Most of us can remember those pit-in-the-stomach times we experienced as teenagers when we realized we had been left out. I remember a summer day in the neighborhood when I couldn’t find any of my friends at home. I couldn’t figure out why they were all gone until somebody spilled the beans later, telling me that they had all been invited to go to a home in another neighborhood to swim in the families’ pool. Truth be told, I felt like a loser. The journal Frontiers in Digital Health reports that for kids living in today’s social media world, the feelings I felt on that one summer day occur far more frequently, as our kids see visual and story content recounting activities and gatherings of friends from which they’ve been excluded. This ramps up feelings of exclusion, jealousy, and rejection. Researchers say this is feeding emotional stress and creating interpersonal conflict. Let’s use these moments to teach our kids to handle disappointment and conflict with the kindness and grace of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes the circumstances in our own lives and the stresses of raising and living with teens in today’s rapidly changing culture can become overwhelming, paralyzing, and detrimental to our spiritual and emotional wellbeing. When that happens, we’re not doing anyone any favors if we continue to spiral down out of control. If our normal support systems aren’t enough to carry us through, then it’s time to seek some outside help. . . maybe even some professional counseling. One or two sessions with a trained and competent Christian counselor may be enough to provide you with the guidance and support you need to get back on the right course. Perhaps long-term counseling is needed. Ask your pastor or a trusted friend to recommend a Christian counselor. Going to counseling isn’t an admission that you’re weak. A counselor can offer an unbiased perspective, and give you guidance that will lead to wholeness and healing.

The latest report from the Pew Research Center not only helps us understand where our teens ages thirteen to seventeen are spending time online, but should light a fire under us to exercise diligence and regularity about helping our teens practice what we call digital discipleship. It’s not surprising that YouTube is hands down the most used online platforms for kids, with nine out of ten saying they use the site. Seventy three percent of our thirteen to seventeen year olds say they visit YouTube daily. Six in ten say they visit the TikTok video site daily. With our kids consuming so much video content on a daily basis, we need to teach them to use wisdom and discernment regarding what they see, along with limiting the amount of time they spend scrolling through videos. Ask them about what they are seeing. Ask them to share what they see with you. And train them to embrace content that furthers their faith, while avoiding that which is not good, true, and honorable.

If they would be honest with us, our kids would tell us that their feelings and emotions serve far too often as their guide for life. Not surprisingly, today’s culture encourages this kind of feeling-driven living. To be honest, being driven by feelings and emotions is not just an issue for our kids. What a shame it would be if history remembered our generation of Christian parents as people who didn’t do anything to help their kids listen to God instead of their windblown emotions. Feelings should never eclipse God’s truth. We must walk our teens through the Scriptures to show them examples of people who allowed their emotions to eclipse the truth, and then suffered the consequences. This includes people like David with Bathsheba, Lot’s wife, and Ananias and Sapphira. One way that we can help our kids see the dangers of feelings is by walking them through the stories of our own lives by sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding the feelings-based and truth-based choices we’ve made.

The moment I turned sixteen years-old, my top priority in life was to get my driver’s license. Armed with my brand new learner’s permit, I couldn’t get enough practice time in on the road. And when I passed my driver’s test on the first try, there was a feeling of freedom and liberation I experienced that I look back on as a major rite of passage. As I think back, I don’t remember one high school peer who didn’t think as I did, and we all were eager to get that signifier of being one-step closer to full-fledged adulthood. But something’s changed. Researchers tell us that almost forty percent of teens delay getting their license by one or two years, and thirty percent are delaying by more than two years. What’s driving this shift? (No pun intended!). Today’s kids say they’re overscheduled and too busy, they are staying home and socializing online, and some are too depressed and anxious to drive. If your kids are holding off for any of these reasons, take steps to ease the unwarranted pressures which they find paralyzing.

One of the questions we often hear from parents relates to the appropriate amount of screen time which they should allow for their kids. Generally speaking, research, surveys, and the observations of parents themselves indicate that our teens spend way too much time focused on their screens. This means that they are spending less time on what once were the normal activities of childhood, including things like outside play, socializing with friends, and spending time with family. Researchers in Sweden are reporting that kids ages twelve to sixteen who spend excessive time engaged with their screens experience multiple negative impacts on sleep, including decreased duration of sleep, decreased quality of sleep, delayed sleep until later hours, and greater incidence of depression. Let’s be responsible parents who set and enforce strict time limits on screen time so that they will get the amount and kind of sleep for which God has made them.

As a father and now grandfather, I often think about the wise words of instruction found in Proverbs twenty-two, six. “Train up a child in the way he should go; and even when he is old he will no depart from it.” Training our children is not a once and done task. Rather, it is an ongoing project that in many ways lasts a lifetime. Neither is the training we are called to only verbal in nature. While the verbal instruction is necessary, equally necessary is the example we pass on to our kids. Let me share with you some great wisdom from the Puritans on the power of example. John Boys writes, “If both horse and mare trot, the colt will not amble.” Consider these words from Thomas Brooks: “Example is the most powerful rhetoric.” If we are to raise and train our children to follow the Lord, we must be eagerly following Him with every ounce of our lives. Remember, Jesus has called us to deny ourselves and follow Him. A heritage of faith is the most valuable inheritance we can pass on to our kids.

Fifty years ago there was little or no knowledge among teenagers about eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In today’s image-obsessed and social-media saturated world, the great majority of our kids not only stress over their appearance, but many are struggling with body dysmorphia, which is defined as a mental health condition in which you can’t stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance. New data from a study of thirty-nine-thousand adolescents ages fourteen to eighteen reports that the dominant factor raising the risk of self-harm, including suicide, is one’s perception regarding their weight. Our kids are being hammered by a constant diet of marketing images and social media posts which leave them feeling inadequate and less than. As Christian parents, we must affirm their standing as loved divine-image bearers, emphasizing the fact that God looks on the inside, not the outside. Our identity is not to be found in appearance.