Screens and Teens (16 page)

3. We can give them skills for tackling what isn't easy
. This impatient generation needs coping skills for learning perseverance and patience. Sometimes a book starts with a long, slow
wind-up before it gets to the interesting pitch. Sometimes the language of an older work requires a teen repeatedly to tap into Merriam-Webster.com from his or her phone. As you help young people break big or hard tasks down into manageable parts or make yourself available to discuss difficult ideas, you help them conquer that “outdated, slow-paced” but worth-the-effort material. The successful endeavor will strengthen their own competence.

Teens Know Information Is Easy to Find

Websites, search engines, Siri, apps, videos, television documentaries, friends on social media, and other resources exist to help us efficiently get answers to our questions and information we seek. Today's children are missing opportunities to use higher thinking skills, when all they have to do is ask a phone a question or “Google” it.

So how can we help teens value information that takes more time and effort to obtain?

1. We can acknowledge the value of teens' ability to access information
. Teens can quickly find information. That's a definite strength and value. We can encourage them to help us when we have a need to gather information for something.

2. We can help them value what they can get by digging deeper
. While finding quick information is a strength, we need to encourage them to put forth effort to dig deeper than the first hit that comes up after a website search. We can model curiosity and talk about what we learned while spending more time
exploring websites, using books, and comparing information across services.

3. We can help teens discern levels of reliability in information sources
. Especially for those who often use websites for gathering information, we can search with them about a topic that interests them. As we open and peruse four to six resources, we discover that some sites offer shallow summations of a topic, some are incomplete, some are biased, and some contain contradictory information. Our input can help them develop skills for discerning reliable sources. This can compel them to seek more information when doing research in the future.
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Teens Enjoy Infotainment

Information satisfies teens. Because of the one-click-of-a-mouse search-engine mentality of our youth, many are satisfied with the information they find online. My friend Sy Rogers refers to this as “infotainment.” Mere information is like eating donuts to satisfy us for the moment instead of taking in a full meal to nourish us for a longer time. Teens can quickly accumulate lots of information on many topics and be distracted from actually
landing on solid information leading to well-informed decisions and understanding. “Everything matters, so nothing does.”
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Because young people think this quick search-and-grab is all they need, the role of “teacher” is unimportant.

How can we help our young people reach out for more than just what entertains them?

1. We can be alert for teachable moments
. Rather than waiting for teens to ask for help to go beyond information, which will often be hard for them to do, we can offer insights as we engage them in conversations. Talking together makes it easier to help them discover why simply being “infotained” is only satisfying in the moment; true knowledge and wisdom are more interesting, valuable, and life-giving.

2. We can help teens distinguish between knowledge and wisdom
. We can explain the difference between information, knowledge, and wisdom. Information is data gathered; it may or may not be relevant or true. Knowledge is understanding a body of facts and the ideas inferred by those facts.
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Wisdom is applying the right information in the right way in a relevant situation. “From a worldly perspective, knowledge helps you make a living, but wisdom makes a life.”
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While we're mentioning wisdom, let's remember that Christian parents will want to narrow a general definition of
wisdom
to
a godly view of wisdom. One writer defines spiritual wisdom as “the ability to apply the Word of God accurately and correctly, not only in the believer's life, but in the lives of others.”
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Affirm your teens when you see them applying God's wisdom—our Creator's good intent and guidance for our lives.
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Teens Are Comfortable with Perplexity

Teens can handle perplexity. More than the rest of us, this younger generation is comfortable not rushing to find answers. In their book
What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity … And Why It Matters
, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons conclude that young people “relish mystery, uncertainty, ambiguity. They are not bothered by contradictions.”
¹⁰
Today's young people are willing to withhold judgment and may eventually draw conclusions on their own. They don't see the need for a teacher to help them in many important areas of life because they'll use their own opinions.

It's great that teens can handle perplexity and contradictions; most adults realize they must live with a great many mysteries. But a teen's comfort with uncertainty and ambiguity becomes a disadvantage when it keeps him or her from pursuing truth or from grappling with big issues. Teens need adults to offer wisdom and teach discernment skills and model perseverance so that they don't get so comfortable with perplexities that they stop working toward the truth. How can we help?

1. We can acknowledge ambiguities
. It's healthy to admit complexities that are real. When teens do ask questions, it's better if we avoid overly simplistic answers or suggestions for their problems. They can handle some complexity! It's also best to humbly admit when we can't explain something.
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Many of us may get stressed when not able to reconcile ideas. Or we may rush to conclusions because we don't like ambiguity. Being able to handle perplexity can be a good thing, but teens need to see trusted adults handling ambiguities in a healthy manner.

2. We can share about times in our lives when we, too, held conflicting ideas
. We can share what sometimes caused us to arrive at solid conclusions and why we're glad we did. We can assure teens that wrestling with truth is okay—it's a good thing to do! Knowing we have this shared experience may encourage teens to talk with us when they want to draw firm conclusions about things.

3. We can help them agree to disagree with friends
. Many teens are stressed about drawing conclusions because they don't want to alienate anyone who may draw a different conclusion. They're trying to keep their friends happy! They need adult input to help them discern when keeping friends happy is less important than endorsing what's true. We can guide them to the interpersonal skills they need to talk through disagreements with their friends and about how to handle friends who get upset because they disagree. Agreeing to disagree is an important skill for life!

4. We can embrace paradox in our faith journey
. Since today's teens and young adults like mystery and the existence of complexities, discuss what a paradox means and create a fun exercise by asking them how many paradoxical ideas, or mysteries, they can find in Christianity. For example, this could include how both genders represent our Heavenly Father equally, how serving others and not focusing on ourselves usually turns out to bless us greatly, how God is both gentle and powerful, and how in losing our life we find it. Be ready for everyone to grow in understanding and faith!

Teens Are Rarely Quiet

Quiet and solitude are rare. Scientists know that our brains benefit from rest,
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and our own experiences bear out this truth. Quiet and rest benefit our thinking as attention, focus, and deep thinking are developed during these times.
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Chapman and Pellicane concluded, “The constant noise of the Internet, media, and video games is a huge barrier to creative thought and the development of deep thinking in children.”
¹⁴

When writing for the
New York Times
about the tendency to reach for devices when bored, Sherry Turkle concludes, “Reaching for a device becomes so natural that we start to forget that there is
a reason, a good reason, to sit still with our thoughts: It does honor to what we are thinking about. It does honor to ourselves.”
¹⁵

Solitude allows teens to refine their own ideas. Silence increases the likelihood teens will hear God's voice. Both of these encourage meditation. Times of focused reflection on God's Word, His truths, and other things teens value and want to get clear about help them choose wisdom over information. Often this helps young people realize they need teachers.

How can we help them practice quietness?

1. We can increase the quiet in our homes
. Instituting face-to-face connecting zones and media-free days will increase quiet in our homes. Encouraging everyone in the family to spend some of these times alone will help our kids learn to value both solitude and quiet.

2. We can let our kids see us spending time with God
. Having our devotions in a place where our kids can see us, at least occasionally, is a great way to model spending time alone with God because of our love for Him. We can talk about what we gain from these times. When we share, we need to present it for what it is—something normal and expected when spending time with God. If we amp up the spiritual language and make a big deal out of everything, we can intimidate our teens. They may think they're not as spiritual if they don't have elaborate spiritual experiences all the time. Our relationship and times spent with God are special, but we do not have to glow like Moses or make some big show of hearing from Him every time we do.

Parents can help their teens in two big-picture ways. The first is to be the leader/teacher, and the second is to help teens organize and consider the information coming at them.

Guide and Lead Them

Because teens have never known life without technology and its wonderful advantages, they prefer to investigate and discover truth on their own. We can think in terms of them constructing ideas rather than us instructing them in ideas. We facilitate learning rather than transmit ideas. Many teens will resent us if we present ourselves as experts and treat them as blank slates.

And we are wise to find out what they know. Not only will this help our teaching, they'll also see we value them and their experiences. This enhances our relationship. But they need our wisdom and strength to guide and lead them to reject the extraneous and the false and to learn more about what's relevant and true. We can think of them as researchers who investigate ideas and reporters who complete assignments. They learn to verify and re-verify before believing and reporting.
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Teach Them How to Sift, Sort, Synthesize, and Share
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Because many teens have been satisfied with information, thinking skills and study strategies may not be areas of strength. Also, because of the other lies they believe, these skills don't
come naturally to them. For example, they want things to be easy and they want to keep people happy. So by modeling and working alongside them, we can teach teens to sift and sort, synthesize, and share.

Sift and sort
. Teens need to learn how to sift and sort through all the information they have. The first sifting will usually be for what's true and what's false. Then the information that's true needs to be sorted into relevant categories depending on the goals. This can include things like relevant/irrelevant, important/ unimportant, valuable only to me/valuable to others, complete /incomplete, healthy/unhealthy, right/wrong, and good for me/bad for me.

Synthesize
. I've been told by many educators and pastors that teens compartmentalize bits of information more than they synthesize them into a meaningful whole. They often keep information gathered from a variety of sources as separate. We can help them use ideas from one source to influence their interpretation of other ideas. Help them see connections between concepts, or how one piece of information applies to another.

Share
. Because many teens are self-centered, they may need guidance in how to appropriately pass the information, knowledge, and wisdom on to others. They'll need to do this if they're
going to improve the world by helping to solve problems. For example, we can find out if they'd like help with writing skills, public speaking, creating murals and dioramas, communicating through song, and the like. This can include specifics like learning to finish assignments and create products when purposes are different and with certain audiences in mind. For instance, are they writing to persuade or just to inform? Do they want their artistic interpretation to provoke thought or emotion or both? Do they want their song to simply entertain or inspire?

Believing even just one of the lies that technology teaches our youth gives them an unhealthy view of themselves and the world. When believed collectively, these lies can especially confuse their beliefs and behaviors. For example, let's just consider how all the other lies affect this one about not needing teachers but only information.

• Teens who believe they're the center of their own universe want information that is relevant to them. They don't want teachers because teachers probably won't treat them as if the world revolves around them.

• Teens buying into the happiness lie feel that for them to stay happy, information has to be easy to find and understand. They're happier without teachers who could make them work hard to learn what they don't even value.