[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Thank you for being here tonight. Appreciate it.
So tonight's topic is interesting one to me, it's talking about media and technology and discernment. So interesting topic, you know, And I think we're all aware that media and things like that present challenges that weren't around even probably when you were growing up. I mean, things have changed since then, even even though you probably had devices at that time. A lot of us did.
But I think it's important to, as parents to equip ourselves with wisdom from the Bible, understanding of what's going on, and hopefully strategies that can help us manage the technology in our home. So I'll start out by saying that a lot of what I say tonight is information I got from technology, ironically. But, and I am not anti tech technology by any stretch of the imagination. I use it all the time. I think we all do. It is a, it's like so many other things. It is a tool. It can be used for good or for bad. Right.
But there's a lot of information presented at night. So if, if you, if it, if there's something that interests you or whatever, I encourage you to go dig into it yourself and draw your own conclusions, do your own research. I think that's healthy to understand what's actually out there because there is a lot of information out there and of course you have to be careful, but it's good to check in on that.
So I started out with this headline. This was in the New York Times, August 18th of this year. It said, Silicon Valley executives are tech fans, just not for their own kids.
And the subtitle was At Home Tech executives Strictly enforce moderation, Restraint and even exalt boredom. And that kind of seems counterintuitive, right? But if you go look, it's not a lot of them. A surprising amount of Them limit their kids tech use and it's pretty obvious that they know what's going on, they know the algorithms, they know how it's designed to engage.
The different types of software and social media are designed to cook you and pull you in and not let you put that phone down. So they want to shield their own households from these things, which I thought was ironic.
I did a tech search on Google and you can find a bunch of different executives and people in the tech industry that basically in their home life appear to have different values than the products that are out there.
This one struck me specifically. The YouTube co founder restricts his children from consuming short form digital content to protect their attention spans. I'm like, YouTube restricts, you know, it doesn't seem right, but there are a bunch of them and a lot of these are very well known people.
And you may have heard some of this. I don't know, it may be surprised to you, or it may be like, yep, I've heard that before. But I think we need to be aware that these products are out there. They're designed with a specific purpose and that's to promote the product.
You know, it's not designed to help your children typically, or us either. So just be aware of that.
You know, in my opinion, we've invented this incredible technology and like I said, it's a tool like so many other tools. And then we've turned it loose in the wild on the entire world without fully understanding its consequences, especially on young people. And I think that's cause for concern.
I have a quote there from a guy named Zach Kass. He's the former head of Go to Market, which I assume is the marketing terminology for OpenAI. He doesn't work there anymore, but he compares mobile devices to highly addictive substances like nicotine and even heroin, because it hooks you and it pulls you in and it's hard to put down, you know, So I mean, how many of us think maybe we're on our phones too much? And I'll raise my hand first because I am, because it's hard not to. Right?
So what would you say is the biggest digital distraction in your home right now? And it could be more than just phones, obviously. But you know, a lot of this is probably not news to you. You've probably seen it and you're aware of it. But I think being aware of it is important. And I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about it and then I want to spend hopefully the bulk of the time talking about what are some practical things we can do to help in our.
In our families.
So I'd heard this, that there's been a significant increase in teen depression rates, and it appears to coincide with smartphone adoption. So on the chart here, I don't know if you can read the little numbers or not, but this scale is 0 to 100% and the smartphone adoption percentage. So you can see back in 2004, it's almost zero.
About 2007, it's is when the first iPhone came out.
So it starts to pick up and all of a sudden it starts taking off. Right? And now smartphone adoption is about 95%. It's pretty much plateaued there. But about that same time, the major depressive episode rates that were reported among teens went from 8 to 9% to just. It just started climbing. And you can see about between 2020 and 2021, there's a really big peak. And I think we probably all know what that is. That's Covid. Right?
But it went up to 20% or so, and now it's kind of come down a little bit, but it seems to be leveling off about 15%. So it's essentially double what it was just a few years ago, which is concerning now. Is that a direct correlation? I'll let you decide, but just think about that and see what it might mean.
So, you know, there's been a lot. There's been a lot of pushback when people started to recognize this. You may have heard of this book by Jonathan Haidt. I haven't read the book, but it was a New York Times bestseller. And his premise was that basically with the spread of smartphones, social media, and things like that, combined with another thing that we're not necessarily going to talk about today, and that's increasingly protecting our children from physical risk. He says that may be a cause of the rise in mental illness. Now you can look into that and decide what you think. It seems to make a lot of sense, and it's gotten a lot of discussion going, I think, which is probably good.
