Happy Spring! For the next thirty days, I’m offering 20% off lifetime paid subscription. I really value research and aim to bring you high quality posts each week on screen time and kids, all from a Biblical worldview. I’m extremely grateful for your support.

I’ve read a lot of great stuff over the past week or two that I couldn’t help but share, so here it goes:

1. Zak Mellgren
   posted “AI Devotions Are Here. Now What?” I’ve written before about my concerns surrounding an “AI Jesus” but in this post, Mellgren really gets into the details about why using AI to supplement or replace Biblical thinking, community, and history is dangerous and unwise. Understanding what it means to be human, and teaching that to our kids, is vital in this current age!! I appreciated Mellgren’s take on the works of C.S. Lewis. God appointed a time for Lewis to die, and pretending we can commune with Lewis through an AI chatbot is foolish. (Am I going too far when I say this reminds me of King Saul trying to commune with Samuel????) Our collective desire to use certain forms of AI and social media is one of the more subtle ways Christians are being drawn into opposing God’s created design of personhood. God did not give us the gift of omnipresence or omniscience, but that hasn’t stopped us from using digital technology to be god-like. In Mellgren’s own words:

   I’m sure bible.ai is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AI devotional assistants. The temptation will be real for Christian companies and perhaps even publishers to create apps like this, and in turn the rest of us will face the temptation to use them. I want to encourage us to recognize that AI, in the kind of capacity we see on display in bible.ai, is not a wisdom or preference issue. It’s a sin issue - one we need to draw a line in the sand on.

   Go read the entire post. A lot of these thoughts had been swirling in my mind, and I think Mellegren’s take is spot-on and well communicated.

   

2. Samuel D. James
   wrote another good post on digital consumption/privacy and Christianity this week. He hits on a point that is at the very root of my work: the church hasn’t done much in the way of thinking theologically about digital consumption. As it relates to digital porn consumption, he writes,

   Software that monitors your browsing history and sends a report to an accountability partner is not really holistic rethinking of privacy; it’s more of an emergency intervention. In fact, the advantage of such software is that it’s entirely compatible with a lifestyle of digital consumption.

   Frankly, it’s surprising to me that we don’t have similar accountability apps for women who need to cut down their social media scrolling or online shopping. Best as I can tell, James is handful of years younger than me (aka - not in his 40’s, raising teenagers),1 so I will take his post a bit further and say that the shear fact that the church hasn’t thought much about a theology of digital consumption is enough reason to stop giving kids and teens access to the internet via smartphones and ipads. The unintended consequences of relying on parental controls to train our children for godliness is, thus far, a major cultural disaster. In fact, it is THE reason I started writing this substack.2

3. The best way to teach 5-9th graders about digital media and brain development is to pick up a copy of

   Be ScreenStrong
   ’s newly released Kids’ Brains & Screens Home Edition course. I can’t recommend it enough! In fact, if you look at the Parent Endorsment page, I’m “Emily, mother to two boys.” (Jonathan Haidt, Victoria Dunckley, and Richard Freed also lend their endorsements if you’d rather take their word for it.)

   

   My oldest and I beta tested the orignial version of the book two summers ago and I’m so pleased a condensed, less expensive option is now available for families. My husband will be going through it with our youngest this summer. Though this book isn’t Christian in purpose or design, I can confidently say parents who hold a Biblical worldview, won’t find anything objectionable. Buy it now.3 Seriously.

4. Finally, lots of people are talking about Netflix’s Adolescence. I haven’t seen it on account of not having an Netflix subscription, but I will recommend a tamer, non-fiction alternative in podcast form: “16,000 Videos to Real Life” on Apple or Spotify. Pastors, please take the 30 minutes to listen. Fellow screen reduction advocate, Andrea, and her son Colin discuss the painful experience of in-school screen addiction and their journey out of it. It’s inspiring, honest, and not overly dramatic.