Under New Management
This article is an exceptional departure from the goal of this website. But I thought it was important enough to write about:
Paraphrasing James B. Stenson’s Successful Fathers (2001): “The rise of television as an authority figure diminishing or even replacing the role of parents is one of the most significant social changes of the last few decades. It is natural for children and adolescents to imitate – mostly unconsciously – adults who serve as models of personal strength and accomplishment. For centuries, the father filled this role; but today – with work ceasing to be domestic – children seldom see their father displaying character strengths outside the home, nor see other adults show dad respect. Moreover, with television largely replacing conversation between kids and their parents – which used to be the primary form of domestic recreation – where they could at least learn about dad secondhand, children are left with a weak picture of their father – friendly, likable, leisurely, a bit dull, not really deserving of high respect.
Contrarily, studies show that talk show hosts, musicians, actors, and comedians come to be accepted by children as intimate family acquaintances. These entertainers seem to possess those qualities adolescents long for, yet never see in their father – respect, sophistication, confidence, competence, success. These people – whom you largely wouldn’t allow in your house in real life – have an immense impact on how adolescents talk, think, act, and behave. In most homes, the television has replaced the family altar. Even in homes which still have a family altar, the television usually has pride of place. That should mean something to us; it certainly does to our children. For their entire childhood, the television often takes the place of God, society, and parents. They idolize hedonistic rebels, and – because we enjoy such prosperity today – imitate them, spending their time occupied with nothing but amusement and consumption.
This is only exacerbated by the ousting of religion from family life. Throughout history, periods of prosperity have always given us the illusion that we have life under control and led to decreases in religious practice. Today, a large proportion of children experience very little prayer in the home. They almost never see their father pray, but seeing their father and provider pray is how they learn that God is a father and provider. By his attitude toward God and virtue, dad communicates to the children that this is the correct way to comport oneself in the world, to act towards God, and to behave honorably. If this example is lacking, they will find their values amidst the allurements of modern materialism: men are just clever animals, life ends in death, morality is a social convention, religion is a sham, life’s purpose is the pursuit of pleasure, money, and power.”
The words above were published in 2001. Before widespread use of the internet.
The Digital Age
If anyone believes that the above synopsis is an exaggeration, I invite you to visit any high school in the country. Ask kids for a few of their favorite songs; note that nine out of ten will be about drugs, sex, wealth, power, or violence. The average high schooler spends two hours and thirty minutes per day listening to music. Imagine the ideas a malleable young mind can absorb with 2.5 hours of repetitive suggestion every day. If someone wanted to feed your child 2.5 hours of communist propaganda every day, how would you respond to that? Would you benignly say “no big deal, they’re just having fun?”
Read the front page of reddit. Take a look at the comments for a few minutes. Take note of the vulgarity, nihilism, sexual topics, and political messaging. Your kids are. Read the lyrics of a few random songs from the hot 100. Go through a few videos on tiktok. Ditto with youtube shorts. Ditto with ifunny. It’s what your kids do instead of reading a book, instead of praying. Did you know that the average age children see pornography for the first time is about 12 years old (BBFC)? That’s a self-reported stat, by the way. Go set up an instagram account, pop over to the “explore” page, and see how long it takes you to find an image too pornographic to be shown on a public billboard. See how long it takes you to find one featuring a minor.
Let’s also address algorithmic feeds. The type of content modern social media apps feed to people is curated, not actively chosen. That is, unlike going to google with a specific search in mind, one can open their instagram and mindlessly scroll for hours. Imagine someone offered your child endless candy on the condition that they closed their eyes and ate whatever was fed to them. This is how algorithms work on your child’s mind. Further, children lack the life experience and introspection to recognize how many of their beliefs are simply social media implantations. A child who spends too much time viewing curated content becomes their curated content. A human mind, manufactured by algorithms, manufactured by mega-corporations. And let’s not forget astroturfing – orchestrated interactions made to look real to push a product or ideology. One look at reddit will show you how prevalent this.
How much of the internet is influencer media, or propaganda popularized and legitimized by bots? How much will be in 5 or 10 years with the rise of AI? The average young adult spends somewhere between 5-8 hours on their phone every day. How much time do they spend talking to you? The answer is less than 5-8 hours a day. So, who’s really raising them – you, or their phone? You, or the corporation running their favorite app? You, or whatever propaganda the CCP is pumping into reddit, tiktok, and youtube this week? By the way, these are the same sites all their friends are on, essentially transforming even their real-life social interactions into proxies for internet values and propaganda.
