Screens and Teens

To my brother, Dave, his wife, Debbie, and their three children, Betsy, Katie, and Andy, who pursue life, purpose, and fun with and without screens and have mastered the art of conversation.
Our connections run deep and wide, and I'm extremely grateful.

Foreword by Jill Savage

1. Technology and Our Deepest Human Needs

2. Truths about Today's Teens

3. Less and More

4. Lie #1: I Am the Center of My Own Universe

5. Lie #2: I Deserve to Be Happy All the Time

6. Lie #3: I Must Have Choices

7. Lie #4: I Am My Own Authority

8. Lie #5: Information Is All I Need So I Don't Need Teachers

9. The Ultimate Connectivity

Discussion Guide

Notes

Acknowledgments

About Celebrate Kids, Inc.

About Hearts at Home

L
ess than twenty-four hours after we dropped him off at college our son began asking to come home. This wasn't what he thought it would look like. It was too hard. There were topics being taught that he didn't want to learn. “I want to come home,” he texted every single day during the first week of school.

We listened, encouraged, spoke wisdom, and ultimately said, “You need to stay at least one semester.” This was so hard! There were times my husband and I wanted to cave in and when we questioned if we were doing the right thing.

After a week, Mark and I made a call to the dean of students. He thanked us for the phone call, reassured us they could help from their end, and encouraged us that our “no” was exactly what our son needed. Then he said these words: “I'm finding that this generation of kids does not know how to persevere.” We talked about how today's teens are accustomed to quick wins in front of a video game screen. They fix problems with one click to cut and another click to paste. Thanks to the Internet, information
can be found at young people's fingertips without much effort to research, dig, and come to conclusions on their own. When fixes aren't so quick and easy, their first impulse is to give up.

Our ever-changing technology has, without a doubt, made our lives easier in many ways. But technology has also made some aspects of parenting harder and is affecting the minds, bodies, and souls of our kids in ways we desperately need to understand.

Should we box up our computers and cellphones and return to encyclopedias and landlines? That's not the answer. Technology will only move forward, and we have to move forward with it. We do, however, have to change the way we interact with our kids. We have to give them opportunities to persevere. We have to teach them how to think. We have to help fill the gaps technology is creating, believing wholeheartedly that parents can make a difference. Technology may be here to stay, but so are parents; both play a major role in our teens' lives.

If you don't know where to start with tackling technology, Dr. Kathy Koch will give you the direction you need. At our Hearts at Home conferences, her workshops are standing room only. She has dedicated her life to understanding kids and helping their parents do the same.
Screens and Teens
will give you hope—and hope is the fuel that keeps parents going.

You can connect with your teens in a wireless world.

JILL SAVAGE

Mother of five

Founder and CEO of Hearts at Home

M
ost teens today have seen electric
typewriters only in the movies (
old
movies or retro movies set in old times), and they may never have seen a manual typewriter. But I'm old enough to remember my family's first typewriters, manual and electric. That big, heavy, gray-and-white piece of technology was a sleek and shiny gift. I loved the changes it brought! Fast typing, with just a light tap on the keys. Tapping a return key instead of lugging across a heavy carriage. Adjusting to that piece of technology was, oh, so worth it!

We've come a long way, haven't we? Now we carry tiny computers in our pockets and purses. We add and delete and access a world of information with just a click or two. The changes—from electric typewriters to today's slim and efficient technological tools—have been continuous. It's the speed of changes that takes my breath away! Change happens now faster than it ever has before.

Is the speed of change influencing our kids? Could that be one of the reasons they're quickly dissatisfied with doing things the same old way? Is this why they want to line up at a store at midnight when a new game, movie, or device hits the market? Is it why they insist we get them the latest and greatest phone or other device even though theirs works just fine?

Our world changes, almost daily, with the changes in technology. And that's innocent, right? It seems as innocent as leaving behind Wite-out to correct typing errors in favor of the laptop's delete key! But are those changes having an impact on our children's behavior and beliefs—and on our own? Yes! In both negative and positive ways, technology with its rapid-fire advances is definitely shaping the personality and character and life path of young people.

Teens have always experienced peer pressure, but keeping up has reached intense levels of pressure for today's teens, who definitely feel a sense of urgency, as if they're going to be left out unless they have the best, the newest, the fastest, and the easiest.
There's pressure to be the happiest, the most beautiful, the most talented. Do you hear any of these sentiments or see any of these attitudes in your home?

If you haven't heard statements like these in your home yet, give it a minute. You probably will! These attitudes surface repeatedly in our technology-driven world. Listen and watch to see who your teens' “Joneses” may be—those other teens they want so much to keep up with—and consider how much pressure your kids are putting on themselves. While you're at it, pay attention to the pressure influencing you, too.

Our kids live in a world of screens. They have

• Digital/Smart Devices

• Internet/World Wide Web

• Social Networking

• Games, and

• TV/Movies/Radio/Streaming Services

This book isn't really about technology. But it is about how technology influences the beliefs and behaviors of teens and how parents can connect with their children to influence them positively. Parents and teens are both affected by the influences of our screen-saturated lives, but young people experience the effects with ferocious intensity.

I see the signs of screen-world stress in myself—and I'm middle-aged. Perhaps I notice it most in my own impatience (Why did that light just turn red?!) or in my desire to win every game of solitaire I play (I admit it!). I can get annoyed if I forget to program my DVR. I'm grateful for all the music I can choose from—though sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by the numerous choices that I choose nothing at all. I depend on the convenience of the Internet for research, but I also feel frustrated because there's so much information there.

Screens are part of our lives, and they're here to stay. But we long for deep connection with the teens we love. And that means making sure we give our relationships their rightful priority and connect face-to-face.

