DIGITAL LIFE

Pope urges social networks to evolve from 'like' to 'heart'
The relationship between the community of social networks and the human community is the theme of his message today for the World Day of Social Communications, which is "God is not solitude but Communion, it is love and therefore communication, because love always communicates ... I am only truly human if I relate to others. "
That is why, he added, social networks will only be an opportunity if one knows how to experience in practice the connections made through technology.
"It is necessary to move from the 'like' to the 'ammen," he stressed.
"This is the network we want: a network made not to capture but to liberate, to preserve a communion of free people." The Church itself is a network woven by Eucharistic Communion, where unity is not based on likes, but in the 'amen' with which each one adheres to the body of Christ, welcoming others. "
In the text, the pope warns that the social networking community is not automatically synonymous with community and warned of the risks that young people are facing.
"It is necessary to recognize that if, on the one hand, social networks serve to connect better, making us find and help each other, on the other, they also lend themselves to a manipulative use of personal data, aiming to obtain advantages in the plan political or economic, without proper respect for the person and his or her rights. Statistics on younger people reveal that one in four teenagers is involved in episodes of cyberbullying. "
The network, Francisco explains, is an opportunity to promote the encounter with others, but it can also aggravate self-isolation, like a spider web capable of capturing.
"Adolescents are more exposed to the illusion that the social web can satisfy them completely at the relational level, until they reach the dangerous phenomenon of young 'social hermits', who run the risk of totally alienating society. drama shows a serious rupture in the relational fabric of society, a laceration that we can not ignore.
In the complexity of this scenario, the pope writes, it may be useful to rethink the metaphor of the network, the foundation of the internet to help discover its positive potentialities.
"The figure of the network invites us to reflect on the multiplicity of routes and nodes that, in the absence of a center, a structure of a hierarchical type, an organization of a vertical type, ensure its consistency.The network works thanks to the participation of all the elements, "he said.
In the current scenario, Pope Francisco adds, it is clear to everyone that the social networking community is not automatically synonymous with community.
"At best, such communities are able to demonstrate cohesion and solidarity, but often only individuals who recognize themselves around interests or arguments characterized by fragile attachments remain attached. Moreover, in the social web, identity is often founded in opposition to the other, to the person who is foreign to the group: it is defined more from what divides than from what unites, giving space to the suspicion and the explosion of all kinds of prejudice (ethnic, sexual, religious, and others) , stressed.
For the pope, this trend feeds groups that exclude heterogeneity, feed into the digital environment itself unbridled individualism, sometimes ending up fomenting spirals of hatred.
"And so, that which should be a window open to the world, becomes a showcase where narcissism itself is exhibited," he said.
The pope also explained that since it became possible to have the Internet, the church has always sought that its use serves the meeting of people and solidarity among all.
With the message now announced, the Pope says that he invites reflection "on the foundation and importance of our being in relationship and discover, in the vast challenges of the current communicative panorama, man's desire not to be closed to his own loneliness." was celebrated on June 2. Lusa Agency