Grandparenting in a Digital World

I was in my forties when I got my first cell phone. It was a flip phone and I thought it was cool. It reminded me of the communicators Captain Kirk and Commander Spock carried with them in the Star Trek series. My phone really didn’t get much use, though, because we lived in the mountains of Colorado where cell phone service was definitely spotty.

By then PC’s were fairly common, though it really had limited applications. Email and internet surfing were just emerging as significant options for this new technological age, though with our slow internet connections in the mountains, we didn’t spend much time on the internet. I could not have imagined the digital world we live in today.

For my grandchildren, technology is as much a part of life as indoor plumbing had become for me. Unlike my parents, I cannot imagine living without indoor plumbing, and my grandchildren cannot imagine living without technology. As one computer scientist points out, “technology is technology only for people who are born before it was invented.” That’s you and me!

While digital technology has introduced us to information, entertainment and communication options we only knew in science fiction, it has also introduced us to innumerable dangers. Accessibility to everything imaginable has created a screen time addiction that is consuming our younger generations—and maybe some of us.

 Along with all the wonderful information never before at our finger tips, there are also limitless negative and destructive lies, deceptions and soul-traps waiting to devour us. As author Kathy Koch writes in Screens and Teens: Helping Our Kids Deal with Technology, technology easily tempts us, especially our kids, with these five lies:

1. I am the center of my own universe
2. I deserve to be happy all the time
3. I must have choices
4. I am my own authority
5. Information is all I need, not teachers

In a TED talk, Dr. Sherry Turkle, a technology specialist, said, “These days we expect more from technology than we expect from each other. Technology appeals to us where we are most vulnerable. We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control. But we are not so comfortable. We are not so in control.”

David understood what we often miss in this digital world. In Psalm 16 he writes,

You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing…
I have set the Lord always before me.
Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure…
You have made know to me the path of life;
You will fill me with joy in Your presence,
with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.

My interaction with grandparents throughout the US suggests that today’s digital world often feels overwhelming. It’s overwhelming to keep up with all the new technologies that appear almost daily, and it’s overwhelming trying to figure out how to help our grandchildren (and often adult children) avoid the traps that technology presents to real, healthy relationships, righteousness living, and critical thinking (is it the truth?). That’s one of things I like about Kathy Koch’s book. She raises our awareness of the dangers, and then gives us some practical tools to help our grandkids avoid the traps and glorify God in our use of it.

Next week—a few practical suggestions by Kathy Koch and some other helpful resources. In the meantime, I encourage you to get a copy of Screens and Teens. It’s one more valuable tool for your grandparenting toolbox.

GRANDPAUSE: Loneliness is the ironic epidemic of this over-connected age. – Andy Braner