We're up here than it is down there.
And so, rather than sit here and sweat to death, I figured, I was
take my suit coat off. If you're right that, it's even
if you're not. But if he's in chapter 6
tonight, I'm going to be very, very practical with a try to.
I try to give you some lessons on the family that will help.
We got a lot of young families here and that's tremendous.
That's that is a blessing. It really is a blessing to have
that and but there's also a responsibility then to make sure
that we are teaching on. The family and giving you some
things, that'll be a help. And a lot of times we focus on
spiritual side of things and this is to a certain extent, but
very practical on the other side of the other side of it, we have
been in Shenandoah mountains. The last couple days we left
Monday morning and so decided to take just to step back from.
It takes a lot of a lot of studying to read through and
study through some of these different religions and things
and I like to have an overview of the Our thing before I start
and I didn't get a chance to do that with being gone for these
couple days. So by the time I got into
studying a bunch of this stuff out ended up with just about as
much time into it anyway but if he's in chapter 6, just as a
starting point and I'm not going to give you a lot of versus
tonight. Fact not very many at all but
this one will be helpful for you.
I hope Ephesians chapter 6 and verse number 4.
Of course you know, one verse to verse 3 but verse 4 says and ye
father's provoke, not your children.
Children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture and the
admonition of the Lord. And that's kind of the focus of
this. Bring them up in the nurture and
the admonition of the Lord. And again, it's two fathers,
it's for fathers and mothers. It's for families.
This is, this is one of those things I remember growing up
when my when my pastor would get up there and preach on
discipline, you know, spanking your kids and all itself.
The parents were like, this is something we need the kids were
like, no, we're going to go home.
We're going to get spanked. Everything, right?
And this may be one of those things that's not disciplined,
but one of the biggest discussions, I think in families
with up-and-coming teenagers is cell phones and, you know, kids
want them parents. Don't think it's a good idea to
give them to him and even though there may not be a lot of back
and forth because the kids know better.
They're still the expectation that at some point cell phones
going to be coming their way and I've said, for a long time that
my kids are not going to have phones that give them access to
much of anything. And I said that, when they were
Little, and I still say that now, and I supposed to a certain
extent, there's a little bit of pressure to let them have a
phone and whatever else. But I'm not, I'm sure it's not
exactly what they want to hear, but they already know it's not
coming their way anytime soon and so it's not really
surprising them, but I want to give you some reasons tonight
that you should seriously consider in relation to delaying
giving your children a smartphone.
Yeah, I'm not a mean, a phone is one thing, I'm talking
specifically tonight smartphones and so on.
Into it. I think this will be helpful.
You number one, when they get a phone, Everything Changes.
I've heard many stories of parents who have regrets and
giving their kids a phone too early or too soon because of how
the relationship changes and their parental influence really
Wayne's after the kid gets a cell phone.
And again this is might want to just take, I got six or seven
different reasons tonight that maybe you can write these down
and these are is just a guideline just something to help
you tonight. As you consider because you're
going to come across this discussion at some point or
other with your children, over the course of the time that
they're teenagers or before that or beyond that.
Honestly, I'm surprised at how many parents are giving their
kids, you know, iPhones at eight, you know, seven eight,
nine years old, and these kids are walking around with phones
in their hands and they're on a Non-Stop.
And I mean, it used to be that it was a teenage thing.
Now it's getting earlier and earlier and earlier but I think
these things will be For you too, as we consider these
tonight. But the first one is that
everything changes when they get a phone, don't take this the
wrong way. But parents, whose influence is
not strong enough to tell their children?
No, they're not going to get a cell phone.
Often is not strong enough to control that phone.
Once the kids actually get it and they're not strong enough to
keep whatever influence they do. Have once the kid gets a phone,
it doesn't take much looking around to see that kids all over
the place are walking around with phones in there and we were
we were sitting up there. And you're in the mountains, you
can't even get service anyway, right?