But basically, he says that giving kids unlimited, unsupervised access to virtual worlds all the time, combined with restricting their access to physical risk, not having places to play, not doing activities that maybe their parents or grandparents grew up doing outside, that's stunting their independent growth, and that may be a cause of some of these problems.
I'll throw that out there. You can look into that, draw your own conclusions.
So, you know, like I say, people are starting to wake up finally. It's kind of like I'll Compare it to tobacco. It took many years for us to figure out that maybe this stuff isn't so good for us, you know, and now things have changed in the past few decades, but governments are starting to step in. You've probably seen some of this in the news where Australia has a nationwide ban on social media for kids under 16.
And there was this recent settlement with Meta, you know, who runs Facebook, where they're going to pay between 17 and 18 billion dollars. They admitted no wrongdoing, but basically a jury or the judge found them guilty of putting products out there that are not healthy for kids, you know, to put it simply.
Also, young people are starting to wake up to this, too.
They're increasingly pushed back, pushing back against excessive social media and consuming it due to burnout, mental health, strain, and a sense of being trapped by peer norms. And that's meaning, hey, look, you got to look this way, you got to do this stuff, all that.
They're kind of pushing back against that, which I think is a good thing.
And there's also a growing national consensus that maybe giving every kid a laptop at a very early age is not the best way to learn, too. You know, that was the big thing a few years back, and they're starting to realize that maybe we were a little hasty there.
So, you know, obviously you're not going to find a lot of Bible verses that directly apply to social media and media, screen time, gaming, all that kind of stuff. But. But there are a couple that we ought to keep in mind here. Proverbs 25:16. Have you found, honey, eat only what you need, that you not have it in excess and vomit it. So, you know, a good thing is good, but in excess it's not so good, right?
First Corinthians 6:12. Paul says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.
And that, to me, is a strong verse. You know, hey, just because I can do it doesn't mean I should do it, right? And is it mastering me? You know, is it consuming me and taking too much of my time?
So for our young people, particularly our teenagers, they need skills, right? They don't just need policies, especially. I mean, government policies may help, but that's not the real answer, right?
Because they're eventually going to enter a world where there won't be any phone Bans. They'll turn 17 in Australia and they can get on social media. So we've got to equip them to be able to deal with that on their own. Right? And that's the whole point of this.
So what do we do? And this is where I want to try to spend the rest of the time here.
I've got a few things here. I wish there was a magic prescription that says, well, if you do this, this and this and this, everything's going to work out great, right? Just doesn't happen.
But I think there's some things we can do to help give a much better probability of successful outcomes with our kids when it comes to screen usage and things like that.
So let's start talking about these. The first one is kind of, first of all, you got to be aware of it. It always makes me sad when I'm at a Walmart or Home Depot or whatever and I see somebody, an adult pushing a buggy and there's like a one year old there with a phone, you know, watching videos, playing games. It is a great babysitter, right? I mean, it's perfect. The kid's not screaming. It seems like a really smart idea. But it just makes me sad because I don't think people, some people at least realize that there are dangers in too much screen time. I'm not saying no screen time for anybody ever, okay? Because I've got one right here in my pocket and I'm looking at one. We're all looking at this one.
But it's like so many things. We've got to be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Our adversary, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion and he's looking for somebody to devour and he's going to use every, every single tool out there that he can.
You know, the Internet's kind of like this giant pipe, right? It's connected to practically every bit of information you could ever want almost.
So it is really good in so many ways. But in other ways, it can just be an absolute sewage pipe, right? I mean, stuff can come into your household and into your child's hands and their eyes as they're looking at it that you just don't want, right? And nobody wants. And that's Satan out there trying to get into our hearts and take a hold of us and pull us away from God.
So I've listed three things at the bottom here, and we'll talk about each one of these a little more.
First is developmental and cognitive delays. Then there's physical health concerns, and then there's social and emotional effects.
So let's talk a little bit about developmental and cognitive delays. And this is key Specifically, you know, to. It starts with small children, okay.
The more they watch screens, the more challenges they have with language acquisition. So they have less face to face talk. They're looking at a screen, they're not talking with a person and that slows down their vocabulary growth and it affects attention span. Right.
The fast paced digital content just, it can make it harder for young children to focus during slower real world activities, you know, And I saw this firsthand.
I'm going to tell on us, okay? Because we kept our grandkids last few days over the weekend and we didn't have a TV on the whole time except once. Okay. So Tammy cut.
