HOPE TRIUMPHS
ARE YOU CELL-ING OUT YOUR KIDS?
A smartphone is a natural babysitter, a day-filler, a ‘get out of my way’ remedy. But consider the potentially heavy price we may have to pay by handing a child over to a world of fake war, fake love and a world of video-gaming, writes Reverend Tony Zekveld. Image credit: JULIA COIMBRA on Unsplash.
By REVEREND TONY ZEKVELD
It’s a problem, a widespread problem: kids absorbed in their cell phones and other electronic devices. And with summer vacation here, kids have so much time on their hands and parents ‘cell-out’ their kids to these devices.
It’s a natural babysitter, a day-filler, a ‘get out of my way’ remedy. We start ‘cell-ing’ out our kids when they are young; eight, nine, ten years old; even younger. We accept technologies’ promise of ease and instant gratification, not realizing the potentially heavy price we pay by handing them over to a world of fake war, fake love and a world of video-gaming.
One dear grandma put it to me this way, “Kids today don’t get married. They already have their life partner, the smartphone. They even take it to bed with them, putting it under their pillow”.
The addictive nature of social media should be concerning to ourselves and to parents of children. Ultimately kids are given over to isolation and boredom, living in their own virtual reality. It replaces real face-to-face relationships, and the real life of helping out with chores, playing with siblings and conversations with family at the supper table.
‘Celling-out’ your kids poses major risks like depression and anxiety, loss of sleep and cyber-bullying. Your kids are real, mind and body, and so are the risks. I’m not suggesting we remove social media devices. It’s the world we live in. But honestly, think about it, parents, do your children need smartphones? How much are we affected by the peers of our children to give them one? Children are missing out so much on their childhood! Let them run, play, and use their own imaginations like playing ‘house’ or ‘cops and robbers’. Give them chores to do. Buy them board games to play and compete. Set an example by putting your own cell devices away when you are sitting around the table or travelling in the car, and converse with your children.
God created us to be relational beings, to live in relationship with Him and with others. Life is now broken. We live in a world where life is empty. We don’t know what real life is. We don’t know what is real, nor how to live our lives.
More than anything, our families, our children need Christ. By believing in Christ we discover the purpose, the meaning to life and know reality. Being rooted in relationship with Him, life becomes rich and full.
If you want to talk more, feel free to phone or text Reverend Tony Zekveld (“call me Pastor Tony”) at Hope Centre at 416-740-0543. His email is hopecentre@primus.ca and website: www.hopecentrebrampton.com.