Sometimes the hardest part of healthy screen time is knowing what to do instead. So how do we know if our child has too much screen time, and what can we do instead? There are three questions we need to ask, and then four activities we can use to quickly point our children back to analog adventures.

  1. Are screens babysitting?
  2. Does my child content with screen time?
  3. Is tech a consistent battle for our family?

The average school-aged child has six "blocks" of discretionary time a day. We will look at four possible analog adventures: books, board games, art, and baking.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4nNUQWC

Have you quit praying? Think about the last week: What happened when you saw that last horrible news article, or video on SM, or had someone at work tell you about another heart-rending tragedy. What did you do? If you're anything like me, you didn't pray. You might've shrugged, or cried a little, or made a snarky remark (also more like me than the other two)--but if you're like me, you didn't pray. Our lack of prayer shows we are forgetting just who it is we serve. We serve a God who is:

1. A good father
2. Creator God of everything
3. Calling us to kingdom work

We pray to see His will be done and His kingdom come. Let us not give up in doing what is good, but instead to pray without ceasing, even if it means we pray about our lack of desire to pray.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4pS7m8R

There are three unique struggles on social media thanks to the advent of AI:

1. Bots and the Dead Internet
2. So much p*rn
3. Problems with Reality Retention

There are three steps we can take today:Step 1: Get internet out of the bedroom.Step 2: Get your family hedges setup — start talking about this!

• Ask your child: Have they seen AI generated content? How can they tell what is real and what is fake?
• For younger children: Let’s play a game called “real” v. “story”. .Elsa and Frozen, Vacation we went on as a family

Step 3: Get off the internet. If you’re under the age of 16 you don’t need SM. If you’re under 15, you don’t need a smartphone.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4pCrZWn

There are mean people online. Three steps to take to help ensure we handle mean people well are:

1. Assume others are intelligent
2. Attack ideas, not people
3. Remember the Gospel: We were all once sinners (Ephesians 2:4) — now we’re saints, by grace.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/3JZr8ie

Few people go online looking to change their minds. Most want validation or escape. With this in mind, we must be intentional with our social media interactions. Today we'll discuss three ground rules for dealing with mean people online, and give practical examples we can look to for how to do online conversations and ministry well. 

Three ministries who use social media well as an outlet for gospel hope are:

1. Tim Barnett, Red Pen Logic
2. Brady Cone, Calibrate Ministries
3. The Bible Project

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/3VcSYtT

It's hard to make good friends. Today we'll discuss three questions we can discuss with our children to help them build healthy, and helpful, friends online and in real life.

1. Are we of equal value?
2. 2. Does this person make me a priority?
3. 3. Is the person the point (or is it a shared activity)?

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/45XlupG

Can we use social media well, or is the fact it's designed to take our time, focus, and money make it more harmful than helpful? We'll cover there dangers, three blessings, and how we can remember to not gain the world but lose our soul.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4neMQxh

God gives us clear statements of what is expected of our behavior both online and offline. Today we'll look at what God requires of our words, minds, focus, and content.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/45uelwM

In America we have rules for helmets on a bike, licenses for a car, and permits for a gun, but we don't have any real standards about children and social media. We need a clear way to know when our children are ready, what to say when they're not ready, and a simple way to assess if social media is going well once they've started to use it.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4mEKUxx

Social media is inherently unsafe: It is designed for maximal engagement, with feeds drawn from live users on a global network, with a viewing rate far beyond what children will experience in nature (the average TikTok video is viewed for 5 seconds).

Today we'll look at the age, limits, and boundaries we can lovingly put around our children to get the best chance of healthy results when using social media.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/3Jwa8ji