Did a couple of haircuts for a couple of them. And that screen is a wonderful tool, right? We found this awesome video. It was. They love Brio trains. It was Brio trains mixed in with real trains. Just one Brio train after another. And then there's a real train and then there's, I mean it was just non stop and it was like, so Tammy, how did Ted do still, if he's ever been.
It was so effective. And we're like, oh, this is so good. But we can't do this very often, you know, and we don't, we don't. But their attention span, if that's what they see, is just non stop. Go, go, go, go, go. What happens when that stops? You know, suddenly they're looking around, they're bored, they need something else to do. Right?
So anyway, sorry, I told Donna, sorry Jeffrey and Deborah ruining your kids.
So, okay, the other thing I'll mention is problem solving. So if you're just sitting there passively viewing stuff all the time, you're not really exercising the parts of your brain that you do when you're out there doing things with your hands, you know, so there's downside there too. So more daily screen time is significantly associated with increased behavioral problems and weaker vocabulary skills. So it affects their behavior too. And I don't know, you may have seen it yourself.
So let's talk about physical health.
We have a problem with obesity in our society and around the world actually now.
So obviously sitting in front of screen is generally sedentary, you know, unless you're on a peloton or something like that.
So it replaces outdoor play and you know, it's real easy to just snack and eat a lot. So it, especially with older kids, it's not such a good thing from an obesity standpoint. It disrupts your sleep. You're probably aware of blue light and how that affects your natural Melatonin production that helps you go to sleep and all that. So it's not a good thing from that respect, you know. And if you look at that little block on the side there, this one's this. This struck me. Over half of us teenagers use their cell phones for an hour or more between 10pm and 6am on school nights. And I'm like, what? That's crazy. I don't know how they get this data. Well, I think they convinced some kids to put trackers on their phone. That's how they got it.
But that's scary. That's disrupting their sleep habit. And everybody needs sleep, especially young people.
And then you've got, hey, if you're sitting there looking at this all the time, that creates problems too.
There are also social and emotional effects. And in fact, in 2023, the US Surgeon General put out a warning, just like they put out on nicotine and things like that, that social media usage is an urgent public health issue. So that's pretty serious when the government wakes up and takes notice and says, we got a problem here.
And the reason they did is because overuse correlates with behavioral issues. So kids are not able to regulate their emotions as much. They have more tantrums, they have increased frustration.
And then there's the social skill loss where they have less practice reading facial expressions. They're looking at screens, not looking at real people, and they're communicating through a keyboard or something like that, as opposed to talking face to face, which is not a good thing.
You know, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on this, but this has to do with schools. And we kind of alluded to it earlier. The pandemic accelerated the push for laptops and tablets in school rooms. But people are realizing that, hey, screens are really inferior in a lot of ways to printed text, because reading something on a printed page and then writing it with a pencil or pen, it results in significantly higher comprehension and retention rates than if you do it on a screen. You know, and that, I think that's really true.
And of course, kids can, if they have a device, they can claim they're doing their homework. But do you really know? I mean, you don't. You know, they could be browsing the Internet or doing something else.
And I didn't really put a lot about AI in the presentation here, but that's something that we're all going to have to be aware of. It's like everything else is neither good nor bad, but it can be used very bad ways. And it can have a lot of negative problems if we're not careful. And schools are kind of waking up to the dangers of AI as well, and how you can write a nice term paper in AI and get an A, but are you really learning anything?
Okay, number two, then, is something we do as parents. It set the example. Right.
You know, you mentioned older people and the effects of phone usage on them. We've got to start with ourselves if we want our kids to have healthy screen habits.
Honestly, evaluate your screen usage in front of your children and even away from your children. Right, because they're always watching. They will see you. They know what's going on.
Are you setting the right example by what you're watching? And this may be more on the television, perhaps, or something like that.
And also, are you setting the right example by the amount of time you spend in front of that screen, too?
I think of Psalms 101:3, where David said, I will set no worthless thing before my eyes. That's such a. A powerful thought there that I think it's great for all of us. And if you look at that word worthless in Hebrew, it's belial, which sounds kind of familiar, right? It means basically without profit, worthlessness, and by extension, it's tied with destruction and wickedness, and it later became associated with the devil, Belial. Right?
So it's not good.
So David's saying, I'm not going to put anything like that in front of my eyes. And that's really where it starts. We've got to decide. You know, I'm not going to watch that, right?
So be aware of what you're inviting into your home through screens, and don't let the world exercise excessive influence in your home.
