Social Media's Influence on a TCK's Belonging

Humans are fashioned to belong and relate to one another in community. As image bearers of God, the One who communes in triune perfection, we crave for that authentic community where we are fully seen and yet fully loved. Third Culture Kids (TCK) long for a safe place where they are fully known. With the advent of social media, these young adults can connect with dozens of TCKs or family members living in other countries. However, does social media encourage a TCK’s sense of belonging or detract from it? Do these constantly updating platforms support a TCK in his repatriation or leave him with more baggage? Because of the addictive and superficial nature of social media, social media is detrimental for a TCK’s development of belonging to a physical community upon repatriation into America.

The TCK Culture: Belonging Everywhere, Yet Nowhere

Coined in the 1950s, the term “Third Culture Kid” refers to children who have spent a significant number of developmental years in cultures outside of their passport countries. This term is often misunderstood in ministry settings. The phrase “Third Culture” does not refer to the number of cultures a TCK has grown up in. However, the term “Third Culture Kid” derives its meaning from the following cultures: the passport culture, the host culture, and the relational culture. The relational culture, or “Third Culture,” is “the culture of shared experiences – people who relate to each other because they have been through similar things” (Crossman 2). These “shared experiences” often encompass the feelings of belonging everywhere and yet nowhere, of blending in and yet standing out in every culture. Because of their plethora of cultural experiences, TCKs unconsciously form beliefs, views, and habits that contrast with their monocultural friends and family members who hold the same passport as they do.

Repatriation: The Daunting Affair

That moment came all too quickly. Always anticipated but never prepared, she headed forth towards her gate, glancing back at her family waving madly in the airport. Her world, her security, disintegrated behind her in that wearisome fourteen-hour flight to America. This country promised her a sense of belonging, but she immediately became disillusioned by the foreignness of a country she must now call her own. Forced to adapt to the comforts and expectations in this society, she dwelt in uncomfortable restlessness and isolation, never grieving her past but always feeling lost.

Repatriation can occur when TCKs return with their parents to their passport country. The entire family may need to repatriate due to crises, personal or political in the host country. Children also transition out of their home in host countries into college or jobs in their passport countries. A TCK often struggles with unresolved grief when she transitions from one culture to the next, leaving her secure world behind in the shadows (Habeeb and Hamid 999). This unresolved grief can surface in a surprising number of ways, including numbness, depression, anxiety, anger, or prolonged adolescence. Unprocessed grief influences how a TCK develops community upon repatriation, a daunting, difficult occurrence in a TCK’s development (Collier and Petty 41).Many people assume TCKs belong to their passport countries because of their parents’ connection to these countries. Their parents return to a plethora of friends, families, and memories formed in America. TCKs, however, repatriate to their passport countries with expectations of complete, immediate adaptation after leaving behind memories and friends that they may never return to. In desiring to repatriate well, some TCKs may silently observe and imitate the perceived actions of others. Other TCKs may angrily stand out from their passport cultures, clinging to the identity of their host countries that they never truly belonged to. These interactions amongst TCKs and their monocultural friends surface the isolating feeling of being misunderstood, which sprouts into the fear of never belonging to a community. Repatriation becomes a rude awakening to the reality that a TCK has nowhere to belong. It shakes a TCK’s identity in an unsurmountable manner as he wonders,

How much of my passport culture and/or my host culture(s) can I give up and still be true to who I am?" (Bloomberg and Brooks 296).

TCKs' Use of Social Media in a Technological Society

Distance does not seem as cumbersome or intimidating as it once was viewed due to the technological advances of the past several decades. The phone has been continuously adapted and now visually connects people on different sides of the planet. Because of their transient upbringing, TCKs utilize social media to connect with friends and family members in other countries, striving to sustain deep friendships as social media promises to break the barriers of distance and time. TCKs enjoy using social media to hear updates about their friends who are not in their physical vicinity (McCarthy). Social media platforms have also allowed TCKs to taste American culture before repatriation. TCKs, specifically students from, and alumni of, Moody Bible Institute (MBI), partake in socializing on Facebook and Instagram. However, when responding in interviews and to a personal questionnaire, older TCKs observed greater negative effects of their social media practices than younger TCKs who repatriated within the last three years (Hull). The negative consequences of social media on TCKs far outweigh the positive effects.Much research has been conducted on the dynamics of social media companies and social media’s influence on adolescents and communities (Iwamoto; Lanier; Medrut; Smith). Due to the outworking of these companies, users on social media are the products, not the consumers. In constructing individualized algorithms on users, companies collect data on anything someone clicks on, pauses over, or likes (Lanier 142-143). Social media feeds present advertisements specifically attuned to each algorithm as outside parties feast on and pay these companies for a distribution of personal data (Lanier 6, 24).For example, Instagram, currently owned by Meta, can be viewed as the fraternal twin of Facebook. Both platforms use algorithms to encourage longer viewership and advertisement placements to obtain money. Instagram, however, is a highly photo-oriented and followers-based platform. Meta bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and gained $20 billion in revenue in 2019 from the platform (Bellstrom 96). These platforms are not neutral entities (Clark). Companies format social media platforms to acquire money rather than foster healthy relational dynamics between humans. When TCKs maneuver these platforms to support long distance relationships and adaptation into passport countries, they unwittingly feed the stream of economic-fueled entertainment.