These guys are laughing because they probably know what I'm
going to say. But we were sitting at the
little Wayside restaurant and and this family gets out of the
car, little kid, you know, I don't know.
Five, six, seven years old, jumps out, he runs in front of
everybody, runs into the store, you know, and then the mom gets
out in the dead gets out. And this this kid that looked
exactly like the little one, but just like a bigger version of it
comes walking past doing this on his phone, the whole way into
the store, didn't even know what he was going.
If he didn't have somebody that he Following close behind
otherwise, you know, but you're in the mountains, you can't even
get service in here. Your, your life is focusing
around the cell phone. So, given your kids an outlet to
go, complain, about anything and everything.
You do certainly is not really giving you the influence, over
them that you want and need to have or given you an opportunity
to keep impacting them for as long as you should while they're
in your home. But you have to remember in the
whole discussion that you are the parent, right?
And again, we go back. Back to our verse in Ephesians
chapter 6, father's provoke, not your children to wrath but bring
them up in the nurture and admonition of the lord, it's
your responsibility. What happens in your home?
And you are the parent. It doesn't matter how much your
kid whines about wanting a phone.
Doesn't matter how much they whine about whatever else it is
that they want. You're the parent and honestly,
my kids know, the more they want about something, the less the
chances are that they're going to get it.
It's just I mean what you know what the dangers are you know?
What? The drawbacks are to having the
cell phones and everything else and it's your responsibility /
to protect them from those dangerous, no matter how much
they whine and complain about it know, some kids who get a job
early will offer to pay for their own phone because they
know they can Jackson's already. Brought that up with me.
Well, Dad, when I'm old enough, can I, if I can get my, if I can
pay for it, can I have it? No, because it's not about
paying for it. It's not that.
I'm so poor that I can't afford to buy a phone for them.
There's a lot of other dangers and we're going to talk about
those. tonight, but I'm still the parent.
They're still the child, it's still my responsibility as a
dad, whether they're paying for the destruction or not to make
sure that I am bringing them up in the nurture and the
admonition of the Lord, I had several jobs.
You know, when I was in high school I stayed very busy
working for several different people and believe it or not, I
survive without a cellphone. Now, that was back in the day
when hardly anybody had them. Actually my parents did remember
the next cell phones where actually you could bleep, you
know, and you could actually use them like walkie-talkies, that
was the coolest thing that ever came.
Around and I thought, you know, my parents were going to get me
one of these things and I can use it because now I'm going
here and there and they didn't, let me have a phone and you know
what I survived I made it. And it happened that most of the
time, they would call my parents and say, hey can he come over?
We need this work done and I wish they'd get it set up and I
go over there and do the work. And, you know, and I think every
parent can say that for the most part, we didn't always have a
phone and we live, you know, and it used to be that parents would
say, you know, when they get a car, everything changes and it
Does. But now we're taking a step back
and we're saying when they get a phone, everything changes and
most of it happens in the influence that the parents have
over the children, they lose that influence when the kid gets
a phone, because now they have somebody else to be their
parent. This little device in their hand
becomes the parent instead of mom or dad.
So I think, you know, just know that on the day that you allow
your child to get a phone, everything's going to change.
Not my kid. Yes.
Your kid, Everything Changes on the day, they get a cell phone
number to these. This another reason why at least
you should do lay it. All right, phones, do not lend
themselves to spiritual growth. And, again, the cell phone
itself is not inherently bad. I'm specifically talking tonight
about smartphones in the everything that comes along with
it because, you know, okay. If you could get a flip phone
that had like, remember remember back in the day when you wanted
to send a text And you wanted to say, stop you had to say s St.
And then you had to whatever the oh was, you know, you had to get
to the, oh, I mean, it was very, very slow, right?
And if that's all you had then, okay?
Probably, you're okay with that, all right?
But phones, don't have just that capability anymore.
They come with a whole lot of other things and of course, the
kid who's trying to convince his Christian parents.
