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4 Strategies to Help Your Teens Scroll Less and Live More
Foundational Principles
Virtually every family has to have some version of the “tech talk.” Regardless of your family’s particular decisions regarding how old your children must be to use which particular technologies, every family needs wisdom to navigate this issue. Though biblical wisdom is rarely black and white, and there is much space for Christian families to do things differently, there are foundational principles that should be present in every Christian home’s tech use.
One foundational principle that I strongly recommend is: the smaller the internet-connected device, the older the child must be to have it. Think about internet-capable devices on a spectrum, from gaming console (Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, etc.), to computer, to smartphone. All three of these devices require parental oversight, but such oversight is easier on a gaming console that is connected to a family room TV. It’s less easy on a computer and quite challenging on a smartphone. Families should understand that not all digital devices are equal. Devices that stay in a common area are more open, not just to accountability but to keeping teens from becoming too absorbed in the tech. On the other side, smartphones are addictive precisely because they travel with us. As your family is establishing its rules for technology, pay special attention to which technologies allow for greater transparency—and which ones do not—and restrict accordingly.
Another foundational principle is that secrecy is not allowed. Parents should be able to get into their children’s devices at any time. This means that parents should know the passcodes to every computer, tablet, or phone in the home. While some might consider this a violation of privacy, this is incorrect. The world of the internet is expansive and immersive. It contains limitless people, images, videos, stories, things to buy, things to listen to, things to believe. Parents should think of the internet less like a trivial hobby and more like a spiritual and emotional environment. While parents won’t be able to know everything their teens are dealing with (and greater privacy will come with older age), they should be ready, able, and willing to care for them in the digital habitat.
Scroll Less, Live More
Samuel D. James
Scroll Less, Live More offers 10 practical habits for navigating the world of technology, helping teens keep digital tools in their proper place and find wisdom in God’s perfect design.
One final foundational principle is that wisdom in tech use should be a part of a family’s worship and discipleship. In other words, everyone—parents and teens alike—should be aspiring to use technology well out of love for God and a desire to become more like Christ. How parents talk about the quest for wisdom matters. Ultimately, it is not about getting better grades, or being able to read more books than other kids, or even being a certain kind of family that others admire. A family pursues wisdom in technology because it’s pursuing Jesus himself. Everyone is striving to think, feel, love, and serve like him. Teens should feel that wisdom with technology is a journey they’re joining their parents on, not just a list of rules they have to endure.
With those foundational principles in place, let me offer several suggestions for how parents can help their teens grow in godliness and wisdom with their technology use:
1. Get to know more about the technology in your home, sharing what you learn with your teens.
Many people have no idea how much digital technology works. For example, did you know that social media engineers designed the notification system based on principles in psychology for addictive behavior? Or that “infinite scroll” is the technology most responsible for why we find ourselves aimlessly perusing the web even when we’re not looking for anything? Do you know how an AI chatbot works (answer: by “scraping” data from around the internet, especially forums like Reddit)?
Knowing how these tools work is not just good motivation for implementing wise practices; often, knowing how they work can reveal wise practices themselves. If you and your teen take the effort to learn a little bit more about how and why our digital tools do what they do, you will be more equipped to navigate them well.
Everyone—parents and teens alike—should be aspiring to use technology well out of love for God and a desire to become more like Christ.
2. Make your home a place where friends are welcome.
Recent data indicates that American young people are less likely than ever before to spend time with friends. Why? Partially, because of technology. A culture saturated with “content” to consume has less willingness to tolerate the demanding, often awkward realities of in-person friendship.
Christian homes should be different. The more friendship fills our lives, the less hungry we are for empty scrolling. One of the best things parents can do to train their teens in wisdom with technology is to build rhythms of life that welcome other people. This is harder than it sounds. It requires intentional effort. But the payoff is worth it. If our homes are places where guests are normal, it will also be a place where lonely scrolling feels abnormal.
3. Let boredom do its good work.
Almost every parent has listened to a child complain about nothing to do. In the digital age, it’s so easy to relieve this boredom with online novelty that many parents barely think twice before turning on the streaming service or unlocking the iPad. But boredom isn’t bad. In our own young family, my wife and I have noticed that the more we allow our children to deal with boredom on their own—without screens—the more creative and cooperative they seem to become. We’ve seen our kids reach for toys they seemed to have forgotten about, games that were collecting dust, and creative activities we could not possibly have planned for them.
Boredom can often drive us to explore God’s world. It can make us more willing to notice things, more willing to use our God-given creativity rather than consume someone else’s. For teens, boredom can often give way to remarkable ingenuity and imitation. Let your home be a place where boredom can do its good work in shaping patient, attentive, creative people.
4. Talk about normal life as a gift rather than something to be endured.
Finally, we parents should take note of how we talk about the daily responsibilities and routines of life. Do we complain about life? Do we talk about work, school, church, chores, guests, etc. as something that drains and exhausts us? If so, we may be priming our children to think of life as a problem to which technology is a solution.
We need to honestly admit that in our own lives, technology addiction usually comes in through a door that discontentment has left open. We default to scrolling social media or streaming a new video as a way of interrupting, briefly, the stress and frustration of everyday life. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Though work is futile because of Adam’s sin, work is God’s original destiny for human beings. He has made us embodied people, whose hands and feet are meant to subdue the world and fill it with his glory. Everyday life, even when small and obscure, is not a punishment. It is an adventure of following God and representing his greatness in the world he has made. The way we carry out our daily tasks and the way we talk about the lives God has given us should reflect this.
Living wisely with technology is not something we will do automatically. Sinful people who live in a sinful world need grace. The gospel is the good news that God has sent Wisdom himself, Jesus Christ, to die for foolish, screen-addicted people. There’s no mistake he cannot forgive, and there is no home he cannot bless. Let’s scroll less and live more for his sake.
Samuel James is the author of Scroll Less, Live More: 10 Healthy Tech Habits for Teens.
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