Steven Waldman co-founded and served as editor-in-chief of Beliefnet before becoming senior adviser to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He is the author of Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty.

Read a June 30, 2007, New York Times story about the intersection of social networking sites and religion.

Read a March 4, 2009, Personal Tech column from The New York Times on dealing with the anxiety created by the deluge of emails.

An October 2009 Religion News Service story, posted at Crosswalk.com, discusses the issuing of a “digital fast,” and it includes links to columns by Christian leaders discussing the pros and cons of social networking.

Observing a “fast” from Facebook and Twitter and even email is becoming a popular spiritual practice — at Lent, for example — as shown by this National Public Radio story from March 2009.

Observing a “fast” from Facebook and Twitter and even email is becoming a popular spiritual practice — at Lent, for example — as shown by this Star-Ledger story from March 2009.

In his message for the Catholic Church’s World Communications Day of 2009, Pope Benedict XVI also cautioned that if “virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction while also disrupting the patterns of rest, silence, and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development.”

Read an April 14, 2009, story at CNN.com about studies warning that rapid-fire news and constant updating via social networking tools such as Twitter “could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering.”

Read an Oct 10, 2009, Houston Chronicle article about pastors encouraging their congregations to tweet during sermons.