Ministry Among Screenagers

The question is not new, at least not for those of us leading youth ministry during the mobile phone era—Should I ban smartphones in my youth group? I remember wrestling through this back in 2009, just two short years after the iPhone was first introduced in June 2007 and one year after the Android market opened in October 2008. It didn’t take long for smartphones to saturate the market and suburban students to show up with mom and dad’s old devices. This was, of course, before smartphone etiquette was a thing and long before smartphone etiquette was ignored.  

Phones became a major distraction.  

We asked students to keep their phones off or in their pockets but that was like expecting leftover pizza after a junior high all-nighter. One night I tried to shock the kids into compliance by planting a phone on a kid in the front row and then, when the alarm rang, smashing it on the floor in a fit of frustration. (Not my greatest moment, but to be transparent, I got the idea from my friend, author and speaker Jonathan McKee.) As soon as the shock of flying shrapnel wore off, the chatter about the spectacle became an equal distraction, and I had to confess it was all a poorly conceived effort to curtail phone usage.  

We even purchased a signal blocker for our youth facility – then discovered they were illegal. We were at a complete loss on what to do, so we gave up trying to discourage phone usage and instead tried to steer it in the right direction. 

The upside of smartphones at youth group 

Aside from the ease of not fighting against the cell phone tsunami, there were several beneficial uses for phones at youth group. We encouraged students to download the YouVersion Bible app and read along both at youth group and throughout the week in reading plans and groups we invited students into. Bible app notifications of friend requests, friends’ highlights, comments, badges and invites to new reading groups became a norm throughout the week, not just at youth group. 

We encouraged students to pull out their phones and make notes of important points and Scripture, reminding them that their parents would ask what they learned and this way they would have an answer. When we took time to pray as a group, we encouraged students to text the person they prayed for, letting them know they were thinking and praying for them.  

Leading up to camp and big outreach events, we asked students to text an invitation to a friend. We even provided social-media-friendly invite posters to photograph and post or send to friends. And, of course, we played the typical youth group phone games, like Kahoot and phone-photo scavenger hunt.  

This was good but there was a cost. 

The downside of smartphones at youth group 

The unavoidable downside of technology is, well, technology. Glitches in our Wi-Fi, trouble downloading the apps, notification distractions, login problems and compatibility issues created delays on the regular. It also opened the door for a variety of misuses from gossip and gaming, to bullying and blackmailing and worse.  

However, the biggest downside was that not all students had a phone. Those who came from conservative or less affluent homes not only felt left out but, by virtue of the activity, felt called out as oddballs in the room. It even led to some difficult conversations with parents whose kids begged them to have a phone because, “Pastor Pete expects us to have a phone, he asks us to use them every week.” We made parenting these screenagers even more difficult for parents who weren’t willing or able to just hand their kids a brick of electronic crack. While that sounds over the top, that’s exactly what studies have revealed about smartphones.

The dark side of smartphones 

While the DSM5 doesn’t officially recognize social media and phone addiction as official diagnosis, they share many of the same symptoms and effects with other addictions. The dopamine hit the brain receives when notifications ping is the same dopamine hit resulting from drug use. Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired, founder of GeekDad.com and technology executive was quoted in a New York Times article, “On the scale between candy and crack cocaine, it’s closer to crack cocaine.” Additionally, the withdrawal of or weaning off these addictions are also similar. One University of Chicago study found that even the proximity of one’s phone reduces a student’s ability to focus:  

“The results were clear: The closer the phone was to students’ awareness, the worse they performed on the tests. Even just having a phone in their pocket sapped students’ abilities.” 

In other words, phones have become so powerful and prevalent that they affect our performance even without being on. For this reason, many schools have banned or restricted phone usage in both the school and classroom. In the same NYT article, Athena Chavarria, who worked as an executive assistant at Facebook and is now at Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic  Chan Zuckerberg Initiative said:  

“I am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children.” 

Those are not the words of a pastor or Christian psychologist. Chavarria is a social media insider that recognizes the danger of the platforms and technologies she promotes. 

 The dangerous side of smartphones 

Whether the devil actually lives in our phones is not my biggest concern. (Though, if he did, it would certainly explain the brevity of my battery life.) My concern is that people treat their phones as if God lives within them. The phone has become an idol and is treated with godlike devotion. As the Psalms say, “Those who trust in them become like them” – having ears but not hearing, eyes but not seeing, mouths but not speaking (Ps 115:4-8). 