Let him get a phone will say that they're looking forward to
all the spiritual conversations, they're going to have with their
friends and you know how much they're going to enjoy sharing
Bible. He's with each other and all
this stuff when they finally all get phones together, right?
Doesn't usually work that way. Every adult who has a phone
knows that the obvious is more likely going to be true.
There's so much Temptation available at the fingertips of
anybody that has a cell phone. And by the way, it's a great
idea as a parent, even for you to have safeguards on your
phone, right? My wife has access to any
account that I have. She has my password to
everything. I'm not sure.
I don't want to have something that I'm trying to hide from my
wife, right? But when you put that into the
hands of a teenager, even if you take precautions and by the way,
if you do have a decide to give them a phone, they should not
have a phone without a lot of precautions on it, but they're
always around just about everything and brother.
Josh probably knows a whole lot more about that than I do but
there's a lot of people who know how to find ways around any
safety net that's there and they do, they do it.
In more technical or technological, somebody is the
better. They are at it, but there are
always ways around just about everything and that phone is not
lending itself to spiritual growth but by giving them a
phone essentially, you're exposing them to all the
worldliness and the trends of tick-tock and Instagram and I
don't even know all the other social media things out there,
but but I know enough about them to know that.
That is where everybody goes to find out what's popular.
That's where everybody goes to find out, what's in?
That's where everybody goes to try to, See what they have to
do. To be like, essentially, is what
it comes down to. And I've witnessed a lot of
young people over the years, with phones in the trends,
certainly does not lend itself to the, you know, to the kids
who got phones becoming more spiritual.
And I'm not, I'm certainly not saying that.
There's anything inherently evil about a cell phone but rarely
have, I seen it helped their spirituality number three.
Phones amongst teenagers often lead to bullying and regret.
And again this is this is a very practical aspect of it
spirituality set aside but I'm certainly not an expert on cyber
crime or anything like that, but I follow what goes on.
And I know that it's a huge problem and I'm interested in
the crime world I suppose. That's one of the reasons why I
enjoy doing the police stuff and I know Kevin's probably in the
same boat with me on that I stay up with it.
I like podcast about that kind of stuff, just to just to keep
My fingers in that at least a little bit and understand what
goes on in that world and so on. But kids constantly getting
bullied on group, text and Snapchat, Snapchat and Instagram
and lots of other ways and honestly, if those platforms
were not there than there, probably bullying on the
playground, like they're always used to be, right?
But the difference is that's done in secret and bullying on
the playground. Hey, you can hear it, you can
see it. An adult can intervene if they
notice that something's going on, but what's happening now is
these kids are living in their own world.
And not only does that open them up to all these, you know,
pedophiles and everything else. But on top of that, what happens
is they end up in their own little private world where
nobody else knows what's going on.
And I know Kevin's probably been on many of them.
I've been on a good handful of them ourselves were teenagers
committed suicide because they were being bullied on one of
these group. Social media sites that nobody
else knew about and turns out. Once they started going back in
there and trying to figure out why did this kid commit suicide?
Because somebody made fun of them, somebody was picking on
him, this happened that happened and they didn't feel like they
could tell anybody about it because it was in this little
bubble that's hidden from the rest of the world.
So even if they don't kill themselves, a lot of them are
left with scars that last for many many years and and and some
that they never get over and so phones amongst teenagers often
lead to that bullying and regret.
Number four, Young people are particularly vulnerable to
addiction and this is a serious issue that for some reason a lot
of parents overlooked and and this this is bigger than cell
phones. This this this gets into video
games computer games, you know, Playing games on the iPad or
whatever else, but obviously addictions can develop at any
stage in a person's life, but there's a lot of evidence out
there. Now, in a lot of studies that
have been done to suggest that that teenagers are very much
more vulnerable to addiction, and there's been a lot of
studies one that I read in particular, that was actually
very good that explained. Why kids end up getting addicted
because most kids believe it or not, most kids that are good at
that, it get addicted to smoking or drinking.
