12 tips for parents of the younger generation I
When we talk about teens and screens, we have to go to the app, so let me give you twelve practical suggestions to trigger the discussions you already have in your churches and at home.
- Social media has a dilemma.
- Journalist Nancy Jo Sales has written a fascinating (and terrifying) book titled: American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers.
- In this book.
- She recounts a conversation when a teenage girl told her.
- “Social media destroys our lives.
- “Then Sales asked.
- “Then why don’t you log out?”The teenager replied.
- “Why wouldn’t we have a life then?(Sales.
- 18).
- Social media is the place where teens are looking for life.
- And that’s what it’s costing them.
- We need to help our children see this paradox.
- Social media.
- Used recklessly.
- Will cost you something valuable.
After introducing your child to a smartphone connected to mobile devices, with text messages and apps like Instagram and Snapchat, parental control is virtually useless. I’ll give an example of how this happens:
Your children may be exposed to nude and sexual conversations, and you may never know it. Again, in her book, Sales investigates the disturbing phenomenon of girls receiving unsolicited nudity from boys in text messages, often as a first step in showing interest. And boys often ask girls for nudes in return. Obviously, we must alert our children to this before it happens. But there is practically no parental filter that prevents a nude from reaching your child’s smartphone via SMS or Snapchat, even if your child doesn’t AND 47% of teens use Snapchat, an application for sending and receiving images and “disposable selfies”. In the age of the smartphone, texting with sexual content (? Sexting?)? Normal? In adolescents. They are powerful devices. Resist the pressure to give your child one and don’t leave old cell phones lying around.
In our house, the default is to turn off the wifi until necessary. Many routers allow you to suspend service at home. I was impressed with a device called “The Circle”, which is located next to our router at home, and it gives me the power to turn off the wifi completely or on a specific device, depending on the content filters, ratings, time limits and bedtime. Interrupts a Wi-Fi connection between the router and the device or computer. Instead of setting up parental controls on each device, you can control the flow of data for each device. Can I pause Wi-Fi at home with my phone?our 2 smart TVs, 3 computers, iPods, iPads?all disconnected from wi-fi at the push of a button. When a child in our house wants to use the computer, he makes a request and explains why he needs to access the Internet. We could say more here, but it’s a way to help them think a little bit about a clear goal of using technology, all this is possible because wi-fi isn’t always active.
For children from 6 to 12 years old, think of something like the Verizon Gizmo watch. The Gizmo is a smart watch, with speaker, that receives and calls a limited number of parent-defined phone numbers. The watch has a built-in GPS locator, allowing parents to see through an app on their mobile phone.
Parents want mobile phone technology for three purposes: (1) always call their children, (2) so their children can always call and (3) know where their child is via GPS. You don’t need a smartphone. Gizmo offers each of these things, and not much else, which is good. Ask your mobile operator for the latest options to meet these three criteria. And for those over the age of 13, think of a folding phone. They are inexpensive and in many cases lose GPS, but you have a phone with the functions you want. And be prepared for cell phone providers to look at you like you’re an alien. As my wife says, go to your mobile service provider’s store and ask the seller for the “simplest phone you have.
I think the most common mistake parents make is to assume that the smartphone is an isolated device, but it’s not. The smartphone is the pinnacle of all the communication technologies a child has been introducing since birth. Receiving a smartphone is a kind of graduation of various stages of technology experienced before.
Here’s how my wife and I describe those steps: When you take control of Wi-Fi at home, it’s crucial. Then you can start introducing some technology that your kids can only use at home. On the paper, draw a large table. Top left, write? 0 years? and, at the top right, write “18”. From left to right, these are your child’s first 18 years of tech. Now draw stairs diagonally from the bottom left to the top right. At some point, you can introduce a tablet with educational and coloring games. Maybe 3 years. Or at 5. Or at 8. Anytime. A ladder at the top. Then you present a tablet with educational videos, maybe 6 years old. Then step by step. Then at one point, bring a family computer into the living room to write projects. Maybe 10 years old. Then it will feature a phone like Gizmo or a flip phone. Intensify. Then it allows you to do Google searches on your computer. Maybe 12 o’clock. So maybe at some point you will introduce some Facebook or Messenger applications to connect with selected friends on your computer. Intensify. And then comes the cornerstone, the smartphone, the last step to the top. At 15 or 16 or 17 or, I suggest, at 18. But you decide.
The benefits are twofold
(1) You can adjust the steps to your needs, as well as show your child where the smartphone fits into a digital path that has set him up. As he proves to be trustworthy and wise with Wi-Fi at home, he heads to his cell phone away from home. Show him that being faithful in the little things leads to fidelity in the big ones.
(2) It also reminds parents that when you give a child a smartphone with a mobile data plan, it goes from strict parental control over your child’s Internet experience to virtually uncontrolled. You can draw a bold black line between all the remaining steps. (wi-fi at home) and the smartphone on the right (mobile internet everywhere). It’s a graduation, an important transition.
