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.

Read a January 2010 column on tweeting at SpiritualityandPractice.com, titled “25 Reasons Why Twitter Is Spiritual.”

Read a column by Henry G. Brinton, pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia, about social networking’s effect on religion. The column appeared June 20, 2010, in USA Today.

Read a June 24, 2010, Religion News Service article (on HuffingtonPost.com) about debates over how Muslims use Facebook.

An Aug. 27, 2010, Belief Blog post at CNN.com by religion scholar Stephen Prothero examines the practice of tweeting the Bible 140 characters at a time.

Read a July 1, 2010, article at FastCompany.com on research indicating that social networking releases chemicals in the brain that make us feel pleasure, almost like falling in love.