Bugs or drinking or pornography, or any of the things that they
end up addicted to as a lifetime addiction start between the ages
of 12 and 14 and some much earlier than that 12 and 14.
And in this one study that I was reading in particular, it went
into explaining how their prefrontal cortex and all this
stuff is being formed and at that age, they don't have the
ability to rationalize their decisions and so they just do
things on a whim and obviously a lot of these things, Things are
designed to be addictive, right? Nicotine itself is addictive.
Alcohol is addictive. Drugs are addictive, this Social
Media stuff is addictive. And so it's becoming very
increasingly clear that a lot of the algorithms that are built
into these social media sites are designed to draw, not just
people, but especially kids into them.
No matter what viewpoints we have for as long as possible.
And and those tools are developed Up to be addictive.
You wonder why you start scrolling on Facebook and you
can't get off, they design it that way.
It's an algorithm that's designed to keep you there.
As long as you can. The more you scroll, the more
they get revenue from the ads that you see and click on and
everything else. Of course they're going to do it
that way and kids in that teenage in those teenage years
are very much more susceptible to addiction.
You give them a phone when they're 12 13 14, 15.
Years old and they developed that addiction.
At that time, it's an addiction. That probably, unless there's
some kind of outside intervention, they're never
going to break and they're going to be walking around at 30 years
old still addicted to that phone and not being able to get off of
it because that's exactly how they're designed in these social
media apps and everything else. One researcher that was talking
about this whole area several years ago, compared giving us a
cell phone to a kid to giving him access to the alcohol
cabinet. That's how addictive social
media and phones and all of that stuff is number five and this
kind of goes right along with that, but social media use is
frying. Kids brains.
Remember back in the day 90s, maybe even the early 2000s, used
to be that the biggest war in favor of teenagers was the War
on Drugs, right? Nancy Reagan.
This is back in the 80s, going way back but it stayed around
for a while. Remember the Dare program dare
to keep kids off drugs and everything else?
That was the big push. Because kids were getting
addicted to drugs and they were frying their brains on drugs and
everything else. There's a lot of years of
research showing what drug, use does to the brain, and they had
a, another had an ad campaign. I think they probably still do
to a certain extent, this is your brain.
This is your brain on drugs and it just shows you like, you
know, looks like a scrambled egg essentially.
And so I mean that's based on all the years of research of
what drugs does to a person in their brain and everything else.
There's only a few years of research on the implications of
social media on the brain. Because social media has not
been around for all that long, especially when it comes to, you
know, kids using it and especially the developing brains
of teenagers. But the early research actually
is very troubling in what this social media lifestyle and
social media world is doing two teenagers essentially.
But the research is showing that teenagers are being trained to
read in short chunks, not being able to grasp any kind of
meaningful information. They can't, they can't engage in
Long. Emotional reading, at all.
When's the last time you walked out in public and saw a kids
sitting somewhere reading the book.
Nice to carry a book with me everywhere when I was when I was
growing up, I mean, I love to read write and used to see kids
sitting all these and see kids at the library reading books and
all this, you don't see any of that anymore because they can't
even comprehend that. Because everything they have is
a short, little blurb of, you know, 160 characters, or
whatever it is that it allows you to do on these social media
sites. They don't read books anymore,
they don't, they don't, they don't develop social skills.
Everything is done through a text message, right?
I don't know how to talk then. How to interact with anybody
because of that they're losing their ability to rationalize and
what's happening is that is in turn making them less happy and
more anxious than any previous generation.
And all of these things are things that have been researched
out and studied out. And then we wonder why they
can't sit in church and pay attention for 30 minutes during
the service, right? We wonder why, you know, in
order for there to be some kind of Youth Activity, it has to be
fun, exciting and exploding with all kinds of everything because
they can't pay. Tension long enough.
And so, they learn nothing in a youth meeting.
