{"id":34219,"date":"2025-04-17T21:28:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T21:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/church-leaders-urged-to-limit-childrens-screen-time\/"},"modified":"2025-04-17T21:28:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T21:28:00","slug":"church-leaders-urged-to-limit-childrens-screen-time","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/church-leaders-urged-to-limit-childrens-screen-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Church Leaders Urged to Limit Children\u2019s Screen Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jonathan Haidt, author of a bestseller, &quot;The Anxious Generation,&quot; challenged church leaders to address an important issue. He writes:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>As long as children have a phone-based childhood there is very little hope for their spiritual education. An essential precondition is to delay the phone-based life until the age of 18, I would say. Don&#39;t let them fall off into cyberspace, because once they do, it&#39;s going to be so spiritually degrading for the rest of their lives. There&#39;s not much you can do in church if they are spending 10 hours a day outside of church on their phones.<\/p>\n<p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Believers also need to know that researchers have found evidence that religious communities and families play a crucial role in raising healthy children. Haidt continued, &ldquo;The kids who made it through are especially those who are locked into binding communities and religious communities.&rdquo; Meanwhile, it is the &quot;secular kids and the kids in progressive families&quot; who tend to be &quot;the ones who got washed out to sea.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>Haidt stressed that lives built on smartphones, tablets, and computers will change their minds and hearts:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Half of American teen-agers say that they are online &#39;almost all the time.&#39; That means that they are never fully present &ndash; never, ever. They are always partly living in terms of what is happening with their posts, what&#39;s happening online&hellip;.<\/p>\n<p>There is a degradation effect that is overwhelming, but most people haven&#39;t noticed&hellip;. I am hoping that religious communities will both notice it and be able to counteract it. But you can&#39;t counteract it if the kid still has the phone in a pocket. The phone is that powerful.<\/p>\n<p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[446],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3380,3383,3569,3726,3808,3997,4112,4245,4272,4320,4468,4596,5012,5013,5038,5129,5130,5134,5160,5314],"tax_ctp_topics":[400],"class_list":["post-34219","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-addiction","tax_ctp_tags-adolescence","tax_ctp_tags-children","tax_ctp_tags-culture","tax_ctp_tags-distractions","tax_ctp_tags-focus","tax_ctp_tags-habits","tax_ctp_tags-influence","tax_ctp_tags-internet","tax_ctp_tags-kids","tax_ctp_tags-mind","tax_ctp_tags-parenting","tax_ctp_tags-social-media","tax_ctp_tags-social-trends","tax_ctp_tags-spiritual-bondage","tax_ctp_tags-technology","tax_ctp_tags-teens","tax_ctp_tags-temptation","tax_ctp_tags-time-management","tax_ctp_tags-youth"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Church Leaders Urged to Limit Children\u2019s Screen Time - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/church-leaders-urged-to-limit-childrens-screen-time\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Church Leaders Urged to Limit Children\u2019s Screen Time - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jonathan Haidt, author of a bestseller, &quot;The Anxious Generation,&quot; challenged church leaders to address an important issue. 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