Let’s cut to the chase. There’s never been a time in history quite like right now. In fact, there’s never been a single generation who has endured more change in their environment during their lifetime. I’m specifically referencing technology, how it’s quickly dominated our culture and how it’s not going anywhere. When I was 16, I inherited my dad’s old Jeep Grand Cherokee that had a car phone (with a spiral-y wire) attached to the dashboard. It was powered by the battery of the car, so if I had ever been stranded with a dead car battery, my phone wouldn’t have worked.
Can you even believe that I survived?
When I turned 18, my parents gave me a cell phone, but I never really did anything with it. It was kind of like a calculator that could also make a phone call. Four years later when I finished college, texting was a kind of a thing, and facebook was a website you went to on your desktop. Yes, I was in college when “the” facebook came to my university. A guy named Austin set up my facebook account for me and made up my password that interestingly enough, is still my facebook password today. He told me I had to have the facebook. And so I did.
I got my first iPhone when I was 27 years old. Twenty seven. I can remember looking at it and realizing all the different things I could suddenly do on my phone. I was shocked and I told my brand new husband “this is seriously life changing”. So yes, I was a married woman before I had my first smartphone. My husband, who doesn’t have social media at all, much less on his phone, listened with caution and compassion.
So the first 18 years of my life were almost completely absent of technology…(well, other than Nick at Nite, Duck Hunt, slap bracelets and TI-95 calculators), while the second 18 years have been permeated by it. This year, I turn 36, so I’m perfectly centered on the spectrum right now in this very moment. Half of my life was one thing and the other half has been completely different.
Don’t we all love AND hate technology? Don’t we love the things that it does for us while also hating the things it steals? Don’t we long for the days before it existed but also refuse to accept a life without it? We are the final generation to walk the earth with a firsthand knowledge and experience of life before the technology boom.
But I’m not here to talk about love and hate today. I’m here to talk about fear. Recently, and especially this week, a great fear has swept over parents as we have learned about some of the troubling content surfacing in our technology. The same technology that we hand to our kids so that we can prepare dinner. The same technology that taught my 2 year old how to count to 15 and sing his ABC’s. The same technology that allows me to set the mood of my house with a playlist during bedtime. The same technology that gives me immediate, real-time directions to where I’m driving so that I don’t waste my life sitting in traffic and making the wrong turns.
I hear parents fearfully vowing to remove technology. Parents fearfully expressing anger. Parents fearfully feeling helpless, wondering where we’ve gone wrong and how to defend and fight back. They’re all saying different things, but the underlying message is fear.
Friends, can I just encourage you...do not live in fear.
Technology is not bad. It’s not evil. It’s being used in an evil way by people who have been influenced by evil all along. This world is not a scarier place for children than it was 50, 100, or 1000 years ago. And the fact that these dangers are being brought to light should not bring us to fear. It should call us to action, to intentionality and to repentance. Yes, to repentance. We should fear when issues are NOT brought into the light. We should fear when we’re uneducated, unaware, and operating in “darkness”. Shining light on evil is the very best thing for hope and reconciliation.
So why am I not afraid?
Because I am present. I am here. I’m not going anywhere.
And skeptics may say “that’s helicoptering”. But moms in this generation have grown thicker skin, so whatever. We know the stakes are higher in certain areas. I’m not present because I’m afraid. I’m present because that’s what parents do.
Can we talk for just one minute about how Hollywood portrays parenting? I’ll give one example from one of my favorite shows EVER that actually blatantly lied to us. Don’t be mad because I still love Friends, but gosh, they sold us a lie that you can have a baby and not have your life radically flipped upside down by it. Didn’t Rachel and Ross prove to us that a newborn is kind of like a hobby? Can you imagine if Emma had been in every scene going forward after she had been born? Do you know anyone IN REAL LIFE who had a baby and then just returned back to life as usual?
Parenting is hard work. It’s making unpopular decisions. It’s pulling technology out of bedrooms with closed doors. It’s limiting personal use. It’s monitoring text conversations. It's saying NO when all the other parents are saying YES. It’s having hard conversations about pornography with children. It’s watching episodes of Peppa Pig WITH your kids. Not because of what might pop up in the middle of the episode, even though unfortunately that’s a real thing now that we must navigate. But because we love our kids and we only get a few years with them at home before they spread their wings and fly.
Parenting is not a side job. It’s not a hobby. And it’s definitely not something you do to boost your own ego.
It’s absolutely imperative to protect our kids from seeing all the horrible things out there. Hands down. Not up for negotiation. I can remember specific things that I saw too early in life. Things that were graphically violent, sexually explicit or terrorizing in nature that would have been NO BIG DEAL at all if I had seen them ten years later. But because I was eight when I saw that guy’s heart get ripped out in Indiana Jones...it has stuck with me as a fear-inducing scene. I can even remember other details about that day when I saw it. I was with some of my older cousins in my parents room and after we finished the movie, we played outside in the backyard for a bit before we all went out to dinner and then ice cream. I should NOT have this memory stuck in my head almost thirty years later, especially when I can’t remember the last time I washed towels, but nevertheless, it is there. It is not negotiable that we protect our children’s minds and hearts while they are young.
But we cannot be motivated by fear.
I don’t know how it looks to implement this in every single family across the board, although I am currently already putting together a second post about this. But I do know that it will require us as parents to make more unpopular decisions than any generation of parents ever before. It will cause us to second guess ourselves. It will mean that we don’t get to do certain things that other families get to do. It will mean that we feel like these restrictions on our children are actually punishments to us. Because yes, it IS easier to hand a kid an iPad and walk away to get things done. It will also require our kids to handle an accelerated maturity level at an even earlier age. An expectation that they will need to choose good for themselves.
So like my new husband, let’s all approach it all with caution and compassion. Caution because there is a real and present danger, and we must be aware. Compassion because we are desperate for grace from the older generations as we navigate this brand new territory of parenting with technology. Compassion to each other as we all make decisions for our own families that might look different from one another. AND compassion to our children, who are literally a generation of test dummies, on this topic of technology.
Caution and compassion.
Never fear.
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9, ESV