Social Media: The Deceiver

Social media provides an immediate input of personal information from others, promising relationships and community despite physical distance (Williams 376). For example, Instagram supplies its users with the system of stories, quick snippets of pictures or videos. However, while viewing updates about others’ lives through pictures and photos may make someone feel connected, these snapshots of life are not reality. Pictures, updates, and morsels of texts, heavily filtered and crafted, cannot sustain authentic, vulnerable relationships in TCKs’ lives. According to Dr. Andrew Schmutzer, an adult TCK and MBI professor,

Intimacy is not the same thing as connectivity” (Schmutzer).

Immediacy of information can never equate to intimacy just as propositional knowledge cannot compare to experiential knowledge in relationships.Although many young adults may experience the deceiving influence of social media, TCKs are prone to believe social media's deception. In moving back to America, TCKs who desire to grasp onto their past lives may drown themselves in overwhelming amounts of personal data from their previous homes. Some spend around six to ten hours each week on social media, mindlessly updating themselves on the activities of others in a desperate desire to escape (Hull). This over-abounding, never-ending propositional information from online friends keeps TCKs from spending time in true life-on-life relationships in America as they spend hours scrolling through updates. Humans were not formed with the transcendence to bond with hundreds of people at one given moment (McCarthy). TCKs have a plethora of long-distance relationships, and social media pledges to meet a TCK’s desperate need for belonging to community upon repatriation. However, this medium of communication falls short of its pledge, never satisfying the genuine social needs for vulnerable, physical relationships. A TCK’s community cannot be built around minuscule pixels that form a dimensional abstraction of their friends.

Social Media: The Taunter of Perfection

Using social media can exacerbate issues that TCKs regularly struggle with. A common thread among TCKs is the striving for perfection. Social media catechizes adolescents into thinking they must perform with perfection (Smith). The vast majority of TCKs are parented by those with high levels of academic degrees, and parents may expect their children to pursue higher education (Crossman 281-283). Along with this, TCKs place themselves under the pressures to perfectly represent their host countries upon repatriation. The toxicity of perfection harms the development of community. For a TCK to belong in a community, he must be fully known and must truly know his American friends. Social media strains TCKs as they pursue perfection and judge others based on impracticable images, videos, and words.This focus on perfection inhibits adolescents from being amateurs. When a TCK embeds himself back into America, he is an amateur in his understanding of the cultural expectations and values of America. Many TCKs already feel a drive to be experts, but social media only intensifies this issue by providing manufactured pictures of specialized experiences and talents (Smith). This aspect forces TCKs to adapt in unhealthy manners by mimicking the personas, talents, and attitudes they notice on social media. On the other hand, it can encourage TCKs to condemn the perceived American culture. For example, one TCK found herself judging Americans without developing deep relationships due to what appeared on her social media feeds. She transferred the unrealistic, piece-meal updates onto her friends without providing them a chance to commune with her (McCarthy).

Social Media: The Tempter to Compare

Social media tempts TCKs to fall into the pit of comparison, the enemy of community. In responding to a questionnaire on the effects of social media, every American TCK noted the issue of comparison. A TCK compares his life to other TCKs through social media, noticing how his friends thrive in his past home (Hull). Another TCK has an innate desire to travel and explore, and countless pictures of traveling appear on Instagram, which further intensifies the restlessness that she feels (McCarthy). On the other hand, a TCK can compare herself to the profiled experiences, lifestyles, and trained talents of her monocultural American friends. Instead of communing in contentment, she competes for approval because of the images and updated feeds of social media.TCKs cannot compartmentalize the influence of social media in their lives. No one can engage in any form of social media and remain untouched by its influences. Social media will undoubtedly impact the level of a TCK’s contentment in belonging to a community in America. Comparison propagates discontentment which inhibits community. If a TCK does not feel as though he can belong to a community, he will disengage and seek to find another place to belong.

