other forms of entertainment, offering quality content. For a long time, Christian entertainment was criticized for a lack of excellence, but Miller believes those tides are changing.
“Christian media is paving the way, but we still have quite a lot more work to do,” she said, noting it’s important for Christians to get a better grip on the audience. “I think we’re starting to see that, but we still have a long way to go. We need to make sure that we know our audience. We know that 30 seconds is what performs well on Instagram. We need to know that we need to format.”
Miller added, “We know that Christian media has the answer, we have truth, we are the only ones that are providing the way to eternity.”
Part of engaging, she said, is understanding that we’re in a spiritual war that requires engagement. She cited examples of persecution in Nigeria not getting much coverage — and of Israel being maligned after Hamas’ deadly October 7 terror attacks.
“The mission field is different today,” Miller said. “When we talk about the Great Commission, that doesn’t just mean going over across seas to Africa; it also means getting online because the mission field is also media. It is also digital.”
And that digital world, much like the physical, demands that Christians take action.
“The digital world is a spiritual world as well and Christians need to be there combating, and we need to be there leading the front lines, and we need to be there getting the truth,” she said.
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