Like all idols, they overpromise and underdeliver. They promise freedom, yet they enslave. They promise wisdom, yet they cloud the mind. They promise connection, but they isolate. They promise to serve us if we will serve them. They promise satisfaction if we will simply sacrifice.  

Andy Crouch, former executive editor of Christianity Today and partner for theology and culture at Praxis, a venture-building ecosystem advancing redemptive entrepreneurship, makes a similar point in an article on his website:  

“For the fact is that all idols appear to work—at first. That’s how they become idols. 

Though the details are lost to history, at some point sky-god figurines did seem to deliver what they promised. Why else would they have become revered? We see this dynamic clearly in the case of the small-scale, personal idolatries known as addictions. Every addict knows that the habit initially delivers everything it promises and more. But over time, addictions—and gods—stop satisfying our desires.” 

Crouch identifies the pathway of technological idolatry that, like the pagan gods, leads us to the ultimate sacrifice, human beings – especially the most vulnerable ones – children. He concludes: 

“But that’s ridiculous. We are not a superstitious, primitive civilization. We wouldn’t sacrifice children just for technology’s evanescent promise of a more controlled, worry-free environment, would we? Would we?” 

But isn’t this exactly what we have already done? Articles on the correlation between mobile phone time and social media usage, and depression, self-harm and suicide, are plentiful. One study states that, “The incidence of certain mental health concerns, such as depression and suicide, have increased significantly among adolescents in recent years, with rates of suicide among youth aged 10-24 increasing 56% from 2007 to 2017.” Our children are suffering and being sacrificed at the altar of technology.  

The flipside of smartphones 

Perhaps you see this spiritual imagery as over-the-top and struggle to label technology as idolatry. Personally, I shy away from over-spiritualizing things. But the smartphone question doesn’t need to be over-spiritualized to conclude that caution must be taken. 

It may not be idolatry to allow phones in youth group, but it is also not ideal. Ideally, youth ministries should help students develop spiritual disciplines to encounter the Trinity. The smartphone is often an obstacle to developing such disciplines – especially the traditional disciplines of silence, listening, solitude, prayer, Scripture memory, hospitality, fellowship and fasting. In his book, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place, Andy Crouch writes:  

“Because technology is devoted primarily to making our lives easier, it discourages us from disciplines, especially ones that involve disentangling ourselves from technology itself.” 

Discipleship is all about denying the self and pursuing our Savior along with the spiritual family of God. We cannot have it both ways. One cannot serve both God and technology. One will always keep us from the other. Because God cannot be moved, it is imperative that we put technology in its proper place. 

Crouch offers Ten Tech-Wise Commitments for families, and I would like to riff on these with my own ten commitments for youth ministry. 

Ten tech-wise commitments for youth ministries to put technology in its proper place 

1. We develop wisdom, courage, connection and compassion, face to face, as a spiritual family. Therefore, we minimize the mediation of screens and digital interfaces. 
2. We want to contribute more than we consume. Therefore, we will fill our environments with words of worship, encouragement, and prayer. 
3. We are designed with a need for rhythms and rest and were therefore given the gift of Sabbath. Therefore, we will celebrate in Sabbath spaces by resting from those things that create anxiety and distractions or draw us away from experiencing God and Him through one another. 
4. We believe that our student sanctuaries are places of reverence in which we hear from God. Therefore, we will silence and still our phones so that we are free to hear from Him. 
5. We aim for no disparity between older and younger, or privileged and underprivileged students. Therefore, we will not program or communicate in such a way as to highlight disparities. 
6. We use screens for productive purposes within our youth ministries. Therefore, we will not prohibit digital Bibles or note-taking, but we will encourage and even provide print Bibles and paper journals so that students have a more embodied and holistic experience. 
7. Small group time is conversation time. 
8. Leaders reserve the right to restrict phone usage and ask a student to shut down and put away a device. (For relational and liability reasons we discourage leaders from confiscating phones.) 
9. We strive to sing and worship together, being led by live singers and musicians (rather than playlists and videos) because God has called us to cultivate spiritual gifts and offerings of worship within our students. 
10. We believe that creation, the incarnation and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ validate embodied experiences. Therefore, we will strive to live embodied lives together by showing up and being fully present in one another’s highs and lows, offering authentic empathy, embrace and audible words of consolation and encouragement whenever possible. 

Perhaps if we communicate and commit to these and similar thoughtful declarations, you and I won’t have to smash any more mobile phones.