Third thing here is teach your kids to filter the media using a couple of lenses. And I think this is a real good thought here. So the first One is Philippians 4:8, and we'll call it the Quality Filter.
So the verse says, finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there's any excellence, and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. And some versions say, think on these things.
So when we're looking at something ourselves or as a family, let's think about this is what I'm looking at. Does it pass this filter? Is it good, wholesome, lovely, excellent, worthy of praise?
If it's not, think about it very carefully before you start watching it and before you let your children watch it. Okay?
So the second filter is if you pass through that one, the time filter.
Ephesians 5, 15, 16 says, Therefore be careful how you walk.
Not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So, yeah, just because we can do it doesn't mean that we should spend that much time. You know, I like to read the news. You know, it's really easy just to sit there and almost doom scrolling on news, right? Which is not good because generally the news is not. It's not positive in a lot of times, you know, but it's like, oh man, I want to know what's going on. You know, I want to know what's going on with young people and social media and how screens are affecting them and all that, among other things.
And I can spend too much time on that, right? It's not a good thing. So I would think about this.
When you decide to watch something at home or when you decide to pick up your phone and you've got a free moment, and I think if you're like me, you find it's harder and harder to just stop doing things and not reach for that phone, right? It's like, oh, I got a second, let me check this. You know, it's really easy to do. Is that the best thing? Does that pass these filters? Is it the. Is it good stuff you're looking at? And even if it is, is this really where you want to trade this, this much of your life for this particular thing you're looking at on the screen?
So it requires us to be intentional, right?
And yeah, it may make us a little bit different from society.
I know you're familiar with this verse in Romans 12, 2, don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So we're not like the world, we're different and we've got to be that way. And we've got to ask our or tell our kids, you know, it's like, okay, this came on, but hey, those are not good words. We're not going to watch this. I'm not going to watch this. And this is why, because we don't do that. It doesn't match our values and things like that.
Okay, number four, limit screen time. So this is hard, right?
A good suggestion is to avoid background TV because it's really easy to just turn that TV on, just let it run, right?
So turn it off if nobody's actually watching it to encourage more talking and interaction so it's not there trying to distract you.
Number Two, keep your meals screen free. And I would highly recommend this. You know, don't use your phones or tablets during meal time. It always makes me sad when I go to a restaurant and I see a family of four and they're all sitting there facing each other with their head down on their screen, you know, not saying a word. It's like maybe there's a legitimate reason why they need to do that, but it's just kind of sad because they're missing out.
You know, you're trading real life experiences for a screen, right? And what's behind that screen? So just make that a policy that you're not going to do that.
We've kind of talked about this a little bit. Screens are not a real good, they're a great pacifier, but don't use it as a pacifier to calm tantrums and do things like that. And it's really easy to use them as a babysitter. But be careful with that, you know, and I'll say I was guilty, I confessed. Right?
And I'm not saying that all screen usage is no good. And we'll talk about that a little bit in the next slide. But just be aware. And it's not easy being a parent. It requires you to, it requires time. You don't always get to push the easy button. Sometimes it's hard, Sometimes it's like David said, you know, the kids are going at it in the next room and they need you to get up and go in there and settle the argument as opposed to just hollering at them and saying stop it. So it takes effort, it's hard to do. But as parents we're called to do that and it pays dividends down the road. I'm convinced the last one is talking about protecting sleep. So turn the screens off 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime. That of course reduces the blue light.
And keep devices out of bedrooms. I think that's a great idea. So you know, we saw that statistic on the teens that between midnight and 6am so many of them were on there spending an hour more on their phones.
If your phone is on the kitchen counter or in your parents bedroom or whatever, you're not going to be able to do that. And I think that's a really good thing. You need to have limits on that for a lot of reasons, but also to protect healthy sleep.
So, you know, I didn't mention this with this first one, but studies have shown that increased exposure to background television can have adverse effects on children's language usage.
Executive Functioning and the cognition in children. So just sitting there in front of the TV all the time, it's not the healthiest thing.
I put this chart in here. I almost didn't put it in here. But this is what the US National Institute of Health recommends for screen limit times. And I am not saying this is what you should or shouldn't do. Okay. This is just for information, but I present this to say that you'll notice before ages three, what do they recommend?
Zero.
Okay.
And then when you get to ages three to seven, they're saying, no more than a half to one hour a day. And a lot of people, people will say, well, if you at this age, especially if you have a screen on with your kid, you need to be in there watching it with them. Okay?