Or, at least for 12 hours, for example between 8:00 p. m. and 8:00 a. m. Set a rule about it. No TVs, gaming devices, tablets, laptops or mobile phones. Break endless social demands. Eliminate addictions to the game and preserve sleep patterns. Make sure all appliances are charged at night in the same place, not in the children’s room. A simple load on the parents’ room is a good solution.
When switching to your smartphone, enter a contract about expected behaviors, usage interruptions, and family expectations related to your mobile phone. Ask your child to share his passwords. And familiarize yourself with the steps you need to temporarily pause or deactivate your phone. Most operators make this easier. For parents who have made the mistake of presenting a smartphone too soon, it is never too late to establish a contract on the smartphone
It was so fascinating to me. My wife and I have three Generation I children, including two teenagers, and each uses digital media in completely different ways. I have a son who will watch all the Videos of Dude Perfect 40 times per hour. I have another girl who will buy a new musical instrument, watch 30 minutes of YouTube and master the basic chords without paid courses. He did it with the ukulele, then the keyboard and then the clarinet, and these presentations led to formal training courses. I’m fascinated by YouTube’s ability to unlock new touch skills in my kids and, frankly, I want my kids to learn YouTube tutorials as soon as possible, but not before they’re ready.
Each child reacts differently. Some teens will want social media to be able to follow 5,000 people, while other kids will want social media to be able to follow five close friends. These are radically different uses. Treat each child exclusively according to what you see in them. And when your children are away from an injustice, look at the steps and explain why each child in the home is at different stages of the same progression.
Smartphones don’t invent new sins; they simply amplify all of life’s temptations and manifest them in pixels on high-definition surfaces. Old temptations are given new levels of attraction, dependency and accessibility. This means that the tension and anxiety that parents feel in the stomach in the digital age from the perception that we are waging a total war against the affection of our young people. That’s what is scary. Parenting has always been a war over our children’s feelings, but the digital age more quickly exposes the comfort of our parents.
If our youth do not find their greatest satisfaction in Christ, they will look for something different. This message has always been relevant, today it has more weight just because it?Anything else, manifests itself in addictions to smartphones. We not only play with words, or just say that Christ is superior on Sundays; We pray daily to the Holy Spirit to open the hearts of our youth; they must value Christ above all trifle in the digital age, otherwise these little things will conquer them. That’s why fatherhood now seems so urgent.
It is not enough to choose a handful of isolated Proverbs and spread them as general seeds of wise counsel. Disciping adolescents in the digital age requires all scriptures to be unreservedly seeded and cultivated. And that’s because we’re dealing with every facet of what it is. The heart desires. This war for affections in the digital age offers unprecedented new opportunities for teenage discipleship, if we can move from temptation to the biblical text and to Christ. That’s our challenge.
Our parental passivity has been revealed in the digital age, I will not emphasize this point, because that is what my book does when considering 12 ways in which our mobile phones change us (and distort) and then show us how to be reformed since we, as parents (and pastors), are humble to self-criticize our own smartphone abuse , we can also help our children. The digital age is frightening and exhausting, but it opens up phenomenal new opportunities for young followers.
Stay together at the table, drive together and create cellless spaces for a family vacation. I am often amazed at how the pressures of life at the table are expressed. The time without haste together, without the pressures of the day, is very fruitful What happened in school?The meeting with my children usually comes at dinner time, and this communion occurs even more intensely during the family holidays.
The statistics are as follows: Is Generation I the loneest in America?More solitary than people over the age of 72. Twenge believes smartphones cause the loneliness of Generation I. However, it may make more sense to analyze larger phenomena before iPhone.
Surround yourself with enough technology, enough machines and you won’t need anyone else. Grab the right electronic device and you can do anything. Dozens of science fiction novels have already emerged from a planet saturated with robots with their most extreme consequences and is pure social isolation (e. g. Asimov’s Naked Sun). However, once the technological age has made everyone useless, you will soon discover that you yourself were not necessary for everyone.
When no one needs you, we see catastrophic spikes in social loneliness. Generation teenagers, I’m sorry. Older people feel it, middle-aged men feel it. And in this age of increasing isolation and loneliness, do social media offer an uprooted cure for diseases that occur in a rootless age?(Kass, 95). The smartphone becomes an “analgesic”, which promises to solve our loneliness problem, but only disguises pain for one more moment.
The greatest need of our youth today is not new restrictions and new cell phones, stupid contracts and limits; their greatest need is a community of faith where they can grow in Christ, serve and be served; they must find a necessary place as a legitimate part of a healthy church. Continue building faithful families and churches. Listen to teens, don’t make fun of them. Don’t laugh at them. Target them as risky missions, online and offline.