They learned nothing in, you know, they can't sit in church
and so they send all the teenagers out of the auditorium
to go have fun with the youth. Pastor, who just got through the
same thing, himself. Right.
Who still can't keep himself off of his phone either because he
grew up in that same lifestyle and he's addicted to it to,
right? And then we wonder why our
churches are falling apart and why everything has to be a big
party scene to keep people coming.
And I'm kind of being facetious a little bit but, but really,
I'm not because this is exactly what's happening in our
churches. There is one of the last kids
can't sit down and read through a commentary to understand the
Bible because they've never had to do that before because there
are they've got this phone that gives them two sentences and
then they can move on and read another two sentences about
something else. And read another two sentences
about something else and look at this picture from that
happening. And this, you know, and They're
being trained to do. And social media is destroying
their cognitive abilities. And we wonder why we have the
dumbing down of America. Social media is doing it and
we're putting the tools in their hands to make that happen.
You know. Kids have to be constantly
entertained or they don't want to do it.
Kids have to be constantly, you know, charged up.
Or it's not as exciting as sitting over there in the
corner, scrolling through some social media post, right?
There's a lady by the name of Jean twinge wrote a book called
ijen. And she says this, in the midst
of the pandemic, doctors are reporting a rise in Tourette
like symptoms that they believe me.
Be caused by too much social media, use specifically too much
time on Tick-Tock Tourette's. I mean, You wonder why so many
kids today have? So many neurological issues
right there, wasn't around 30 years ago, right?
ADD and ADHD in this D and that be and all that, right?
I mean, why is that? I think it has a lot to do with
this kind of stuff, and unfortunately, I think that a
lot of parents, see a phone is a type of babysitter.
So they don't be bothered to have a conversation with their
teenagers and essentially what they're doing, is stunting that
parent-child bonding time over. That'll actually matter in life.
They're trading what? Little time they have with their
child for a few minutes of Peace so they don't have to have this
conversation so they don't have to be bothered with their kids
because they got all this busy stuff going on in their life and
essentially what they're trading at for is you know, no
meaningful conversations with their kids unless they can pull
them away long enough to have one.
And once you give them that phone, everything changes and
you're not going to get it back. Number 6, this kind of goes
right along with what we've just been talking about.
But the development years are critical.
The teenage years, especially our critical years for teenagers
morally psychologically cognitively and spiritually.
They are as teenagers. They are developing what they
are going to be as an adult. And that's when they learn a
sense of who they are, they learn how to learn.
They learn how to develop that, moral compass, they learn how to
develop their spirituality and to do so many more things.
And I'll be honest with you, most of the decisions that I
made. That helped me to become what I
am. Now I made, when I was a
teenager, I made it at Youth Camp.
I made it in, you know, teen conferences, I made it at those
times when I was still developing into who I was
becoming, and what's happening now is the same exact thing.
You have these youth conferences and everybody's on their phones.
And they're not even paying attention and they're not
developing spiritually. And if by chance, God gets ahold
of their heart in their 20s. Then we're salvaging a couple
here and there rather than an entire generation.
We're losing a generation because of these cell phones and
there's so much research out there and how young people
develop and and yet they're so little known in terms of how
social media is impacting that development and all the initial
indications are that, it's not helping in the least.
And that, in fact, it's greatly harming, our children, as
they're growing up, they essentially what it comes down
to As a society is that we're in the middle of a giant
experiment. And I, for one, don't
particularly care to have my kids be Lab Rats and this giant
experiment of social media and how it affects our kids and
their brains, right? I want them to grow up learning
how to learn. I want them to grow up learning
how to, to be spiritual young people apart from a phone.
Your identity is not in a cell phone, your identity.
If you're saved is in Jesus Christ, you don't need all of
that stuff, and not just that, but It's from a purely physical
standpoint, harming our children here's another thing.
Number 7 only got this is the last one.
I'm gonna give you a couple of a couple of things as we close
kids are absorbed in anger and polarization at a time when they
should be enjoying life. Some days.
