SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN EFFECTIVE PASTORAL TOOL

Abstract

An omnipresent civilization progress causes religion and moral values to become less and less important aspects of life for young people. A significant drop is noticed in the number of people attending Sunday Mass and praying regularly. At the same time, the number of non-believers is rising. Also, among young people labelling themselves as believing and practicing, a change in how they experience their faith can be observed. Those people search very often for evidence of personal faith testimony and sincere communication. Young people also desire to actively participate in the believers’ community which is witnessed, for example, by being a member of different groups present in social media. Therefore, in this article, the author attempts to answer the question as to whether religious activity aimed at young people via social media is indeed effective. To answer that question, the author decided to put a couple of chosen forms of social media under analysis.

Keywords

• religion
• young people
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube