One Parent's Response to Screen Time Addiction

This past Friday, Tenth Church hosted a parenting workshop called "Kids, Screen Time, and the Tangled Web" with award-winning educator Ross Laird. If you missed it, you can listen to it online.

I loved it. Found it riveting, compelling, practical.

But I also felt the niggling touch of fear creeping up. What if my child grows up to become a screen addict? What if my child never learns self-regulation? What if I never learn self-regulation?

Thankfully, Jason Byassee's sermon the Sunday after the workshop was a great counterbalance for me. "What is one thing you fear?" he asked. "Is God not stronger? The only thing that can drive out fear is greater fear. And Christ is worthy of that. Our culture sees nothing but misery in the future. The only hopeful future there is, is in Christ."

Let's not descend into the morass of fearful predictions or regrets. ("Oh no! Baby Einstein has made my kid dumb!") Let's come together as a community and ask Christ to provide the deep resources that our children need in a digital age: mentors, kindly yet firm and encouraging parents who stay in conversation with their kids, and plenty of purposeful pursuits to lead our kids both in and outside of themselves.

So. Workshop speaker Ross Laird suggests these remedies: conversation with our children, mentorship, and healthy outdoor pursuits. How do I find these things or nurture these things in Christ?

Yes, rules, negatives, and boundaries will be necessary. But the positives, the relational goals, the instructive goals, are equally necessary. And to be Christ-like is to have both. Does Christ ask us to come down with an iron fist? Or with a compassionate heart?

Maybe some version of both?

He is, after all, as our Revelation sermon series has been teaching us, the lion-like lamb and the lamb-like lion.