Full disclosure: I have 1,156 friends on Facebook. Clearly, I spend some time on the infamous social network!
Currently in my 28th year of youth ministry, I have seen many technological changes. Remember the days of using the ditto machine to crank out printed sheets to advertise events?
How can adults keep up with it all? As the campus pastor at a Christian high school, one thing I do is witness some of the interesting dialogue between my students on the Facebook News Feed. A thread this past summer really cracked me up:
Student #1 (male): SO it looks like my parents aren’t going to let me have Mass Effect (an Xbox video game) for another TWO months in all probability. They want to teach me PATIENCE. Whoopee.
Student #2 (female): Hahahaha!! 😀
Student #3 (male): dude…you’re 16 and your parents are still having to teach you patience for something simple like a video game? c’mon…
Slightly Older Friend (male): My parents tried to limit me to “an hour Saturday, an hour Sunday” of computer time when I was growing up. It didn’t stick.
(More grumbling from several voices, especially Student #1- until 1 hour later)
Mom of Student #1: okay–parent alert! Hi everyone 🙂
Student #1: Ummm hi mom…
I thought this was priceless! I was really proud of the mom. I didn’t ask what happened at home that night, though.
From Paralysis to Practices
There is plenty of fear-mongering out there regarding youth and technology (perhaps you’ve heard about sexting or sextortion.), so I don’t need to pile on the statistics.
What I will do is give you some practical guidelines that I have shared with parents and teens. Perhaps you’ve heard some of these ideas before. If so, use this as a refresher to encourage you to keep these practices front and center in your daily parenting and discipleship of kids.
1) Keep computers in common areas, and stay there yourself.
I had a student tell me recently that every single one of her friends has a computer in the kitchen and family room area of their homes, but that not one parent sits with their sons and daughters when they are online. The entire point of keeping computers in common areas is for parents and other family members to be able to see anything being viewed online that is unacceptable.
Nearly all the students I have talked to do their homework into the wee hours, well after their parents have gone to bed. So they aren’t using laptops behind closed doors, but they might as well because they are using them without adult oversight.
While we certainly want to cultivate trust and responsibility with teens, we also need to let them feel the fences we have built around them. As Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden says, “[Keep] an eye on your child’s texts and online communication, whether it’s via instant messages or Facebook…I’m the parent. If I have to choose between having my child upset with me or having them victimized, I’m going to chose for them to be upset with me every time.” (See: “Parents, Do You Know What These Texts Mean?” CCN.com, Aug. 26, 2010.)
I find that students do best when they have ground rules—and regularly experience these ground rules being reinforced.
2) Allow online access as a limited reward, not an uncontrolled entitlement.
My students hear me tease them about their complaints on their Facebook walls over long hours of homework. They wouldn’t spend so much time on homework if they would quit writing about it on Facebook!
I recommend to parents that students not be allowed to go online until all of their homework is finished. Even then, their access should be kept to a modest amount of time. Unlimited access just creates boredom and entices students to start wandering or saying things online they shouldn’t be saying. I’ve observed dialogues on Facebook that run to more than 100 posts and watched the conversation spiral down from semi-productive commentary to cyber-bullying and name-calling. Fatigue and long-term online activity breaks down judgment and filters.
If teens cannot adhere to these guidelines, follow through with limiting or cutting off online access until they can prove they have the ability to manage their time wisely. Don’t forget that if they have a smartphone they can maintain their Facebook access on their phones.
It’s crucial to hold to the limits you set. Don’t forget what was said in the dialogue I quoted at the beginning: “My parents tried to limit me to an hour Saturday, an hour Sunday of computer time when I was growing up. It didn’t stick.” If your son or daughter knows you can be worn down through persistence, he or she definitely will do it!
3) Consistently monitor what your kids are doing and saying online. If you don’t know how to do that, find out now!
More than once, I have gone to parents’ homes to show them how to navigate MySpace and Facebook, read text messages and save IM dialogues. This is tedious and time-consuming, but I want to serve the entire family, not just the youth. I wish more parents wanted to take the time to learn.
Several years ago, one of my students was posting truly frightening stuff on her MySpace page (the secret one she created after her parents friended her on her first one). Her friends contacted me, really worried about her. She was meeting guys online. I will spare you the rest of the details. I showed her parents her page. They wept, had a massive confrontation with her that night and took away her computer.
A week later, they gave it back to her, saying to me, “I don’t know what else to do—she says she can’t do her homework without her computer! We want her to go to college.” Not surprisingly, this girl went right back to her destructive online practices.
Attorney General Wasden describes their situation well: “For parents, there is a mystique about technology…” I would even say that many are intimidated by it. While I realized I couldn’t do any more for those particular parents, I believe it is possible to understand what is going on.
I counsel parents to view regularly and without warning the texts and IM dialogues of their children. Make sure the kids know before they even get the phone that that is what will happen. There are also several valuable plans that parents can use that limit the hours of texting.
Technology Is a Powerful Tool
This is serious stuff, but I let me end on a genuine, positive note. While there are plenty of reasons to be cautious about technology, I also have found some lovely ways it can be used to support and encourage.
After our annual retreat last month, I checked my email at home. Within one hour of our return, I was excited to see several students post words such as:
Senior: I loved the retreat, love our school, and love Jesus
Junior: Fog+warm friends+fire+the Word of the Lord= an amazing retreat!!
Senior: Wow. It’s times like these you really learn to appreciate your peers.
Junior: Wow. I can’t even begin to describe how much I love my school, my friends, and Jesus right now. What a wonderful day it has been here on our little mini retreat! I feel so blessed to be a part of such a great family as ours. God is very good!
Junior: All glory to God for everything that happened today 🙂
Freshman: What an amazing day!
Believe it or not, technology actually can provide positive peer pressure. Be reminded that teens are frequently very deep, earnest and hungry to grow. That’s certainly why I have stuck with them for so long, and am helping them work through the challenges created by the new technologies they are learning how to incorporate into their lives.
Protecting Against Dangerous Behavior
Many parents have asked me about purchasing various software products that claim to protect children. Likewise, YouthWorker Journal often is asked to review these products.
All of them seek to create elaborate (and seemingly failsafe) ways to prevent users from gaining online access to pornography or gambling sites. However, we need to realize that access is the secondary issue.
One vendor, Saavi Accountability, states the problem well: “There are a number of monitoring and blocking products on the market, but they “primarily serve as online access restrictors and don’t address the underlying issues and addictions.” The company goes on to say that its product “doesn’t rely on technology as the main solution. Instead, it relies equally on the person and his or her relationships to “increase accountability, which in turn reduces online temptations and addictions.”
I consulted with Denny Wayman, a senior pastor for 34 years and a pastoral counselor who frequently deals with addiction in his clients. While he says these programs can be good tools, he says addicts need reinforcement from other people.
“We need to make a choice to stop not just once, but daily,” he told me. “If the accountability of the software is to an entire 12-step type of group, this then brings in a lot of good reinforcement. By itself there are other software programs out there a lot less expensive that just lets your accountability partner(s) know what you are doing.”
In other words, it comes down to diligent relational accountability, not just more technology. The bottom line is that we need to be aware and available as much as possible in order to know what our kids are doing. There are no shortcuts.
Note: You also might want to see what Tim Schmoyer says about the accountability program Covenant Eyes in this article.
Youth Pastor, Young Life and a Local Church; Campus Pastor, Providence Hall High School; Consultant, Youth Ministry Architects; Fuller Seminary Graduate; Writer, Fuller Youth Institute and YMToday.com; Santa Barbara, California. Blog: KellySoifer.Blogspot.com; Twitter: KellySoif.
