They live in a convent, pray for hours a day and rack up millions of views on TikTok. The “Media Nuns” figured out something the rest of us haven’t.

August 16, 2026

By Kim Komando

Picture America’s most chronically online job: making TikToks for a living. Now picture who’s behind the camera. A Catholic sister in a full habit, filming between prayers in a Boston convent.

Meet the Daughters of St. Paul, aka the Media Nuns. Sister Bethany has more than 198,000 TikTok followers. One video of the sisters answering rapid-fire questions pulled 3.4 million views. 

They dance, they lip-sync, they answer the questions everyone’s afraid to ask a nun. The comments are full of people who haven’t set foot in a church in years.

Here’s the twist. This isn’t a modern stunt.

The order was founded in 1915 with one mission: Spread the message using the fastest media of the age. In 1915, that meant printing presses. Then radio. Then paperbacks and bookstores. Today, it means a ring light and a trending sound. They didn’t cave to the algorithm. They’ve been waiting for it for a hundred years. The habit is the same. Only the microphone changed.

And it’s bigger than one order. Sister Monica Clare, who leads an Episcopal community in New Jersey, has 234,000 followers of her own. Her reasoning stops you cold: “If we’re hidden, we’re going to die out.”

☕ Meanwhile, the monks went into e-commerce

Deep in the Wyoming mountains, Carmelite monks fund their monastery by roasting Mystic Monk Coffee. You can order it online to be shipped to your door. Sites like Monastery Greetings are basically Amazon for the abbey set: fruitcake from Missouri monks, caramels from Trappistine nuns, soaps, honey, hot sauce. 

Hours of silence in the chapel. A checkout cart in the cloud. The candle business moved online, and nobody upstairs seems to mind. Silent prayer, loud espresso machine. Somebody’s up early either way.

💡 The part I love

These are the most intentional tech users I’ve ever seen. The sisters post, then put the phone down for hours of prayer, meals together, actual silence. The tech serves the mission, never the other way around. No doomscrolling. No checking likes at dinner.

Most of us let our phones decide what we care about. These devoted men and women found the answer to the question we’re all fumbling with: how to live in the feed without letting the feed live in you. And they get engagement rates most influencers would pray for. 

🎯 Send this to someone who swears social media rots your soul. Exceptions exist.