I love listening to music. As a music lover, nothing enhances my own listening experience as much as a good set of ear buds and a volume setting that I’m sure is higher than it should be. Lately, my difficulty hearing conversations when there’s ambient noise have me wishing I could rewind to turn down the volume that I’m sure now effects my hearing as I’ve gotten older. The World Health Organization tell us that globally, thirty-four million children have deafness or hearing loss, of which sixty percent of the cases are due to preventable causes. As you might expect much of this could be mitigated if we would intervene when our children are younger, teaching them to practice safe listening habits, such as using headphones or earbuds less frequently, and turning down the volume. Parents, you are responsible for stewarding your child’s health, including their hearing, to the glory of God, so that they might make choices now that lead to life-long hearing health.

Listen to these heartfelt words of warning from Megan Garcia, the mother of a fourteen year-old boy who died by suicide in February: “There is a platform out there you might not have heard about, but you need to know about it because, in my opinion, we are behind the eight ball here. A child is gone. My child is gone.” Her son, Sewell, had logged on to a site known as Character.AI. The site allows users to create and interact with fictional chatbot characters. Kids who are lonely are especially vulnerable to going deep into these so-called relationships with chatbots. But the risks are many, including exposure to hate speech, sexually explicit content, security issues, and privacy violations. In Garcia’s case, she is now suing the company, since in a conversation where he said he was considering suicide, the chatbot did not dissuade him. Parents, shield your kids from these ai companion sites. What our kids really need are healthy real-life relationships with family and friends.

All this week we’ve been looking at the thought and planning that went into the Philadelphia area’s Delaware County Christian School’s establishment of their well-received and highly successful phone free school policy. The school wanted to address a rise in mediocrity. Administrators write, We are far too easily pleased with superficial counterfeits for the good, the true, and the beautiful, mediated through a five-inch rectangular smartphone screen. We are far too easily pleased with half-hearted intellectual effort on school assignments, though we are called to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. The question was then asked, What steps can we take to overcome mediocrity and steward what God has given us, to pursue excellence throughout the day for His glory? We applaud the Delaware County Christian School for thoughtfully and theologically creating a path we all must walk, managing our smartphones, rather than allowing them to control us and our kids.