I wish I could go back to the Carefree days of being a kid.
I'm glad I'm an adult. I don't want to be a kid
forever, but sometimes it's it would be nice to just go back to
the days when you had no responsibility wouldn't go back
to the time when you could go out and play cops and robbers if
you wanted to or Cowboys and Indians and you could play as
long as you wanted and nobody cared right.
There was no other responsibilities that you had
other than making sure you ate right other than making sure
your room was clean when you got to bed you know, when you when
you got up in the morning or whatever else There was easy.
There was no real responsibility and what's happening now and I
mentioned these algorithms already, but these these
algorithms and social media are designed to keep you online.
And so, Have you ever been angry at a post that you read on
Facebook or one of these other sites?
I'm sure you have, right? Have you ever you ever been
polarized by some news Outlet or news story?
I'm sure you have and essentially what happens is the
same thing as happened with kids and it's just pulling them
deeper and deeper into a Viewpoint.
That's taught them to hate everybody else who doesn't hold
that same Viewpoint. Now completely different from
saying that we ought to hate sin and everything else.
I'm not saying that well you know we should You know, accept
this or that because you know, it's a different Viewpoint.
I'm not saying that, but some people don't even realize that
the information they're being fed through their social media
posts is tailored to, keep them online and information that
other people are not seeing because the algorithms are all
given those people completely different set of information.
And so now you have two people who are completely Polar
Opposites against each other and anger and frustration and that
can just be pulled to the surface because anger and
frustration, keep people on those platforms.
So they're keeping them mad. That they're keeping them angry
so that they'll stay on those platforms and our kids are being
sucked into that. And as you're being sucked in
now they're growing up as angry people instead of getting
outside and playing like they should be their kids, right?
They're going to grow up and they're going to have
responsibilities and they're going to be adults and they're
going to have families and they're going to be dealing with
all that stuff for the rest of their lives.
Let them be kids as long as they can be kids, right?
As much as it as much as that is unhealthy for us how much you
know, how much more unhealthy is it?
For kids, they don't need to grow up yet, they're going to
spend the rest of their lives as grown-ups.
Let them let them keeping them from that phone.
Just let some hold onto that innocence and that childhood a
little bit longer. And I'm glad my parents kept us
in a bubble and kept us away from a lot of that stuff and I'm
glad for that. I was able to be a kid and I had
to be an adult at 12:00 because I saw way more than I should
have seen or I heard way more than I should have heard.
Or I was drawn into all these adult conversations way too
early. And I'm thankful for that.
And that's one of the things that our kids are missing out on
by being drawn into all of this Social Media stuff at such a
young age, they're not kids, they're grown up at 14, right?
And we're missing out on that. Let me, let me kind of close
with this. Let me answer some arguments.
All right, because I don't deal with it a ton, but I hear a lot
of these different things. And so number one, they need to
have one so that I can get ahold of them.
That's a, that's a number one argument.
I fuck it has to have a phone. I got to be able to get ahold of
Everyone, I would like to know how many parents actually really
do use that phone to get a hold of their kids when they do have
a phone, but be sure you're sending them a people that
you're comfortable with sending them with and you don't even
have to worry about really getting hold of them, right.
We're going. We're going to to teen camp here
in order Youth Camp, here in a few weeks, and they're going to
be responsible adults who are going to be responsible for your
children and if you can't trust them too, if you can't trust the
people that you're going to send him with and they have to have a
phone so you can get a hold of him 24 hours a day, then you.
Only not sending them with people that you should be
sending what's in the first place, but you could give them a
phone with only minutes and texting on it.
And that's what we do for our kids.
We leave them at home every now and then, we'll run up to store
Jackson's, getting to the point where he's able to kind of stay
home with the younger ones, and they can handle themselves for a
little bit of time. They have a phone at home, that
can make a phone call, and can send a text, and there's two
phone numbers in it, mine and my wife's, and that's the only
thing they know how to do is send a text and make a call.
