No matter your age, the kids to whom you’re ministering today are living in a media world very different from the one you inhabited when you were their age—even if you graduated from high school last year.
Since the days when I was a teenager, the number of media outlets and delivery technologies has multiplied exponentially. It’s a trend that continues to snowball, leaving us all out of touch at some level. Today’s kids have and use more media. Tomorrow’s kids—literally tomorrow‘s kids—will have and use even more.
A few days before Apple’s Steve Jobs unveiled the much-anticipated iPad media technology, researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation released the latest research on just how much our kids’ media world has changed. Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third report released by KFF in its 10-year series of studies conducted in five-year increments beginning in 1999.
The research warrants our attention. After all, the purpose of our youth ministries is to lead kids into an understanding of what it means to be redeemed by answering Christ’s invitation to “come and follow Me” and then to live every minute of life with that faith integrated into every nook and cranny of life…including their media use habits and choices. In effect, media has become a primary nurturing force. We need to sit up and take notice.
Generation M2 is packed full of information to dissect and discuss, but three overarching trends deserve our attention.
Media Use Is on the Rise
Think first about “total media use”—the actual number of hours out of the day that are spent using media. In 1999, the average 8- to 18-year-old was using six hours and 19 minutes of media a day. In 2004, that amount had increased by only two minutes a day. Another five-year period has passed; now our kids are using an average of seven hours and 38 minutes a day!
Thanks to their ability to multi-task by using more than one medium concurrently, the amount of “total media exposure—the sum of time spent with all media—has seen a significant rise, as well. Total media exposure has increased from seven hours and 29 minutes (1999), to eight hours and 33 minutes (2004), to the current rate of 10 hours and 45 minutes (2009). These numbers don’t include time spent reading books for school or doing schoolwork on the computer, or the two hours and eight minutes a day the average 8- to 18-year-old spends talking on the phone or text messaging.
When we pause to digest these numbers, we have to ask ourselves, “Are our kids spending this amount of time interacting with anyone or anything else during the day?” The answer is clearly, “No!” The numbers alone reveal just how great a potential and very real life-shaping influence media has on the emerging generations of kids we’ve been called to lead to the Bread of Life and Living Water.
They’re Going Mobile
The difference today when the final bell rings to let students surge from the school building is that fewer and fewer members of “Generation M2” head out the door while engaged in face-to-face interaction with each other. Now they emerge with heads down and eyes focused on handheld devices, thumbs pounding away at miniature keyboards and touch screens.
Later that night, they go to bed with those devices no further than arm’s reach away or maybe even tucked under their pillow. Before their feet hit the floor next morning, they’re back at it. Researchers report that 20 percent of media consumption (two hours and seven minutes a day) occurs on mobile devices, including cell phones, iPods and handheld video game players. In addition, kids are consuming another hour of TV and music through a computer using delivery platforms such as iTunes and Hulu.
They’re Going It Alone
In today’s bedroom, 71 percent of 8- to 18-year-olds have their own television, 49 percent have cable or satellite TV access and 24 percent have premium channels. Dad and Mom are watching TV (or TVs) in another room (or rooms). Accessing other media on mobile platforms or through the privacy of earbuds takes this “aloneness” up a notch. Consequently, vulnerable kids are left to sort out everything they see and hear for themselves.
The reality expressed by these numbers should not only open our eyes to this emerging brave new world, but motivate us to think about how to disciple our kids effectively into living out a faith in God that informs the seven hours and 38 minutes a day of media use. If we are called to teach them to integrate faith into all of life—and a large and growing segment of their lives—is time spent with media, what should we do? Here are some simple suggestions that I believe will go a long way in nurturing faith in a media-saturated world.
Get Your Own Media House in Order
This involves taking inventory of how much media you’re using alone with how you’re using it. Begin by asking God to challenge and change your media use habits if they’re not pleasing to Him. Pay attention not only to the time you’re spending with media, but how you use that media along with the media messages you consume. Your kids are watching and learning from you. It is crucial that you model healthy media use habits.
Evaluate Everything Through a Biblical Worldview
Most of our kids (and adults) engage with anything and everything without consciously or critically thinking about the message and worldview being expressed by the medium. This approach of mindless consumption assumes media is nothing more than neutral and harmless, but remember: Media is a powerful teacher. When consumed without consciously thinking about it, the worldview and messages expressed powerfully shape our values, attitudes and resulting behaviors without realizing it’s happening.
Kids are especially susceptible to media’s life-shaping power. Disciple kids to engage with media from a conscious posture of “mindful critique.” We must teach them skills for listening and watching critically and carefully. We want to nurture them to the point of engaging media through a biblical worldview. Teach them how to control media rather than allowing the media to shape and control them. Challenge and equip parents to do the same.
A simple Google search for “media literacy” will yield scores of helpful resources to assist you in the task. You also can use a tool I wrote just for this purpose: How to Use Your Head to Guard Your Heart: A 3D Guide to Making Responsible Media Choices (available at CPYU.org). This is an investment that will pay great dividends in their lives.
During the past few years of culture-watching, I’ve become increasingly convinced that addressing issues related to developing media and media consumption must be at the forefront of our youth ministry agendas. Media is here to stay. Perhaps five years from now God will bless our efforts in ways that will bear fruit in media habits and use that bring Him pleasure and are reflected in the research. Five years—a time when kids will be looking back and asking, “An iPad? What’s that?”
