Confessions of an Aging Youth Pastor

I have a confession to make.  As an aging youth pastor, it is getting harder and harder to jump on the bandwagon of each new social media platform that influences my teenagers.  The latest one that I am referring to happens to be Tik Tok.  In a blog on Tim Elmore's website, growingleaders.com, author Andrew McPeak, writes his own experience with Tik Tok and how the social media platform makes its users feel.

Before continuing, take some time to read his blog here.  It will only take you a few minutes.  It is a really great assessment of the social media platform's use of psychology to engage its users and the positive and negative effects of such psychology.  The thing that doesn't get addressed in great detail is what to do about it.  And that is what my aim is to do here.  [Spoiler alert!] McPeak draws the conclusion that there are "two social and emotional skills that help students take control of Tik Tok:"  impulse control and critical thinking.  But how do we teach these to our students in youth group and our kids at home?

My eleven year-old son is in 5th grade and attends a local public elementary school.  There has been so much negative press lately for the public school system.  Some if it is deserved and some of it is just plain made up.  One thing my wife and I love about his school is the teaching of five pillars.  These get brought into the classroom in a number of different ways to help the students remember how to have good behavior.  One of the pillars is managing impulsivity.  In the elementary setting, this is more about not blurting out an answer or learning to leave one's hands to oneself.  So, how can we translate that over to the overuse of anything that isn't good for us, be it social media or anything else under the sun.

I pick my phone up out of boredom just as much as the next guy or gal.  So, how do we instill managing impulsivity in us before we teach others to do the same?  I think it comes down to discipline and creativity.  Discipline, when brought on externally (from an outside influence) can be very negative.  No one likes to be disciplined by someone else.  It is embarrassing.  It is painful.  And it is demoralizing.  When we internally discipline ourselves, we are better people for it.  When Facebook played a more prominent role in my life, I would discipline myself to ready my Bible before I ever opened up the Facebook app to scroll or post.  As adults, I think we can discipline ourselves, for the most part, if we want to.  But will our students even see the benefit of self-discipline?  Or will the instant gratification of a funny video overrule always?  When teenagers are young they still need the guidance of a caring adult.  So, giving them a little help as to how to have self-discipline can come in a couple of ways.  

One way you can be helpful in a teenagers' endeavor to be more self-disciplined is to be more self-disciplined yourself.  The other way you can be helpful is by offering suggestions.  Try asking, "how many minutes a day do you think is appropriate to be on social media?"  Most students are harder on themselves than you would be.  If they give a good answer, then help them stick to that.  When their time is up, help them come up with some alternatives.

Another important quality to teach is creativity.  How can we be more creative with the use of our time?  When we are bored, can we think of more creative ways to bust boredom?  Creativity goes hand-in-hand with self-discipline.  In order to think creatively how we can use our down time takes self-discipline to want to do something else than to mindlessly scroll through the latest and greatest social medium.  Again, we can most likely do that as adults, but how do you teach that to a squirrelly middle schooler who just wants to laugh?

Become a producer instead of a consumer.  Like most other kids his age, my son desires to one day be a Youtuber.  I am going to discourage that as much as I can without squelching his desire to become a producer of content because of the sheer reality that the chances of becoming an "influencer" is downright miniscule.  Another desire my son has is to make a video game.  Even though it is screen time, I am going to encourage this one because it is something he and I can do together as I have learned a small amount of coding over the past few years.  He hasn't been allowed on any social media yet, but I think starting out with these habits might help for his immanent teenager years.