They absolutely need to get ahold of somebody because
there's an emergency or something like that, they can do
it. They doesn't have any internet
ability, it doesn't have any capability, they don't know, any
of the passwords. They don't know any of that kind
of stuff because I don't want them to be able to have that
because it's not good for them to have.
Second thing that I hear a lot of times there's no it's going
to stunt their growth in technology and honestly this is
one that I have in the back of my mind.
Sometimes you know, these guys have never really been on a
computer. They've never been on a
smartphone where they can get on there and mess around and play
around and do whatever they want to do.
And I think, you know what, they're growing up in a computer
age and they're going to get to the point where they're going to
be, you know, 18 years old and they don't even know how to turn
a computer on and I know it's going to put them back and
everything else. Do you know that Steve Jobs?
The guy who invented the iPhone and the iPad and all these other
things did not let his own children.
Have a cell phone or an iPad. Did you know that?
He said it was be it would be way too detrimental for them to
have one of those things. They said around at the dinner
table just about every single night and had dinner together.
No phones, no iPads, none of those things and you know what
Steve Jobs as, probably one of the smartest Tech Minds it's
ever been that's ever lived and maybe he's the one that's
responsible for all of this stuff.
So maybe we should be blaming him but obviously didn't feel
that it was so important that his kids be technologically
advanced that they were never going to be able to catch up.
Kids pick up things very easily and I've learned that, you know,
we have an iPad that every once in a while, we'll let the kids
play some games on, you know, how long it takes him to figure
stuff out about 10 seconds and they know more about it than I
do. By the time they're done in
those 10 seconds, they'll pick it up, they'll figure it out.
You don't have to have an iPhone to stay up to technologically
up-to-date and all those things. Number three.
And I think this is a big one that people Fall prey to.
I don't want them to feel out of place.
Well I got to get my kid a phone that, you know, the everyone
else has a phone to my kid needs to have one too.
It's a very weak argument. We're trying to teach them to be
different from the world, number one, and number two, it's better
to have them feel out of place than to lose them or subject
them. To all the harmful things that
we just mentioned. I ride with officers a lot.
And, you know, we'll get to talking about something and
somehow, And I can't even tell you how many times this
conversation is come up for whatever reason.
I'm talking about drinking or something like that.
And I'll say, you know, I've never had one sip of alcohol in
my life. Never tasted it.
Don't have a desire to taste it. What you've never drink alcohol.
I said, nope. And you know what?
Almost every single time they say, you know what, it's
probably better that way. Probably better that way.
They drink, they go to all these different breweries and
everything else in a lot of their lives.
Revolve around that drinking and everything else, but when they
look back, they say in their mind, you know what?
I wish I'd never started that in the first place and I think the
same thing is true with your children when it comes to
phones, if they're being honest, and look, I'm far enough away
from it now that I can look back and I can be honest, I'm glad I
didn't have that stuff. When I was a teenager, I wanted
everything that all the other teenagers had my parents rarely
gave it to us. I'm glad they didn't.
Ask me that then I would never have said that.
Ask me that now I'm glad they didn't do it.
Did it make me different? Yeah, because there was other
kids that had stuff that I wish I could have had that.
I wish I could have done that. My parents just didn't let me do
but now that I'm looking back on it, I'm glad they didn't.
Let me do those things. Well, they didn't give me that
stuff and this is one of those cases where everybody's got one.
My kids got to have one of their going to feel out of place.
You can be glad that you didn't, and so will they here's the
fourth one that I hear often, as well?
I just have to trust my kid. I know it's probably not the
best, they're going to make mistakes, but I just have to
trust them to make the right decisions.
It's not that I don't trust my kid.
It's that I don't trust his flesh.
And neither should you the same way that I don't trust my flesh.
If I put that in his hands and give him the ability to make
those decisions. Then inevitably he's going to
make some wrong ones and those decisions may be way bigger.
