During Lent, the Drohobych community has been holding traditional spiritual conversations with young people and students on religious topics and issues of concern to young Drohobych residents every Tuesday for the second year in a row.
On April 23, the spiritual conversations were held in the Ivan Franko People’s House.
The topic discussed this time was “the influence of social networks on the formation of the personality of modern youth.” Father Taras Pletenya from the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Stebnyk) spoke to the teenagers about this issue.
The discussion of this topic was of great interest to young people, as social media has become an integral part of their daily lives and leisure time. Father Taras Pletenya tried to convey to the youth that excessive use of social media has a negative impact on their mental health. As a result, the real world is often replaced by the virtual world.
The priest also gave many real-life examples of the impact of Internet content on young people and told instructive parables. The spiritual director emphasized that each person is unique, so one should not compare oneself with others. He also added that social media is not only a danger to the teenage psyche. There are many positive benefits of social media. It’s about self-expression, keeping in touch with peers, and learning something new. However, everything should be dosed and in moderation.
According to Lesia Tatarska, head of the Department of Culture and Arts, initiator of the Spiritual Conversations during Lent, the purpose of weekly meetings with young people is to help students overcome certain apathy, fear, rejection of themselves at a certain age, and most importantly to build their lives on algorithms of healthy thinking, patriotism, and spiritual tasks.
We would like to add that the initiative of Spiritual conversations was implemented last year, also in the pre-Easter period. Such meetings were initiated by the Department of Culture and Tourism Development together with the Department of Education and the Department of Family and Youth of the City Council in cooperation with the Sambir-Drohobych Diocese of the UGCC. The coordinator of the Spiritual conversations is the host Ulyana Voyat.