Navigating our way with our children in a digital world

I am sure parenting has always been a complicated business. I’m sure each generation of parents has had to deal with issues specific to their unique time and context. I rather suspect, though, that parents who raise children at the cusp of a technological transformation face a special kind of challenge. It falls to them to blaze a trail through unknown territory. And that is exactly what parents are doing today as we raise our children in this digital world.

I’m convinced many of us feel like we are failing most of the time. We’ve got this deep seated feeling that our children are spending way too much of their childhoods tapping on glowing glass rectangles. We feel a lot of guilt that they aren’t spending more time playing in the great outdoors or reading great books. We feel frustrated that mostly they don’t even want to.

This is easy enough to deal with when they are little, and we have a lot of control over their time and activities. “Turn that thing off and go play outside!” But it gets a whole lot harder as they grow older and more independent and get devices of their own. They get to the age where we need to give them more freedom, but then they use that freedom to do little more than tap and play and surf. Many teens get home from school, head to their rooms, close their doors, and just disappear into YouTube and Instagram and a billion digital distractions.

So, what do we do? How do we live well in a world like this one? How do we have confidence that we aren’t ruining it for our children in some of their most formative years? How can we be sure that our family memories won’t mostly be of us scattered around the same room, each staring at our own little screen? I’m sure many of you are experiencing the same challenges.

With all that said, here are a few principles that are worth considering implementing with your family.

Be the parent. God made you the parent, so you have both the calling and the authority to lead your children. And, as much as they might fight back, I firmly believe that children truly do want to be led. So, lead. But lead kindly and gently, and with wisdom.

Take comfort that you’re not alone. What is relatively easy when they are young becomes far more difficult when they are older. So, if you’re struggling, have an honest conversation with a family in a similar age range and I think you’ll hear that they are struggling just as much. That’s strangely comforting.

Be an example. Most of us hesitate to properly manage our children’s use of their devices at least in part because we don’t care to manage our own. There’s nothing intrinsic to being a parent that gives you the right to watch endless amounts of YouTube or Facebook while capping your kids at a half hour. Though we hate to admit it, much of our children’s behaviour is learned behaviour. If you want to know who they’ve learned it from, you should probably start with the person in the mirror.

Distinguish between different forms of digital entertainment. Watching Netflix is not the same as playing Roblox or Minecraft—one is mindless while the others are creative. Playing Angry Birds is not the same as listening to Audible—one offers nothing more than entertainment while the other may increase knowledge and build the mind. The trick is that both happen on the same device (and sometimes at the same time). So, the concern is often not that the device is being used, but how it’s being used.

Don’t idealize your own childhood. We can reminisce about our childhoods like they were so much better than our children’s. We remember carefree summer days spent doing great and wonderful things. But it is far more likely that we were wasting just as much time, even if in different ways.

Focus less on time and more on responsibilities. Children of all ages have certain tasks they need to accomplish, and I think it’s wise to focus our attention on making sure they accomplish what they need to and that they accomplish it with some degree of excellence. Of more concern to me than how much time they spend playing games is that they are getting their schoolwork done, earning good grades, studying hard and putting in a solid effort at their jobs and responsibilities.

Give them alternatives. If you take away your children’s devices, you’re now opening time that will need to be filled with something. You could tell them to go and spend time with friends, but chances are their friends are all staring at their phones. So be sure to provide your children with alternate activities—the kind of activities they may want to do. Don’t forget to praise them if they do these activities well. Maybe you can even find some activities you’ll enjoy doing together. Try Disc Golf as an example of a great family activity, as there are lots of courses around Christchurch, and we even have our own mini course at Middleton.

I doubt it has ever been easy to be a trailblazer. For now, I think the challenge before us is to learn what we can about life in this digital world, then to apply those lessons confidently to ourselves and our children.

Proverbs 22:6

“Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

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Room 13 - ANZAC Day Art