The social media ban is a reprieve for Christian parents, not a rescue

For many Christian parents, the recently announced ban on social media for under-16s will come as an enormous relief. Perhaps now they can stop worrying about sexting, pornography, self-harm and the many other dangers that lurk online. Perhaps, for a couple more years at least, they might even get their children back.

So, what are we going to do with this brief reprieve? For many of us, the right starting point might be repentance.

That may sound unfair, but under the pressure of “well, everybody has one”, many Christian parents have quietly abandoned attempts to regulate either the amount of social media their children consume, or the content.

Before we start worrying about children’s digital habits, perhaps we need to take a long, hard look at our own

One mother recently told me that on a recent church weekend away, her 14-year-old son had spent much of the time bored and lonely. There were plenty of other teens around, but most of them were staring at their phones. And their parents seemed largely unconcerned.

Many have wisely activated content restrictions, limiting access to pornography and sexual material. Yet there are other harms that may prove every bit as serious: the erosion of attention, concentration, self-control and the ability to delay gratification.

At such a crucial time for brain development, why would parents risk exposing their kids to technology that has been specifically designed to capture attention and cultivate dependency?

For and against

Part of the answer is that Christians have often approached social media using the same strategy we adopted during the sexual revolution: identify the obvious moral threat, build a fence around it, and assume the job is done.

The result is that people know what Christians are against but have little idea what we are for. We have focused on keeping certain things out of the heart, while paying far less attention to what we are trying to cultivate within it.

Which brings us to the deeper issue.

The first duty of Christian parents is not behaviour management, but heart formation. Proverbs 4:23 puts it starkly: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” In scripture the heart is a person’s control centre - the seat of our loves, wants, loyalties and worship.

Therefore, the goal of Christian parenting is the formation of rightly ordered loves. That is why the ability to pay attention, focus on what matters and exercise self-control is not a peripheral issue, but a profoundly spiritual one.

Of course, Christian parents have long understood that the barn door of the heart should not be left wide open. We are mimetic creatures who learn by copying those around us. This is one of God’s good gifts, but it comes with obvious dangers. Crowds do not always move in wise directions.

My own parents understood this. Much of what I was allowed to watch on television as a child in the 1950s was carefully controlled. Cinema visits were confined to Disney films. As a teenager, dance halls - and much of what was regarded as ‘worldly’ entertainment - were firmly off limits. Looking back, some of that caution undoubtedly drifted into legalism, judgementalism and an unhealthy suspicion of pleasure. Yet beneath lay an important insight: what enters the heart matters.

Today, by contrast, we have placed a device into children’s hands whose entire commercial logic is to break the barn doors of the heart off their hinges altogether, allowing a constant stream of influencers to enter and leave at will.

Leading by example

The point is that social media is not merely an old problem in a new form. It is the old problem industrialised, monetised, personalised and carried around in your pocket. It represents a dramatic escalation in the power of distraction. Yet, provided the pornography filter is switched on, many Christian parents have effectively said: “Come right on in.”

This isn’t because we love our children any less. Nor because we are ignorant of the risks. Wherever I speak publicly on this issue, people immediately recognise the patterns I describe, because they experience them themselves.

Our own relationship with these devices may reveal more than we care to admit. Perhaps we have been too distracted by our own habits to notice what we have let loose in the life of our children.

The government may have rescued us, temporarily, from what the eminent psychologist Jonathan Haidt has described as “the greatest destruction of human capital and human potential in human history, leaving aside the two world wars”.

We have focused on keeping certain things out of the heart, while paying far less attention to what we are trying to cultivate within it

Whether or not we accept that judgement, it captures the scale of the concern being expressed by many psychologists and educators. But the government’s action is a reprieve, not a rescue.

More troubling still, followers of Christ should not need politicians to remind them of the importance of guarding the heart. Scripture got there first.

There’s no shortage of practical advice on managing children’s digital lives. But before we start worrying about children’s digital habits, perhaps we need to take a long, hard look at our own. Parents, grandparents and churches need to lead by example.

Our children need more than warnings laced with hypocrisy. Digital technologies offer extraordinary opportunities as well as undeniable dangers. The task before Christian parents is therefore not simply to resist technology, but to tell a better story about it - a story where wisdom stewards attention and hearts are directed toward what matters most.

The ban may buy us a little time. The question is whether we will use it well.

For more advice and guidance on raising faith in the next generation visit premiernexgen.com