Guest Heh: The Next Generation of Lent

So, here we are, in the middle of the Lenten Season, when most people give up sweets, video games, or other things. So, I have to ask, what do the kids these days give up for Lent? Social networking sites. I think that's just fine. The theological underpinnings for Lenten denial is to be more mindful of one's faith, and one way to remind oneself of God, and your neighbors, is to deny that little bit of selfishness we all have, whatever that may be.

I don't agree with the one girl in the story who gave up MySpace and started using Facebook instead, because that defeats the purpose. What's wrong with email? I remember, back in college, I gave up web browsing for Lent and limited myself to email. But that was at a time when only porn and entertainment was online. E-commerce was not reliable, and news sites were very pale versions of the newspapers. These days, almost everything is done from your web browser of choice, one's entire workday may be spent online using a web browser (I mean for your job, not playing Bejeweled!), so the things one can sacrifice technologically also changes. Oh, and for the record, for what I gave up for Lent, no comment.