Social Media: The Ally of Isolation

One too many goodbyes to worlds and friends welled up in her mind. In her logic, vulnerability was exposure to the agony of future goodbyes. She exercised herself in friendly, thoughtful conversations, but she never broke down the impenetrable borders around her pain. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling became her new communing and master of her time. The mindlessness and easiness of watching others succeed perfectly in their lives seemed safer than embarking into a community that might not accept her broken self.

Social media provides false images of reality, which may confuse a TCK’s understanding of his own identity while living in an American culture. TCKs often struggle with isolation, especially as they discover the dissimilar nature of their own multi-cultural experiences in contrast with those of their American peers. They excel in friendly talk, fake vulnerability, and yet quiver at any sign of intimate vulnerability. In the mind of a TCK, to be truly vulnerable with someone is to be eventually hurt when that person becomes ripped away, resulting in another painful goodbye (McCarthy). Social media can pressurize anyone into a place of isolation as one digests the perfect lives of others, comparing his worst experiences to their photogenic filtered pictures. However, this pressure is heightened for TCKs, who walk through bouts of identity confusion and isolation upon repatriation.As TCKs scroll through Instagram updates and post their own false selves through controlled and crafted profiles, their fear of not belonging will be further embedded into their souls. No one can fully belong to a community without being fully known. TCKs will be tempted to isolate themselves as they inhale fake reality, only presenting perfection rather than genuine vulnerability. This posture only fosters a plastic, fake community devoid of belonging. While social media destroys the boundaries of privacy, it cannot construct experiential, physical vulnerability. Authentic, painful vulnerability is the only victor over depressive isolation.

Leaving Home Behind

That one picture dragged her into that pit. That one picture taken of all her TCK friends in the city of her current residency, without her. Alone in the comforts of her dorm room, comparison and FOMO bashed their ugly heads together in her social media feeds, crushing her identity. Her past friends understood her pain and restlessness. Who would desire to seek fellowship with her when her own friends ignored her very self?

Social media appears to eliminate the pain of goodbyes, but it only removes the awareness of the need for closure, further lengthening unprocessed grief in a TCK’s life. While the process of grieving during repatriation is unnervingly painful, TCKs must embark on the confusing journey of releasing their past and living in the present (Crossman 176-177). TCKs cannot hold onto their past lives. Recognizing this truth is a vital step in the grieving process of transition. However, social media does not encourage this process. Instead, it protects TCKs from “stepping into the unknown” of a particular community (De Rosset). A TCK thinks that connection to friends back in one’s host country through social media is uncomplicated and beneficial, but this undeviating connection elongates the procedure of healthy closure until the TCK’s identity splinters when she recognizes that her friends have moved on without her.Upon reentry into America, TCKs must journey through five stages of grief before fully healing from leaving home behind (Crossman 170). Because social media can be a form of escapism due to its addictive nature, TCKs will utilize social media during any point of the five stages of the grieving process. Research supports the fact that social media aggravates issues of depression and anxiety, common feelings experienced by TCKs upon repatriation (Medrut; Crossman 177). Social media will further provoke feelings of unprocessed grief, anxiety, and depression in a TCK as he wrestles with leaving home behind. Rachel McCarthy, a TCK and TCK trainer and counselor residing in Colorado, comments that counselors must now decipher between anxiety in TCKs induced by actual trauma or anxiety produced by prolonged connectivity to technology and social media (McCarthy). If social media can exacerbate anxiety and depression because of its inherent, unrealistic expectations, TCKs should evaluate their participation in these platforms as they transition into a new and permanent residency in America, which can be a highly depressive and anxious period of time.McCarthy also notes that transitioning TCKs who grasp onto relationships through social media “are not processing loss because they are minimizing it” (McCarthy). While social media hinders TCKs from processing grief in some aspects of transitioning, it maximizes their grief in other areas of repatriation. For example, some TCKs deny the pain of physical distance between friends by constantly engaging with social media. Ignoring their need for corporal presence as embodied souls, they avoid grief that should be dealt with for healing (McCarthy). On the other hand, other TCKs mourn their identity forgotten in the eyes of their past friends (Hull). One TCK recalls scrolling through his social media, depressed in the puddle of FOMO as he recognized past friends gathering together in the same city without inviting him.When they feed off of social media for long-distance community, TCKs seek to belong to what they left behind, which is an easy escape from the pressures of wrestling with their identity upon repatriation. They endeavor to hold onto deep relationships that were never meant to be experienced digitally. At some point, long-distance relationships fracture unless TCKs reunite physically. Humans were never designed to sustain relationships through digital, inhuman ways. No one supports the relationship of spouses living in two different countries for the remainder of their marriage, fostering intimacy through digital means (Schmutzer). Yet church goers shrug their shoulders at young adults who develop intimate friendships over mechanical devices. People pardon TCKs who depend on long-distance relationships, assuming they satisfy social needs when they only numb them.In a dissertation focusing on missionary retention overseas, Elliot Stephens records that missionaries must disconnect from technology upon their arrival into a new country (229). If they ignore this tactic, technology and social media will become a crutch that never allows them to be fully at home in their new cultures (Stephens 229). Should not the same be said of TCKs repatriating into America, an unknown place full of straining, confusing cultural expectations? Without disengaging from social media and technology, TCKs cannot develop a sense of belonging in their new homes. If they desire to thrive in present and future communities, they must release their grip of the past.

