I recently had a very interesting lunch with a defense attorney who told me something that reminded me of just how powerful the choices we make really are. Specifically, his words drove home the point that what we choose to put into our bodies can change us in powerful ways. He used the example of the long parade of young heroin users he’s been representing in recent years. “When I first see them, they look horrible,” he told me. “Then, after just two weeks in rehab, I will meet with them again and they aren’t even recognizable. They look great…like totally different people!”

As I’ve been reading about and studying the way our technology choices influence our selves, I’m increasingly convinced researchers are finding the same principle holds true regarding the way technology shapes, rewires and changes us. It was 50-some years ago that media critic Marshall McCluhan suggested “first we shape our tools…and then our tools shape us.” McCluhan was in many ways right, particularly regarding our highly impressionable, malleable, developing kids and their ability and willingness to read. While technology is not in and of itself a bad thing, it does have the power to turn our kids into different people.

What are some of the specific ways researchers are finding that technology, smartphones, and digital immersion are reshaping—or perhaps more accurately misshaping—our kids in regard to their reading and cognitive development?

First, technology is changing how much our kids read. Many kids are reading less and less. Fifty-seven percent of Americans don’t read a single complete book in a year. The percentage of 17-year-olds who never or hardly ever read books for fun more than doubled from 1984 to 2004, from 9 percent to 19 percent. A librarian at a highly competitive and respected liberal arts college recently lamented to me about how the student body has changed during the past five years. “Increasingly, our students neither know how to read, nor do they want to.” Sadly, we are overwhelmed with information, yet we are deeply processing much, much less.

Second, technology is changing the way our kids read. In his book The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr writes, “When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.” Specifically, researchers are finding that reading Internet pages on a computer screen has facilitated a shift from a linear, deep, contemplative and focused type of reading to a screen-based style of reading. When kids read on screens, they tend to read in an F-pattern, going all the way across the top line, then jumping down several lines and skimming only part of the way across the page. They have trained themselves to skip, scan and skim while looking for hypertext and key words. In effect, they are reading in a non-linear fashion that erodes cohesion, dismantles the story, and leads to a lack of comprehension and understanding. Once they transfer back to the printed page, they tend to read in the same disjointed manner.

Finally, reading from screens winds up changing them. Because of where they are in the developmental process, our kids’ brains are extremely malleable. There is a kind of super-plasticity. Consequently, how a child or adolescent chooses to use his or her time to read or not read, and how and where (printed page or screen) they choose to read, shapes their brain. Science is showing that the more you don’t read, the more you can’t read. Granted, Web-based reading from a computer screen does equip us for certain tasks. Some cognitive skills are developed from net-reading, but they tend to be lower order in nature, including things such as hand/eye coordination, reflex and response, and a better ability to process visual clues, but the sacrifice is extremely costly. Kids lose framework, context, the ability to pay attention and focus, and experience the disappearance of logic and other higher-order tasks.

When you take these three changes into consideration—how much they read, the way they read, and how screen-reading changes them—it’s not hard to connect the dots between the use of technology and implications for youth ministry. As a result, it’s important for youth workers not only to understand these realities, but respond to them with balanced and informed strategies that will foster rather than impede their spiritual growth.

So…what now?

First, you need to understand rather than ignore the implications. In other words, don’t fall into the trap of assuming technology and its impact are harmless and/or neutral. Yes, there’s great good that comes from our access to technology, but a consequence of reading less is that they are prone to avoid immersing themselves in reading God’s Word. A consequence of reading less effectively is they will miss hearing God speak in a coherent fashion if they are simply skimming as they read the Bible. The fact they are reading less on the printed page means they are changing themselves into individuals who increasingly will find it difficult to sit down to read, mediate on, and understand God’s Word as they move through the rest of their lives.

Second, you need to encourage them to read God’s Word. Encourage them to find a segment of alone-time during their day when they shut off all the technological distractions in order to read and focus on a portion of God’s Word. Be forewarned: Your students will find this to be an incredibly difficult task as it is something foreign to most. However, if you help them find that piece of alone time, while creating times for them to come together in community to talk about not only what they are learning but also their struggles in making this happen, you will be giving them the blessing of support and encouragement that can fuel their passion to pursue Bible reading more as they see how much of a blessing that focused reading in silence can be. Take the time to help them quiet the noise of life so they can listen to God.

Finally, help them find a healthy balance between reading the Bible as a printed book and reading the Bible on a screen. Most of us know how convenient it is to be able to access Scripture through a host of available apps and online tools that enable us to read God’s Word on screens, large and small. The convenience factor is huge and undeniable, but it’s important that we exercise some cautious wisdom by encouraging our kids not to read exclusively on their screens. Holding and reading a printed Bible not only encourages the kind of deep, contemplative and focused linear reading that we can’t afford to jettison, but it serves to give a context and feel that reading Scripture on an iPad or smartphone just can’t do. To hold a physical printed Bible in one’s hands reminds us of the flow of God’s great story from Genesis to Revelation. That’s something that can’t be sacrificed.

The apostle Paul tells us that we are to be conformed to Christ, not to the world (Rom. 12). Countercultural Christian living requires thoughtful reflection on where and when to go with the flow, and where and when to resist. We’re only a few feet into what’s shaping up to be a long trip onto the digital/technological frontier. Some deliberate good sense exercised now will pay great dividends as our journey proceeds. Let’s hope that what we do with technology now shapes our kids in ways that lead to responsible use and deep spiritual growth for the rest of their lives.