Whether your children have phones and iPads or not, they are massively influenced by social media because of the culture we live in. It can be scary. But you’re still the parent, and you get to have the biggest influence in your child’s life. Youth Pastor and podcast host Aaron Mamuyac, student pastor and host of the We Think God is Awesome Podcast,  joins me to discus ways we can make sure that we are still capturing the heart of our children.

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Show Highlights

• Technology immigrants vs. technology natives
• The social engineering behind the addictive nature of games
• Technology as a force for good as well as evil
• Tweens average 6.5 hours a day exposure to media. Teens average more than 6.5 hours a day.
• The brain development of a child, referencing Episode 97 The Radically Changing World of a Preteen with Dan Scott
• The role of behavioral scientist in developing social media apps
  • You facebook, instagram, and social media feeds are uniquely designed for you, to keep you on the app longer.
  • Age aspiration – where a 13 year old desires to be a 17 year old and is targeted with adds from Cosmo, etc. exhausting that lifestyle.  At the same time, the 30-40 year olds are targeted with marketing that makes them want to look like 20 year olds again.
  • Age compression – an 8 year old has to deal with sexuality and identity
• The fragile psyche that develops from the narcissistic, self oriented world of social media likes and follows
• The emotional tailspin that happens when “normal” hard things hit someone who lives comparing their lives to the false narrative of everyone else’s life
• The 3 aspects of Social media: Curation, Fabrication, Promotion
• The core of the problem – sin. It’s breaking relationships. How can you have real relationships when you’re putting up false images of yourself?
• 3 Fears: People will see me, people will reject me, people with hurt me
• The Solution of the gospel – forgiveness, identity, and belonging.
• How to have more influence than social media in your children’s life:
  • Social media is a megaphone. What’s louder than a megaphone? A whisper of a parent in the ear of their child.
  • Determining a strategy for how much time and access your children will have to phones and iPads.
    • Start with a phone and text. No passwords, no social media.
    • Go slow with introducing new apps on a phone. Very slow. Extremely slow. Even slower than that.
    • When your kids are younger, you want to think for them, when they are older, you have to train them to think for themselves.
    • Be curious about their social media, their friends social media. Scroll with them, ask questions, refrain from judgment of their friends, because your children are gauging how safe they are with  you by the way you react to their friend’s sin and foolishness.

Tweet This

The very sounds on candy crush were engineered for addiction. We grossly underestimate how impactful games and social media are.
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Sins introduced in the developmental time of our teenage years become hardwired in our brain, and can be struggles we wrestle with for life.
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Your social media app feeds are engineered specifically to target you, because they make more money the longer you stay on their app. But it creates a narcissistic identity where the world is revolving around you.
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The reality of Social Media: it's NOT reality!
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Social media is a megaphone. What's louder than a megaphone? A whisper of a parent in the ear of their child.
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If you give your child a phone, and don't realize that within 1 year your child will be a better expert on phones than you, you're fooling yourself. It's your brain vs. the crowdsourced minds of every classmate your child has.
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It's hard for me to tell my children to get off the phone, get off the iPad, get off the TV, when I'm on it.
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Resources Mentioned Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle When People are Big and God is Small by Ed Welch Let’s Parent on Purpose Episode 97 The Radically Changing World of a Preteen with Dan Scott https://www.CPYU.ORG The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement The Tech Wise Family Aaron’s first childhood tech love – http://www.neopets.com Aaron Mamuyac, Sunlight Church, Port Saint Lucie Website: https://www.sunlightcc.org God is Awesome Podcast God is Awesome on Facebook Try you first book on Audible for free: https://www.audible.com/letsparentonpurpose