Let’s take a look at how these “internet values” are playing out in real life. Youth who use social media more than 3 hours per day – that’s the majority, remember – double their risk of mental health issues. Teen attention spans have dipped below the average attention span of a goldfish in the past 20 years. Social media is associated with a general rise in youth eating disorders. A 2022 study found that around 7% of adolescent males use steroids, largely due to body dysmorphia. Smartphone use among children has had a direct correlation with increases in depression and sleep issues and decreases in social happiness and participation in rewarding activities. Over 25% of teens receive or send sexually suggestive or explicit text messages on their phones. Sexually active youths aged 15-24 account for 25% of the sexually active population, and half of the STD’s.
Four Levels of Defense
Put simply, here is the circumstance: digital garbage is fighting a war for people’s minds, particularly children. In order to win a war, one must strategize, gather weapons, and fight back. We will do all that in this section through the “four levels” of defense.
The first level of defense is relational. This mostly comes down to your behavior. You need to use the TV and your phone sparingly. Otherwise, you’re setting a bad example. Remember Stenson’s words in the intro: prior to the TV existing, the primary form of domestic recreation was conversation. Not only will your self-control help protect your children from becoming addicts, it will improve your relationship with them and encourage them towards a healthy life of the mind. They will be better able to focus, think on their own, and draw conclusions if they spend more time thinking than consuming curated content. Considering they won’t be looking at screens all the time, they’ll probably enjoy reading books as well.
The second layer of defense is location. If your child does not have a phone, you can control the location of their digital life by keeping the family computer in a public space. So part of “location” is being prudent about what level of tech is appropriate for what age. But more universally, it means protecting your children from higher-risk use. The best example of this is keeping a phone basket where the kids deposit their phones at night. I primarily name this because teens are notorious for staying up later than they should playing around on their phones.
The third layer of defense is the router. Your router is the box that radiates wireless connectivity throughout your house. Obviously, putting content blockers here protects the whole house, including anyone using your guest wifi. You do not need to be a tech wizard to figure this out; many options with simple parental control mechanisms are available. One option is to buy a router with built-in parental control tech. Try googling “[brand] parental router.” Here’s NETGEAR’s page for smart parental control routers, for example. If your modem is compatible, Synology routers are generally considered the best router for this. The other option is to buy bark home or a similar device that connects to your router and directs traffic. You can also use this to support the second layer by setting wifi shut-off times if you please.
The fourth layer is device protection. There’s a lot to discuss here. First, you’ll want to set up all new devices with parental controls. You don’t want the kids having admin access, as they’ll be able to circumvent your controls. iPhones have the screen time app, which is a free and extensive parental control app. You also want to make sure to set up devices so that they require a passcode for app downloads and deletions. If this cannot be done using the stock software, you can use tools like Appblock. You will also want to install parental safety and oversight software like kidslox or Covenant Eyes on all their devices. They should not have access to brain-melting social media like instagram and tikotk. It would be wise to set their phones to grayscale in settings. Getting rid of the slot-machine color scheme makes the phone dramatically less addictive.
Conclusion
And I think that’s a good segue into the conclusion: this article is about danger and addiction, not digital devices per se. Digital devices, when used like screwdrivers, are some of the best things you can give a person. There are few things more powerful than an iPhone in a creative kid’s hands. I know people who have learned how to play multiple instruments – including classical piano – using nothing but the internet. Doing research 500 years ago required finding physical books and hoping they had the information you wanted. Today, a few clicks and swipes and anyone on planet earth can read Aristotle or Einstein for free. Anyone can use their phone to view priceless art pieces across the ocean or watch documentaries or listen to Beethoven’s 9th.
The little device most eight-year-olds have a basic capacity to operate is more powerful than the computers that got Apollo 11 to the moon. Smartphones and open access to the internet, used well, is a genuine superpower. I say this to be clear about a few things: this article is not luddite fearmongering. The internet is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. I am a fan of kids using the internet. But like fire, the internet is incredibly dangerous if we’re not careful about how we use it. Giving a 12-year-old unfettered access to the internet is child abuse, and we need to start acknowledging that and acting like it. Giving kids phones without protections means they will be exposed to porn and all other kinds of damaging curated content. We need to stop accepting this as an “out of sight, out of mind” reality and decisively protect our children.