Theological Ramifications: The First & Second Adam

Social media inhibits community by only providing connectivity, dealing TCKs a deceiving blow upon the importance of relationships in physical proximity. Faith and belonging can only survive in life-on-life community. The First and Second Adam provide ample support for the need to limit digital connectivity for genuine relationships. Adam’s poetic response to gazing on Eve were his first words recorded in the Scriptures. He did not exclaim, “Mind of my mind and picture of my picture.” His poetic words reverberate the importance of physicality in community. He burst out, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (English Standard Version, Gen. 2:23). The Lord recognized Adam’s loneliness and fashioned another physical human, providing fellowship for Adam. Social media twists the necessary components of community; it divorces the mind and emotions from the body in relationships. When TCKs drown themselves in social media, they disregard their designed need for physical companionship, neglecting the healthy, natural development of relationships.The Second Adam is Christ in the flesh, fully human and fully God. The Son of God is Christ Incarnate, and He did not ignore the fleshliness of His followers as He served the bread and wine in their presence (Matt. 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-23; John 1:14). He physically fellowshipped with them, not neglecting His mission. During that night, His command to mimic His love was preceded by the physical act of washing His disciples’ feet (John 13:14-17). According to Dr. De Rosset, professor at MBI, TCKs must ponder two questions:

What is it that you’re not doing when you’re doing social media? What would Jesus do?” (De Rosset).

While social media was created by the fingers of humanity, it is not human (Clark). Communing over digital devices dehumanizes communication and service, making them void of body language and intricate facial expressions that no camera can capture (Schmutzer). The Second Adam cherished His disciples who lived life with Him, serving them with physical touch and speaking to them as a present embodied soul.

Theological Ramifications: Vulnerability in Physicality

Social media belittles the pain of physical absence. Every form of long-distance communication must recognize the lamentable nature of corporal detachment. Instead of finding security in unsatisfying technological systems, people must grieve the lack of physical presence with those they love. Paul laments and longs for bodily fellowship with his brothers and sisters in Christ (Rom. 1:9-15; 15:22-23, 32; 2 Cor. 1:15-16; 1 Thess. 2:17-19; 1 Tim. 3:14-15; 2 Tim. 1:4; 4:9). The letter of 2 John closes with the statement,

Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (2 John 1:12).

Incomplete joy distributed by social media should not master the time of TCKs formed for intimacy. TCKs trade wholesome bonding for unsatisfying shallowness when they open themselves to social media’s catechism.God’s image bearers thrive in intimacy; we are crafted to crave embodied affection (Rom. 12:9-10). However, social media generates isolation, an experience antithetical to humans designed for community. It indoctrinates TCKs into the values of American culture, begging them to internalize beliefs of performance and comparison upon repatriation. It suffocates the virtue of vulnerability as TCKs pick and choose what they deem as “Instagram-worthy.” It encourages TCKs to become masters of performance rather than vital members of the Body growing into the image of Christ (Rom. 12:4-8; Eph. 4:15). TCKs, like other humans, are formidably weak in times of pain. They should not attend to the whispers of cultural lies in the safety of their own homes even if social media links them to the updates of others (Rom. 12:2). Vulnerability and intimacy cannot survive in the presence of comparison, which is bred in the meeting of social media with the fallenness of humanity. Saints are commanded to weep and rejoice together, and invulnerability deprives the Body of cultivating these godly characteristics (Rom. 12:15).

How Do We Then Live?

More than a toy or tool to be played with, social media catechizes against the stream of relationships. Dr. Clark, professor in theology at MBI, reveals an obvious warning on social media:

We can’t be naïve about it. We tend to be naïve. We tend to think and say that things are neutral, and it’s just how you use it. But things aren’t neutral. Your heart is not neutral. This world is not neutral” (Clark).

