Something BIG on my heart that I want to share my thoughts on publicly…..

All generations have their own struggles and obstacles, advantages, and social systems/cultures. At different times in history there have been significant shifts that have changed everything, never to be undone. Technology, specifically social media, has changed everything for this generation of pre-teens/teens.

For our current pre-teens and teens, there is a huge increase in depression/anxiety and an increase in pre-teen/teen suicides. With GREAT heartbreak, we have seen the suicide rate increase locally. This should scare us as parents and grandparents into action.

These new disturbing trends are for a large part due to the constant access that peers have to each other and other harmful pics, videos, information shares on a global scale through social media. Social media causes all of us to say and post and do things with little thought to the impact on others, even as adults.

The kids are finding the same difficulties, but the difference is that their frontal lobes aren’t fully developed. This means they don’t fully have the impulse control, forethought, experience, wisdom, rational/logical reasoning, or self control required to manage social media and it’s influences well or in a way that doesn’t influence their future, character, and priorities.

Adults have had time to develop these critical cognitive abilities and skills through trial and error, and positive and negative reinforcement, and yet we all know examples of social media still wrecking lives in adulthood.

On top of ALL that pre-teens and teens are in a stage in social emotional development where they are self-serving in their perspectives, selfish and image conscious as is normal developmentally, and have trouble stepping outside of themselves much at all without prodding and mentorship. This leads to them being completely unaware, lacking empathy, rationalizing very toxic behavior, or only realizing something they said or did was a bad idea much later, after the fact, without the strength of character to stand up and apologize, especially publicly to try to undo damage of a particular post.

In fact the moral act of apologizing has lost the requirement of taking personal responsibility and looking someone in the eyes. Most apologies end up being very general and by text if they happen at all. This is our responsibility as parents to require person to person, genuine, often embarrassing apologies to deter negative behavior and to encourage the development of self control and forethought.

I grieve deeply for this generation as a parent and lover of Jesus, as I have one pre-teen and one teen myself. These kids have good hearts and minds, they have talents and gifts given to them by God. It is our job as parents to help them discover what those are and help them learn to use them to serve others. Instead we are allowing their brains to be, for lack of a better word, corrupted by the number of hours they spend a day on social media. It’s hard as parents to have a greater influence than the phones due to the sheer difference in time spent with them and the time they are on their phones any given day.

Parents are still the BIGGEST influence in their children’s lives and we as parents have to use that influence wisely, but in today’s time it takes planning, research, wise counsel, prayer, and TIME.

The developmental norms for everything are changing due to constant screen time, not just social emotional norms. In babies and toddlers, we are seeing delays in all developmental milestones for the typically developing. So much so that instead of combatting the problem with a huge campaign educating parents about this, the CDC changed the milestones to match the new norms of the majority now with screens in their lives and to save money because more kids are qualifying for needed services now. More on this later, It deserves it’s own soapbox.***

But for teens and preteens social media in particular is changing how they approach friendships, the quality of parental relationships, the quantity and quality of family interaction, the standards of acceptable behavior overall and especially in dating relationships, increased sexual experiences, increased sexual abuse at earlier ages by peers, increased sexual addiction, and a generation who almost all have been exposed to porn at pre-teen ages leading to lifelong porn addictions.

Why aren’t we as parents screaming???? Why isn’t there a HUGE local campaign against all this changing who we are as a community and what we allow as acceptable behavior? Why aren’t there teams of parents, school boards, therapists, teachers, youth programs, church leaders meeting to challenge all of this and protect our cherished, beautiful children???

I’m asking myself these questions too. I am challenging myself and all of you to ask these hard questions and find a way to fight this in a way that uses your specific, God-given gifts. This is our responsibility. We are the adults.

I would love to see a respectful discussion in the comments with ideas and sharing of successes with battling this in your home. Let’s encourage each other, because we really are the first generation to raise kids in a completely social media driven society. We have to adjust our thinking and work together to protect our kids, and future generations.