Always, Always On: Technology, Digital Life, and New Media / Angela Gorrell

How do visions of flourishing life converge in the new media landscape? Theologian Angela Gorrell (Baylor University) reflects on the challenges and opportunities of technology and digital life, especially those that reveal to us who we are, who we are becoming, and to whom we belong.

Show Notes

• The purpose of Always on: Practicing Faith in a New Media Landscape
  • New media: not just social media, but entertainment, productivity, tools, and more
• How to develop interested conversations about the impact of new media on moral, relational, political, and spiritual life.
• How do visions of flourishing life converge in the new media landscape?
• Understanding (and exploiting) human psychology in new media business
• Seeking joy through affirmation and recognition
• Becoming curious and open to conversations about new media.
• The idolatry of technology
• The chief task of adolescence growing into healthy adulthood: Identity and belonging—Who am I? Whose am I? 
• Recognition has become malformed in the new media landscape.
• The threat of diminished humanity through new media
• Being one’s real self online and in-person
• The importance of participation in order to act redemptively online
• Numbness, anxiety, and depression that comes through passivity
• When will you disengage from new media? When will you engage and participate?
• Developing a rhythm of life that appreciates human hybridity of physical and mental mediated life
• Ask: How can I nurture connection in digital spaces in meaningful ways? 

About Angela Gorrell

Dr. Angela Williams Gorrell is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary. Prior to joining the faculty at Baylor University, she was an Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, working on the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, and a lecturer in Divinity and Humanities at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She is an ordained pastor with 14 years of ministry experience. Dr. Gorrell is passionate about finding issues that matter to people and shining the light of the Gospel on them. She is currently working on a book that shares findings of the joy project while addressing America’s opioid and suicide crises. Dr. Gorrell’s expertise is in the areas of theology and contemporary culture, education and formation, new media, and youth and emerging adults.