Then he even realizes they are maybe even have way more
consequences than I realized at the time when I gave it to him,
there are plenty of other places in ways that they'll be put into
positions where they're gonna have to learn to make the hard
decisions. The consequences for not making
the right decisions. In this area are far too
dangerous for me to feel that. It's worth it.
This this was not a large study that was done by any stretch.
But I've read about one. That was it was actually
conducted amongst High School juniors.
And every one of them had a cellphone that had been given to
them by their parents and they asked them to be transparent
about the issues of cell phones. And many of them admitted that
social media has been a very big struggle for them.
This is 11th graders, 16, 17 years old, That's something that
should not be a very big struggle for a 16 or 17 year
old. Because they shouldn't even have
that in front of them, but they were willing to admit.
They were very open and honest in the piece of advice that came
out as they wrote down in this little questionnaire and I think
they did it fairly anonymously. So that, you know, it was, it
was not something where they could go talk to these
individuals or whatever else, but the openness more than
anything else, was they said as 11th graders.
Don't give your kids phones for as long as you can help it.
That was from. 11th graders the biggest piece of advice that
they gave in this study. Don't give your kids phones for
as long as you can help it as a pretty interesting conclusion
that they came to and when you're in 11th grade saying that
and you know it's a big problem because you're trying to do
everything you can to convince your parents, why you need to
keep it. Here's my conclusion that I came
to. We can always add a phone.
It's very hard to take it away. I obviously don't know everyone
in the world but I don't know of anyone who has permanently taken
away a smartphone from a kid that they had previously given a
smartphone to. Not that you can't take it away,
but what happens. So often is if you caved and
gave them that phone in the first place.
Then do you have the ability to go back and take it away from
him? Probably not.
When I, when I cut my hair, I don't usually take as much off
as I'm planning to take off. I take off a little bit at a
time because you can always take off more.
You can't put it back on once you've taken it off, right?
And the opposite of that is true with the phone, it's easy to
give a phone, it will be. I assume very, very hard to take
it away. So I think it's much better to
err on the side of caution for all the reasons that we
mentioned here tonight. I'm not saying that you, you
know, I'm not, I'm not sure, I'm not, I'm not your kids parent
you are you have to make that decision when you think the time
is, right? And when you think they're able
to handle it, I am just cautioning you on some reasons
why you should wait as long as you possibly can to give them
not just a phone necessarily but that technology because it's
going to have an effect on them and as soon as it gets into
their hands, Everything changed. Are you willing to deal with
those changes? Because as parents it's our
responsibility to bring them up in the nurture and the
admonition of the Lord. And if there is a tool that I
can keep out of their hands to help them in that process of
bringing them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord,
then I want to do it. I don't want to give that tool
to them, that's going to put them in a position where they're
going to be compromised or where they're going to fall or where
they're going to fail or where they're going to not succeed as
a Christian in their life because I put Thing in their way
that became a stumbling block to them and then I failed in my
position as a father to train them up in the nurture and the
admonition of the Lord, just a caution tonight.
That's all that is. And hopefully some things that
you can use that will be a help to you as you're making those
decisions, they're going to come, you're going to have to
make those decisions. Hopefully, this will help you to
be a little bit more informed and how you do it.
All right, let's pray will be done.
Father, we love you, give me. Thank you so much for your
goodness to us. Thank you for the word of God.
I thank you for practical things that we An use in our lives,
that will help us too. Raise our children for you.
That's ultimately our goal is we want our children to reflect the
Holiness of God in their lives and as fathers in particular,
but even as parents in general, it's our responsibility to raise
them for you and to put them on the best path that will get them
as close to you as they grow up in their lives.
And so, I pray that you give us wisdom.
I pray that you give us discernment.
I probably should help us to to be the guides to our children
that you expect us to be. Thank you for all that you do.
Course, in Jesus name. Amen.
Your? Dismissed.