This article came about watching my son grow and question everything. Watching him look for guidance, made me realize much of today’s youth struggles with faith and finding something to believe in.
I don’t know any teens who don’t use the internet. Having a connected device part of your daily life seems to be starting earlier & earlier too. It’s no longer just teens retreating to their rooms with computers and phone. Little kids and even toddlers use devices daily. Whether it’s to watch baby shark videos, do homework or update social media, kids are very comfortable being connected to the internet for everything. Heck my kids don’t even ask me things anymore, they ask Google or Siri.
Greater accessibility to content online also brings greater visibility to non-censored content like violence, drugs, nudity and sex. I won’t forget the first time I scrolled through my daughters youtube search history. She had started looking at videos of cartoons and clicking on the side videos. Somehow she scrolled all the way into a full-on multi-person groping video. Thankfully she was too young to know what was happening, but it brought the realization that by being on the internet, my children are exposed to things out of my control.
SIDENOTE: Now before anyone freaks out… I stated she was very young. We hadn’t set up parental controls because to be honest she was too young to know how to even search for bad things. We now have all the parental controls set up and monitor all their social media accounts.
The reality is that no matter how much I try as a parent, my children will have unsupervised access to the internet in their lives. At school they use computers and ipads for homework and projects. At friends houses they play video games. And if you aren’t aware, most video game consoles allow you to search the internet, watch videos, etc.. My kids switch or playstation ain’t the Atari I grew up playing Pac-Man and Space Invaders.
When I volunteer in my kids school, or watch their sports team hang out I see the results on kids of the daily exposure to violence, nudity and drugs. They are desensitized. It’s not just the traditional kids wearing make up and dressing inappropriately. We had that back in my day with Stepahnie Kaye from Degrassi. Kids today are acting inappropriate too. The tiktoks kids do are not appropriate for most adults. The language (the ‘n’ word, ‘c’ word and a whole bunch of other bad words), sexual dances and general lack of personal respect underlies everything. We are just too busy looking at how many likes and views to notice. And being honest, some of the most inappropriate videos get the most likes.
Parents are so wrapped up in their daily grind they don’t have time to learn about making proper decisions for movies, music, social media and online activities of their kids. While we’re binge watching TV and scrolling Insta we haven’t noticed just hot far reaching today’s entertainment is and how it has slowly desensitized us.
When parents are desensitized, what does that mean for kids?
Like with most things, the family is the starting point for where kids learn how to act. Kids aren’t supposed to have the answers and know what they should do, it’s the parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents that are supposed to help guide them. When my son started trying to figure out things at school, like who to hang out with and what kind of person he wanted to be, I realized he had no benchmarks. Would he let negative influences at school be his guide? How would he tell if he’s a good person? How would he even know what it means to be a good person? What would he think is right? Would he think the things he sees on TV and online are ok? The only thing I knew was that I didn’t have the answers.
I spoke with my husband to figure out what we did as kids. We got those answers from our parents, teachers and church. Our parents are all busy with their lives, teachers are all over worked, so we focused on church. We hadn’t been to church in ages. I started asking close friends which church they went to and quickly realized most people don’t go to church. Yeah, they get their kids baptized and first communion, but other than that they don’t go. In fact, the most common answer I got was why bother.
So what can we do?
I soon realized the real problem. Modern children (& adults – myself included) are so instant information, bandwagon hopping, social media experts, it’s not easy to see how God, faith and believing fits into the real world. It’s not seen as ‘cool’ to have faith. To be honest, all this came at a time when I myself was questioning the world. It was a time when there seemed to be mass shootings in schools every week. There was sickness and new diseases killing people with no cure in sight. Many people I knew were getting sick, having problems with substances or just generally floating through life with no real direction. It made me think of the saying, if you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.
I wanted my children to have direction. I wanted them to know there is an easy way to know what is right and wrong. It’s the same right and wrong I learned growing up. More importantly, I needed to be surrounded by people that believed as I did; that being kind is always the right answer; and if you are able to help someone else you should.
After opening up to a fellow school mom about finding it hard to get through to my son, she invited me to her house one Sunday. They were having a friend come visit and speak about faith in modern families. After that day my husband joked that I drank the kool-aid. To be honest, I did. I found my tribe. It wasn’t a big commitment, no life change. It was just a group of people getting together on a Sunday to discuss a book. An actual book that was written years ago by real people, about real people. Our pastor ties in modern and historical references and thankfully there isn’t any shaming or guilt and the best part: there are TONS of kids attending. Every week there are 30-40 school aged kids and there is even a youth group.
When I spoke to our pastor (Dom Russo of The 180 Church) about writing on desensitized kids and faith he had some pearls to share.
“I think the real challenge is the most families have not explored these issues in the context of a trusted faith community Thus, when their kids start to ask for guidance, or struggle they are often speechless or rush to some person (like a pastor to ‘fix’ their kids or help them have faith).” He went on to explain, “put simply: a life of faith is cultivated in a safe place. Homes, churches, healthy friendships and honest discussion. There is no other way. At least as it relates to the Christian faith.”
It’s true. I spent so long fighting for my kids right to attend a specific school. Fighting for my kids ADHD, to see the Doctors they needed, or get the skating coach for training. For some reason society shames me into not fighting for a safe place my kids could explore issues of faith, death, dying, etc. I had forgotten that it’s ok to fight so that my kids have something to believe in.
Do your youth struggle with faith? Share below.
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