Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

For the last few years I’ve told parents that one strategy for helping their kids fight the body image pressures they feel from marketing is to do a Google search for celebrities without makeup. The classic with and without photos I’d put up were of actress Scarlet Johannsen, who looked like two completely different people when the photos were placed side by side. Sadly, the advances in artificial...

On this Labor Day, I want to pose a question to you: Where will your kids land in terms of the vocations they choose when they enter adulthood? How has God uniquely gifted them? What are their interests and abilities? No matter what vocation they choose, one essential lesson we must instill in them while they are still young is this: all work matters to God. I love these words from theologian Abra...

All this week we’ve been looking at helpful insights for Christian parents from Dr. Christian Smith’s research on how parents pass their faith on to the next generation. In addition to reminding Christian parents of the role that walking their talk plays in the faith formation of their kids, Smith has found a number of traits that are present in families where the Christian faith is passed on to k...

All this week we’re looking at helpful insights for Christian parents from Dr. Christian Smith’s research on how parents pass their faith on to the next generation. In addition to reminding Christian parents of the role that walking their talk plays in the faith formation of their kids, Smith has found a number of traits that are present in families where the Christian faith is passed on to kids....

All this week we’re looking at helpful insights for Christian parents from Dr. Christian Smith’s research on how parents pass their faith on to the next generation. In addition to reminding Christian parents of the role that walking their talk plays in the faith formation of their kids, Smith has found a number of traits that are present in families where the Christian faith is passed on to kids....

All this week we’re looking at helpful insights for Christian parents from Dr. Christian Smith’s research on how parents pass their faith on to the next generation. Smith has found that no other institution or program comes close to the faith-shaping influence of moms and dads. Smith also found that the reason these other influences pale in comparison to parents is the way that moms and dads live...

I have found Researcher Dr. Christian Smith to be a huge help to me in my various roles as a dad, a grandfather, and trainer of youth workers and parents. Smith, who teaches sociology at the University of Notre Dame, has spent over two decades studying the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents. His recent book, Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion On To The Next Generatio...

I recently had conversation with a grandmother who was surprised by some things she had heard her six and eight year old grandchildren saying during a family visit. The young children were asking for downtime, expressing  how they were feeling with the word anxiety, and one even mentioned the need to be alone to decompress. Welcome to the new world of childhood anxiety. The Journal of the American...

Have you ever thought about how and why we make the decisions we make? Every decision we make is based on some authority. Same thing goes for our kids. It’s highly likely that your kids rely unconsciously on some combination of authorities including peers, family, the media, and their feelings. While all of these authorities can lead us in the right direction and to good decisions, there is one pr...

As the years since the advent of social media have passed, we are learning more about the good, the bad, and the ugly related to this ever-present influence in the lives of our kids. New research from the University of South Queensland in Australia have found that teenagers who frequently use social media are three times more likely to try cannabis than those who use social media occasionally. Pub...

Here’s a little phrase you may have heard from your teen in one form or another in response to your efforts to provide parental guidance and direction: “That may be ok for you. But it’s not right for me.” Welcome to the emerging world of moral relativism. In today’s world, kids are encouraged to create truth for themselves. The only rule is that there are no rules. There is no universal standard o...

The dictionary defines plagiarism as the act of using another person’s words, ideas, or intellectual property and presenting them as your own original work without proper attribution. In the academic world, it’s a violation of integrity and a type of cheating. As someone who has been a student and who teaches students, I am well familiar with the need to adopt the highest standards of academic int...

Parents, the teen years are full of change and emotional ups and downs. I want to encourage you to take your teenagers shifting emotions seriously. I caved in far too often to the temptation to write off my teenagers’ emotions as silly and childish. My insensitivity communicated not only that I didn’t care, but that I was rejecting them. What I eventually learned is that my kids’ emotional resilie...

If it hasn’t yet happened to you, chances are very good that it will. You learn that both you and another person purchased the same item at the same place at the same time, and yet the prices you paid were not the same. Surveillance pricing is the practice of using artificial intelligence technologies and consumer data collection to set individualized prices for goods and services. Also known as d...

Remember flunking a test? Getting cut from a team? Getting caught drinking? Crossing sexual boundaries? Wrecking the family car? Having to attend summer school? Do you remember hating those moments, feeling like your life was crashing down quickly, and desperately wanting to snap your fingers to make it all disappear? Chances are that you now look back on those times of failure as watershed moment...

Sadly and not surprisingly, scammers are employing all the latest technological tools to steal money and identities. One of the latest tactics our kids need to know about is what’s called voice phishing, or vishing. It’s a scam that uses Ai technology to clone and mimic the voices of someone you know in order to trick and manipulate you into sharing sensitive information or getting you to transfer...

“Home is where the heart is.” That cliché is a great descriptor of the way that a little child’s life revolves around family and home. Then, the teenage years arrive and something begins to change. Because they are now growing up, teenagers begin the process of disengaging from the kind of ties they’ve had with you as they begin to focus more and more time on building relationships with their peer...

All this week we’ve been looking at the recent Surgeon General’s warning on the Harms of Screen Use in the lives of our children and teenagers. One of the valuable aspects of the report is the list of recommended steps we can take in our homes to reduce screen time and all of the negative effects. The report suggests five “Ds”. First, discuss screens, social media, and the negative effects with yo...

All this week we’re looking at the recent Surgeon General’s warning on the Harms of Screen Use in the lives of our children and teenagers. If you’re a parent whose been wondering about the effects of screen time on your kids, I encourage you to pause and think about exercising your God-given responsibility to nurture your kids well by setting clear borders and boundaries on screen time. The adviso...

All this week we’re looking at the recent Surgeon General’s warning on the Harms of Screen Use in the lives of our children and teenagers. The report tells us that the content our kids see on their screens matters, and screen use is most likely to cause harm to children and adolescents when one or more of the following content features is present. First, the content is designed to increase use thr...

All this week we’re looking at the recent Surgeon General’s warning on the Harms of Screen Use in the lives of our children and teenagers. The advisory says that screen use may be harmful when a child loses control over their screen use, and warning signs of compulsive behavior begin to manifest in our child’s life. Parents, are you seeing any of the following warning signs? Spending too much time...

Late last Spring, the United States Surgeon General issued an advisory warning regarding how to protect children and teens from the harms of screen use. The advisory tells us “harmful screen use among children and adolescents has become a public health concern”, with screen exposure often beginning before a child’s first birthday and then increasing as children age. In fact, by the time they reach...

Last spring I was watching the local news when I saw a story about a group of ten teenagers who were riding e-bikes while being chased by the police. It all happened in broad daylight, as the kids vandalized school athletic fields, stopped traffic on a busy street, and injured a man  by riding past and kicking him, all while shouting profanities. Because electronic bikes can be customized to trave...

It hurts to watch our kids suffer. In a youth culture pervaded by bullying, our kids may sometimes suffer injustice at the hands of others. Sometimes, their suffering is brought on by choices they’ve made. At other times, circumstances related to illness or accidents are the cause of their suffering. The Scriptures teach us that because of the flawed nature of ourselves and our world, we should no...

Several years a thirty-something friend of mine called to tell me what happened to him while he was driving. His heart began beating out of his chest. His face turned red, and he began to sweat profusely. Thinking he was having a heart attack, he drove to the ER, only to learn he was over-consuming caffeine. Because of the way caffeine can effect one’s physical health, experts are increasingly con...