Don't just turn them loose. So that's what the National Institutes of Health recommends. And you can see the exposure. And you can look for ages 16 plus, no more than two hours a day. The average teen looks at a screen between seven and eight and a half hours a day. You know, so I put throw this out here not to say this is what I recommend, because honestly, I recommend a whole lot less than this if it was up to me.
But it's just to make you aware that there's a problem here with people watching or looking at screens too much. And this screen usage is multiple things. It's computers, it's television primarily, it's phones, you know, and phone uses varies a little bit depending on if you're a guy or a girl, as far as whether you're more gaming or more on social media and things like that. But it's really interesting to look into this and see how it affects kids.
Okay, Fifth point was prioritize and encourage alternatives. And Ethan, you kind of alluded to this, so you can't just say, okay, I'm taking your phone away. Okay, we're not going to watch this screen anymore and expect a good outcome. Right. They have to be given something else to do. We can't just take the screens away. We've got to encourage alternatives and give them opportunities.
And this kind of goes back to that anxious generation book where he said, yes, screen usage is a problem, but there's also a problem in that kids are not out there playing. They're inside in front of a screen, they're not outside.
So smartphones, video games and streaming services, they're really engaging and they're effortless, and they're an alternative to outdoor play. That's easy. So that's what Kids do a lot these days. Fewer kids can swim and ride a bike per capita than 20 years ago, which I thought was really sad. I'm like, really? That's just sad.
So children and teens are less independent now, so they're less likely to roam the neighborhood. And I'm not saying roam in the neighborhood unsupervised is a good thing, but that just doesn't happen as much anymore. They don't play as much independently, and they're less likely to want to get a driver's license and drive and go out with their friends, you know, because, hey, I've got them right here in my pocket. I don't need to do that.
So we got to make room for things like reading physical books. Big fan of physical books. Because, you know, it's much better, I think, than trying to read it on a screen. And I have a Kindle and I read books on there.
But I think for kids, it's really good to give them books and don't limit their reading. I mean, reading is great. And read to your kids, okay? Read to your kids every day if you can, even when they get older. I remember reading to my kids, we graduated up to chapter books and we would just read a chapter a night or something like that, you know, and it was a good time.
I say that. I don't know, Jeffrey might have a different opinion, but it was a good time to sit as a family together and read a book or read a little bit of a book every day and let them have the freedom to do unstructured play. I mean, there's a temptation to.
Okay, I'm going to take the phone away, but I'm going to do this with you because I don't think you can play by yourself. And eventually your kids need to learn to play, play by themselves. So they need to have those opportunities and give them creative building toys or materials. If you want something to do on the first Saturday morning of every month, take them to Home Depot and you can make a free.
It's not a craft, but a project, okay? They have really cool stuff. It's great. You go in there, they give you everything you need. Paint, screwdrivers, hammers, nails. The project, and it's free. You know, it's a really good thing. I would recommend things like that. Give them building toys and materials where they can build things.
Recognize that there are benefits to short periods of boredom. That sounds strange, right?
It fosters creativity.
It promotes problem solving skills. They have to figure it out. It builds independence and it encourages self Reflection, because they're not being entertained. They're having to think on their own. So think about that. There's an interesting. I read an interesting blog post by Bill Gates about his childhood experiences, and it talks about how when he was a kid, he was out there in the neighborhood doing stuff. He wasn't this nerd in front of a computer or anything like that. Right.
And he credits that with the skills he needed to be successful later on in life.
Okay, and the last one, which is a really challenging one for parents of teenagers, is delay smartphone ownership until absolutely necessary. Okay. So you want to give your children time to build that confidence, resilience, self control, relationships without the constant influence of a screen. Okay. So it's probably going to be a total battle. But somebody said, yeah, it was a total battle, but it was worth it. All right, and I'll say again, Romans 12:2. We are different from the world. We don't want to be conformed to the world.
Our kids may have to not be the ones that have all the latest phones and things like that, but that's okay because we have our own values and we're trying to live a different way in life as God's children because we're going down that straight path, not the wide path.
So there's alternatives out there, like a dumb phone, you know, a flip phone, something like that. There's smart watches and there's even starter smartphones. I didn't know a lot about this till I did a little digging, but there's phones that you can get when your kids are old enough and you feel like, hey, they've got to have a phone because they're driving or whatever. But there are things out there that are alternatives on that, so.
Well, thanks for your time and attention. Next week, Keith has our final lesson, and then the last week of the quarter, we'll talk about your questions, which I hope you please put some in.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Put some in. Don't be bashful. Thank you so much for coming.
