As American kids head back to school this fall, many will do so with smartphones in hand. The average age at which American kids receive their first phone is just 11, and most public schools only ban nonacademic classroom phone use—and struggle to enforce even that.
We know this is a problem. Research from academics like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge continues to show American young people are in a mental health crisis, and there’s compelling evidence that the phone-based childhood is the leading cause. And the church is not an outlier here; if you’ve worked in youth ministry recently, you understand the challenges that come with a room full of teens who are chronically online. If you’re young yourself, you understand how tightly tech use is linked to belonging and how difficult it can be to pull your attention away from your own device out of fear that you may be missing out.
Christians have already begun to consider how churches can encourage safer digital media use in ministry and approach tech use as a matter for discipleship. But I want to recommend another response with a long history in the church: political discipleship.
If we believe that the gospel has the power to speak to our whole lives, we must recognize that this includes our digital lives, and not just individually but together: as families and congregations, yes, but also in politics. Political discipleship—how we follow God as people rooted in a certain time and place in a political community—can be part of how we love and serve God and neighbor in our digital age.
I understand why some Christians are wary of getting involved in politics and government, whether for theological or historical reasons or simply because of skepticism about the government’s ability to do anything productive. But if we have the opportunity to advocate for public policies that promote safety and flourishing for us and our neighbors, we must steward that responsibility well, like the servants in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. From time to time, we may have a duty to step into the role of advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves.
That particularly means children and teenagers whose families do not have the knowledge, resources, or wherewithal to make limiting screen time a priority. Low-income children are two to three times as likely as their peers to develop mental health conditions, and some research shows that they’re also more likely to spend a lot of time online. Phone-free public schools would provide at least some respite from intentionally addictive digital media.
So how has the church historically engaged in political discipleship for the good of our neighbors? Christians who navigated the rapid technological, economic, and social changes of the Industrial Revolution provide examples we can learn from today.
The shift from agrarian to industrial economies in the US and UK brought with it new convenience and opportunities, but also new dangers for children. Sound familiar? It may be difficult for us to imagine now, but this was an era without mandatory schooling or many safety regulations. Children often worked alongside parents or other adults in fields or factories.
Worship Together or Bowl Alone
Without the labor laws we now take for granted, children sometimes worked 16-hour days or longer. They had few breaks. Injuries were common, and no special care was taken for children. Even child prostitution was found in many workplaces, as historian Penelope Carson wrote for Christian History, and there “were no safety regulations, and financial penalties and beatings were imposed for the slightest slip or misdemeanor. Accidents and deaths were all too common.” Orphans were particularly vulnerable, with no guardians to intervene on their behalf.
But some Christians did intervene, playing an integral role in the passage of child labor laws on both sides of the Atlantic. Richard Oastler, a devout Methodist and abolitionist of the 19th century, began spreading public awareness once he learned how children were treated in British factories. Then, he sought legal solutions to ensure the protection of children. Oastler’s sometimes radical methods and rhetoric got him in trouble more than once, but his concern for the poor and victims of injustice helped pass the UK’s Factory Acts of 1833 and 1847, which limited work hours for women and children.
Decades later, in the US, an Episcopalian priest named Edgar Gardner Murphy was concerned for the well-being of children working in mills. For years, he advocated for legislation that would shorten the hours children worked, raise the age of children working in factories and mines, and outlaw overnight work. Understanding that reforms were essential to protect children from employers and sometimes their own parents, he established the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in 1904 to spread awareness and advance policy solutions.
Just two years after the establishment of the NCLC, conversations about reforming child labor laws were elevated from a state to a federal level, and the committee succeeded in highlighting both the injustice of child labor and the benefits that public schooling would provide. Many parents and employers were content with the status quo, but photographs taken by Lewis W. Hine exposed the plight of children working in factories and mines, prompting legislative action.
Smartphones don’t pose the same physical dangers as early industrial mines or cotton mills, but their risk for American children is real. So is Christians’ responsibility to intervene on vulnerable kids’ behalf by advocating for better public policy around tech in public schools.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that our advocacy will succeed. History and current polls alike suggest that in spite of our best efforts, proposals to protect kids online have a high chance of failure. Many parents—and certainly many kids—would rather maintain the status quo. That possibility shouldn’t discourage us from trying.
In a speech at the International Christian Political Conference in 1977, Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon listed many bills he had championed or voted for because of his Christian faith. “As it happens,” he continued, “each of these proposals was defeated. Yet in each case, a witness was borne, I trust, to the goals which would move us in the direction of the kingdom, as I understand it.” Even if we don’t get the policies we want, we can still practice this kind of faithfulness in the public square. We can still bear witness to the hope we have in Christ, trusting that God will accomplish justice.
At a practical level, Christians—and especially pastors and other church leaders—should build relationships with school board members, state and local officials, and even members of Congress who can shape tech policies in our local schools. We can make the case to these leaders, just as Oastler did with British policymakers two centuries ago, that we have both the duty and ability to better protect vulnerable youth and families in our communities—to better love our neighbors.
Emily Crouch is a public policy and communications professional living and working in Alexandria, Virginia. She leads college student programming and the fellowship for early-career congressional leadership development at the Center for Public Justice.
