I am not going to defend all the negatives with social media for surely they are many. I almost feel like the adversary is poisoning social media so that it can't be used in positive ways.

It's been fascinating to watch over the last several months the total switch and usage of social media by our fulltime missionaries. Social media is so poisonous I would not have guessed that the Lord is asking the missionaries to use it as much as they are. Anecdotal stories I'm hearing of missionaries having greater success with social media in teaching than through traditional means. It's interesting how missionaries are having success reaching out beyond their boundaries and teaching people from all over the world. Our Stake President shared of one story that is brother is aware of in another state of one set of missionaries who are teaching english classes. These classes are being following by 500,000 people. While teaching english they share concepts/words of the gospel and at the end of each lesson they give a short 5 minute gospel lesson.

The other thing I like about social media is being able to stay in touch with friends, mission associates, and relatives all over the world that I would have lost total contact with if it wasn't for Facebook.

I am our Stake's Communication Director. We, like everyone else, is struggling with how best to communicate in our stake with our members. We can't do communications and announcements in sacrament and priesthood meetings anymore like we used to. Email is the default choice of getting the word out. However, it's used so much for everything else that many people ignore their emails. Or if you email too often or too much content it will be ignored. Facebook has it's niche, but my estimate is that 70-80% of users are sisters. For younger members and youth - neither email nor Facebook work. Instagram has been good for youth, but now I'm seeing evidence that it is losing favor with the youth. Heaven forbid that any of our youth - or anyone for that matter - would use Tik Tok. Texting can be effective in some isolated circumstances. Phone calls are the preferred choice of a very limited number of people.

Communicating in this day and age is a complex and complicated.