Media nun shares ways to be good 'digital Catholics'

Sister Helena Burns encourages young people to curb digital addictions

Sister Helena Burns, FSP, is a self-proclaimed “media nun” who can often be found tweeting, writing movie reviews, or giving presentations on the healthy use of social media and technology.

She flew to Vancouver to speak at the Catholic Educators’ Conference Feb. 9. After her talk, she sat down with The B.C. Catholic for an exclusive interview.

The B.C. Catholic: You talk about living in a pre-digital world, before Internet and cellphones, and then in a digital one. Which do you like better?

Sister Helena Burns: Because I have reined in my addictions, I like the world of both. A balance. Even though I love that other [pre-digital] world and there were advantages to it, I still like this technological world.

I like the balanced life. I can say no to this [points to phone] whenever I want, and I do.

At the Catholic Press Association conference last year in St. Louis, I held up my phone and said: “This doesn’t bring me joy! God brings me joy. People bring me joy. Creation brings me joy.”

If we’re honest with ourselves, this [holds up phone] causes stress, too. It’s a stressful thing, but we’re in charge. This doesn’t make me human. If I were to throw this into the ocean tomorrow, I could go back to a non-digital life. It would be hard in (this) digital world, but I would be fine.

BCC: You talk about the challenge of being the same person online and offline. Tell me about that.

SHB: I always say: Satan always offers us false identities. He started in the garden. ‘You can be a god!’ They were already like God. Satan will sell your car back to you.

Online, we can join a tribe. We can join a community of whatever we’re interested in. We can try on different sexual identities.

We lived our growing up years without this. You got identity from the community. When there are bigger families, you see your crazy uncles and cousins and that’s who you are. Now with so many single children families, they don’t have aunts or uncles or they have one aunt or uncle or one cousin.

BCC: What advice do you have for young people about being the same person physically and virtually?

SHB: It’s tricky because they are trying on different personas and trying to figure out who they really are.

I would tell them: get your identity offline. Don’t be looking for your identity or any clues online. It’s not that helpful. You need concrete: your family and your community and your friends and your faith community. Not just your peers, because they’re trying to figure it out just like you are. Look for good people and mentors in your life.

It’s a rabbit hole, if you go online and look for something concrete in your formative years. You get this idea that you are fluid and you can just keep changing. Human beings are very adaptable, but there are certain givens about being human.

Get your identity in concrete reality, starting with the body. If you want to see it half empty, the body is limiting. If you want to see it positively, it is defining. The overlap of Theology of the Body and media literacy is so huge.

BCC: You just spoke at the Catholic Educators’ Conference. What do you think about using technology in the classroom?

SHB: That was huge when I was doing my masters in media literacy education. I’m not against technology in the classroom as part of the class, but as far as allowing students to sit there and do whatever they want on their devices: no. That’s insane.

Back in the day, all the knowledge resided in the teacher. Then it became the teacher and the textbook and it was 50/50. Then technology entered. Then the place of the teacher became more marginal until the point where the teacher was teaching you how to use the technology. You could teach yourself. I disagree.

I think any use of media that lessens the role of the teacher is bad. I think we need to teach our young people the good use of media technology. What websites would be good to go to? How can you fact-check? If you are going to learn by yourself online, how will you do that? Use the Internet so you’re enhancing yourself and not being led astray.

I don’t like this idea that the teachers stand aside and make sure your technology is working and teaching you how to use it. That’s replacing a human being. A computer, a robot, is never better than a human being.

BCC: Students do need to learn how to use technology sometime. What would you recommend?

SHB: A lot of young people get to know technology on their own. They don’t need a classroom necessarily. How much time are you spending in class on technology? I don’t think that’s what they need. That’s not the only thing they need to know.

What is the purpose of education? I think it’s the formation of the whole person: mind, will, heart.

In the educational community, there’s a big pushback against creating workers for the work force. There was a time in U.S. history where they were forming little factory workers, not so much for their own, to make a living, but for the factories.

There’s a balance there. What if they graduate and they’re useless? But if you’re looking at them as cogs in a machine and pouring information into their brains: no. We’re human beings.

The humanities, the arts, are the first to go. Those are what make us human! Reading, literature, philosophy. We need this stuff!

Sister Burns blogs at hellburns.blogspot.com and tweets at @SrHelenaBurns.