Head-in-Sand Syndrome

One of my passions in life is to help parents and caregivers understand the depths of the dangers and temptations that are facing today's young people, primarily in the form of online media and social networking. It seems that nearly every day there are new ways to connect, new ways to chronicle your daily happenings, and myriad ways of sharing that with people you know (and don't know!). How in the world does one keep up with all of these changes? Well the short answer is that you probably won't. BUT I bet the kids in your life will be! They know the latest apps and the latest fads because they are "natives" to that world. Those of us who are older are "just visiting" or "foreigners" in that world--we're still trying to learn the language and learn how to navigate.

Do you know what the biggest danger in this new world is? Ignorance. Hence my title, "Head-in-Sand Syndrome." Parents and caregivers, please please please make sure you are keeping yourself educated. I'm not talking about becoming experts on everything that's out there, but at least take the time to make yourself aware of some of the latest trends in tech and online activity. And especially make sure that you're making regular checks of your child's devices. Anything that connects to the Internet has the potential to connect with the world, and with that comes a lot of "open doors" into areas where children and young people should not be traveling.

So where do you start? How about this article on the "7 Dangerous Apps That Parents Need to Know About." Another great site is Focus on the Family's PluggedIn.com. They review movies, TV shows, video games, and music...all from a Christian and biblical worldview. The Digital Kids Initiative is another great online resource that provides up-to-date info about all the cultural trends that are bombarding today's youth.

Bottom line? Don't bury your head in the sand hoping that the issues with technology will go away. We are in a culture where just the opposite is happening, and our responsibility as adults is HUGE! We need to protect our kids. We need to educate our kids (and ourselves). And we need to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves in this ever-changing culture.

Web Wisdom

Over the past couple of weeks, my brain has been inundated with a variety of posts, forwards, and emails with erroneous information that was gleaned from the "all-knowing" Internet. This may be stating the obvious, but just because something is in print online does not make something true. Verify through a variety of sources. Check out websites like www.snopes.com which do the fact-checking for you. If something sounds a bit off-center, it probably is. Don't be deceived.

I've also come to realize that I can basically find information online to prove my point, even if my point is incorrect or invalid. Between PhotoShop and blog posts and spoof sites like "The Onion" and "The Spoof" whose sole purpose is to make things up, wisdom has got to be the byword when surfing the web. If I want to "dig up dirt" on an individual, I'll find it. If I want to find unflattering pictures of celebrities, I'll find it. But it doesn't mean that it's true!

Jesus said, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16) There are many "wolves" on the internet...our job is to be shrewd, wise, prudent.

Information Overload

We live in a time unlike any other experienced in all of history. In mere seconds, news can travel from one corner of the world to the other via any variety of social media. We literally have the ability to contact people at our fingertips...any time of the day or night. Take a look at this statistic...as of March 2012, there were 644,275,754 active websites on the Internet, and that was an increase of over 30 million from the previous month. (Netcraft) Ironically, if you do a Google search for "information overload" there are over 8.5 million results to peruse! There is absolutely no shortage of information.  However, there IS a shortage of discernment when it comes to dealing with all of this information.

Some wisdom from Ecclesiastes 12:12--"But beyond these, my son, be warned: there is no end to the making of many books, and much study wearies the body." Would it be safe to say, in our current century that "there is no end to the making of many websites, and information overload wearies the body"?  I used to teach 7th grade, and part of our year included writing a research paper. As the years passed and the Internet was a larger tool in the classroom, my students didn't have a lack of information to use for their papers, and they were very savvy at searching it out online. I realized that my role was shifting more into teaching them how to find GOOD information, teaching them that just because it's on the Internet does not mean that it's true. The Amplified version of Ecclesiastes 12:12 amused me--"...Of making many books there is no end [so do not believe everything you read]..."

So what's a parent or a grandparent or a teacher or a youth worker to do? First, make sure you're having regular conversations with the children and students in your life about their media consumption...what are they viewing? What are they listening to? What pages are they "members" of? Secondly, make sure that you are teaching your child to be discerning. Jesus gave the charge in Matthew 10:16 to be wise as serpents but harmless as doves. 

Have you seen posts on places like Facebook that have a ring of propaganda or untruth to them? They usually involve some kind of "scam" that Facebook is supposedly running or something political in nature. And people repost them and repost them and repost them, assuming that they're fact. Quite often, they're not. A website I've used often to check the validity of these sorts of websites is www.Snopes.com. They have almost every urban legend known to man, they give the history of it, and they will let you know whether or not the information presented is fact or fiction.

Bottom line? We can't control the quantity or quality of the information that is "out there", but we CAN control our responses to it.