Families of TCKs must be aware of social media’s effects when they return to America. Social media, full of cultural opinions and expectations, infiltrates the identity and community formation of TCKs who are emotionally taxed by repatriation. It is an addictive taskmaster, and this trait can be clearly seen when we record the amount of time spent on these platforms. TCKs need to realize that placing down their phones full of social media apps will benefit them emotionally as they invest in others who surround them physically.While social media can be helpful for tactical purposes by occasionally connecting friends, it cannot maintain intimate friendships. Physical proximity begets intimacy. A TCK must forego any form of social media to develop physical community upon repatriation. TCKs cannot belong in their new homes if their minds and eyes constantly wander to their past homes. Ideally, TCKs should disconnect from all forms of social media during the first couple of months in America. This will force them to burrow down roots in their new communities.However, relationships cannot grow between TCKs and monocultural Americans if these interactions are not reciprocated. A TCK cannot grow roots in rocky, stiff soil. TCKs will clam up if their peers and mentors obliviously ignore their stories. Trust fosters community, and both TCKs and their monocultural friends must entrust themselves to each other. For healthy repatriation, TCKs need to engage in their new contexts. While detachment from social media can be painful, it can protect TCKs from greater emotional angst in the future. Disconnecting will encourage TCKs to depend on their churches and families for spiritual enrichment and bonding, rather than running to friends who are unable to weep or laugh with them in their physical proximity.Christians believe the falsehood that we can only create intimacy with those who are similar to us. When a TCK returns to America, he may plan to foster better relationships with TCKs, who understand him, over the digital means of social media. However, this intention will drive him away from others, causing him to miss out on the bodies walking past him in church or the faces staring at him across the family dinner table. He will miss the present by living in the past. A TCK must leave his last home behind instead of numbing his pain by relationally surviving through the crutch of social media, destroying his belonging in the present.

How should we then live?

Churches, welcome and search for the invisibly isolated TCKs who beg for intimacy and yet paradoxically act in impenetrability and perceived vulnerability.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, foster intimacy devoid of the inhuman, technological temptations and deceptions found in social media.

My fellow Third Culture Kids, place down your phones. Stop scrolling. Commune in humane physicality in the image of Christ Incarnate.

Works Cited

Bellstrom, Kristen. “Confessions of an Instagram Addict.” Fortune Five Hundred, June/July 2020, pp. 95-98.The Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2001.Bloomberg, Janet R. and David F. Brooks, editors. Fitted Pieces: A Guide for Parents Educating Children Overseas. SHARE Education Services, 2001, pp. 295-316.Clark, John. Personal interview. 1 Nov. 2021.Collier, Amy and Karen Petty. “Characteristics and Repatriation Issues of Third Culture Kids: A Review of Literature.” The Journal of College Orientation and Transition, vol. 14, no. 1, Fall 2006, pp. 39-46.Crossman, Tanya. Misunderstood: The Impact of Growing Up Overseas in the 21st Century. Summertime Publishing, 2016.De Rosset, Rosalie. Personal interview. 23 Oct. 2021.Habeeb, Hiba, and Abdalla A. R. M. Hamid. “Exploring the Relationship between Identity Orientation and Symptoms of Depression among Third Culture Kids college students.” International Journal of Instruction, vol. 14, no. 3, July 2021, pp. 1000-1010.Hull, Annelise. “TCKs and Social Media.” Questionnaire, Oct. 2021.Iwamoto, Darren and Hans Chun. “The Emotional Impact of Social Media in Higher Education.” International Journal of Higher Education, vol. 9, no. 2, Sciedu Press, pp. 239-247.Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Kindle, Henry Holt and Company, 2018.McCarthy, Rachel. Personal interview. 29 Oct. 2021.Medrut, Flavia-Petronela. “The Impact of Social Media Use on Adolescent Mental Health – Depression and Anxiety: A Review.” Social Work Review, no. 2, April 2021, pp. 163-172.Schmutzer, Andrew. Personal interview. 29 Oct. 2021.Smith, James K.A. “Social Media as Ritual: Alternative Liturgy.” Christian Century, March 2013, pp. 30-33.Stephens, Elliot. “Factors Contributing to Longevity in Missionary Service: A Self-Report Study from an Evangelical Mission Agency.” July 2018. Capital Bible Seminary, PhD Dissertation.Williams, Myron. “Community, Discipleship, and Social Media.” Christian Education Journal, series 3, vol. 12, no. 2, 2015, pp. 375-383.Graphic Designed by Joyce Li