Being honest and recognizing how technology influences you can improve your relationship with your teens. You can talk
about what you have in common rather than being frustrated by differences.

One expert in the effects of media and technology on culture says, technology “is fast, cheap, effective, and cool. That's the good part. The bad part is that it's fast, cheap, effective, and cool.”
¹
We all know that digital technology itself isn't the problem. Technologies and how we use them can be wonderfully life-giving. They are both tools and toys—tools we need and toys we enjoy. But the content and use of technology can cause problems when they begin to encroach on our development in five core areas of need that both parents and teens share.

My interest in technology took a big leap when my staff and I met with Scott Degraffenreid, a social network analyst and statistician. Scott came to help us understand how young people were being affected by our digital culture and its rapid-fire changes. Scott became a trusted friend and a mentor for me in this area of digital influences.

As a staff we began to apply Scott's information about the culture of technology to what we knew about young people's core needs of
security, identity, belonging, purpose
, and
competence
. Suddenly, the behaviors and problems we'd been recently observing in teens began to make sense.

God created every single person with deep core needs of
security, identity, belonging, purpose
, and
competence
. For more
than twenty-five years, I've been teaching about these God-given needs and how, ideally, we meet them in healthy ways. There have always been problems when people try to meet these five core needs in unhealthy or counterfeit ways. I began to see that teens were turning to technology and the digital culture to meet their deep core needs—and technology is a definite counterfeit that doesn't work to meet those needs.

We can start by getting better acquainted with the five core needs. You will find them familiar because you have them yourself!

Security

Security is our first core need, and it's defined by the question
Who can I trust?
We're healthiest when we meet our need for security in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit,
²
in trustworthy people, and in ourselves as we learn to be right and do right even when the burden is heavy. Security is rooted in forgiveness—from God, from others, and especially from ourselves.

Everybody has this core need for security; it only becomes a problem when we begin looking for security in all the wrong places. Some young people try to meet their need for security in their technology and its availability. Many believe technology will never let them down (as human relationships often do!).
Perhaps we trust in technology because our computer disasters usually aren't disasters at all. Click a key to “Undo” the keystroke that was a mistake. Power down and reboot, and you're good to go. Have you been with teenagers who are “suffering through” power outages or coping with being at Grandma's house, where the cell signal is weak? Such interruptions of digital connectedness are big deals to them no matter how often we say they shouldn't be. When teens don't have instant access to their technology, their security feels threatened.

Many of today's teens are secure in things being quick, perfect, and easy. They trust that the access they need will always be readily available. They don't need directions to get anywhere because they have a phone with a GPS app. They don't need to remember a friend's phone number because every number is stored in their phones. They don't need to know Bible verses; they can easily look them up on a Bible app, too.

Teens are also secure in their ability to win and to be happy. It's
what
they trust that matters, not
who
. This is potentially very damaging because technology is not how God designed this need for security to be met.

Trusting people doesn't come naturally to young people partly because they're relating through social media and texting. It's
hard to truly know people and develop friendship and discernment skills. They may be attempting to meet this need with the number of “friends” they have. What they don't understand is that security is not found in
quantity
(multiple online connections). It's discovered in
quality
(real and faithful relationships).

Christian parents cherish the hopes that their teens will ultimately have this need for security met deeply, once and for all, by God. But whether teens will rely on God to meet their need for security may be influenced by technology. The Web provides easy access to ideas about many religions and many gods. Some teens follow people we don't know through services like Twitter. They can access information without us being aware. Information could be presented to them (without their looking for it!) via advertising or links in their social feeds. People they follow and sites they visit may report things about the God of the Bible and the way we're choosing to raise our children that might cause them to think we're wrong and our God isn't the only One worth worshiping.

What is worship, after all? It's assigning lordship to God and giving him our attention and praise—and giving him primacy in our days.
³
Have you ever seen teens with their tech tools and wondered if they almost worship their technology? It's where they turn for answers to their questions and to solve their problems. Others unwittingly downgrade God, treating Him casually like a friend on Facebook who may or may not like their status update. As teens become increasingly acclimated to speedy
answers via the Internet, will it be harder for them to wait on God for an answer to prayer, if they do pray? Will young people be satisfied with a Bible app that provides a devotional each morning, considering that bit of Scripture as all the spiritual nourishment they need?

You can immediately realize that there are spiritual implications that accompany deep involvement with screens! But it's not all doom and gloom. A young person's security grows as they become more self-confident. Gaining knowledge (by using tech tools and platforms) can grow that “self-security.” The ease of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and texting reinforces and can even strengthen relationships as they allow teens to be in regular contact and share much about their lives. For the discerning user, these platforms can also reveal inconsistencies, manipulation, and pride, clues that the wise young person can use to make better decisions about which friends he or she should keep at a distance and which they should engage with more personally.

Screens can positively affect faith development, too. Bible apps are convenient, and they allow us to keep the Bible with us. Devotional material read on handheld devices and Facebook posts from ministries, churches, and friends can encourage, humble, and mature young people. Worship music and videos of church services and concerts can be inspiring. Streaming allows teens to watch church services and conferences they might have missed in person.

When it comes to meeting our deep human need for security,
we want technology to take its rightful place. Digital tools can't meet anyone's need for security, but they can be tools that help teens develop the relationships with God and others that are real and trustworthy and nourishing.

Identity

Identity is our second core need. It's defined by the question
Who am I?
Because the way we define ourselves influences our behavior, it's essential that our identity is current and honest. This means we see ourselves accurately. Ignoring our weak areas or challenges is immature. Denying our strengths is just as bad. It's important for us to know who we are!