Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

One of the most heart-breaking and difficult aspects of being a Christian parent who longs to see his kids embrace and mature in their own faith, is the rocky nature of adolescent faith. Much of their “wavering” is simply a part of the teenage territory and the process of adopting their family’s faith as their own. But maybe an even greater amount of that wavering is rooted in their humanness. . ....

I still can’t stop thinking about something that happened back in May and the college commencement season. There were several news reports that popped up regarding the response of graduating students to things that their commencement speakers were saying. It seems that concerns over Artificial Intelligence spurred on choruses of boos at a variety of schools where the commencement speakers were tou...

Every now and then I come across some words from a social media influencer that are good, true, right, and helpful. That’s what I encountered on an Instagram reel posted by Matt Chenard. In his post on anxiety, Chenard shares four steps he takes when he feels anxious and depressed, steps that we can share with our kids. First, pray about the good things in your life. Thank God for His goodness and...

There’s a story about a thirteen year old boy and something that happened to him on a day in April nineteen fifty nine that reminds me of a way we parents should be praying regularly for our kids. Steve Saner was growing up in Cincinnati and was big fan of the Reds. Without his parents knowing it, Saner would often skip school on game days to head over to Crosley field to catch a game. He would mo...

Last Spring I had two of my grandkids with me during a visit to the community where I spent my elementary and middle school years. I was prompted to take a trip down memory lane when right at noon, the fire whistle at the local volunteer fire department let out that familiar siren. I stopped dead in my tracks. “Did you hear that?” I asked the kids. “Yes”, they replied. “That’s the twelve-o’clock w...

I once heard someone say, you tell me how your spend your time, and I’ll tell you who or what your God is. For kids growing up in today’s over-scheduled smartphone-saturated world, it’s reasonable to assume that most kids spend far too little time or no time at all reading and studying their Bibles. This means that they spend more time focused on nurturing their allegiance to the idols of this wor...

I have an eleven year old grandson who has a history of asking deep theological questions that are not always easily answered. For example, he recently asked how old Adam and Eve were when they sinned. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question as we don’t really know. However, his curious mind was at work, so we were able to talk about our first parents and their rebellion against God. In a...

One of the most important lessons we as Christian parents need to learn is that, as the Bible says, salvation is of the Lord. We cannot drag our kids kicking and screaming into God’s Kingdom. It is the Holy Spirit that does that work. Consider these words from Dr. Dan Doriani in his book, “A Man After God’s Own Heart”: “Commands can change the behavior of children or employees, if you have the abi...

The online sports media platform RG recently ran a piece on gambling addiction in adolescents and young adults. The story caught my eye as we here at CPYU believe that sports gambling is the next big frontier for adolescent addiction. Listen to what RG says about peer influence and the role of social circles in teen gambling: Peer influence plays a significant role in gambling behaviors among adol...

We live in a current cultural climate that teaches our children to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. While none of us like pain and we do like pleasure, the reality is that we live in a broken world where pain and suffering do exist. God promises to alleviate all pain and suffering when Jesus returns to usher in the new heavens and the new earth and God’s shalom is restored, but we do live in that i...

A few years ago, a Harris Poll uncovered some data regarding the attitudes of Gen Z toward technology. Keep in mind that this is the generation born between 1997 and 2012, the first of which could experience the iphone when they were ten years old. The research found that eighty percent of Gen Z was concerned that their generation has become too dependent on technology. Three-quarters of them expr...

According to a survey conducted by the Girl Scouts of the USA organization, our girls are feeling a growing amount of anxiety regarding their futures. The survey found that fifty-four percent of girls ages five to thirteen say that the idea of becoming an adult is scary or overwhelming. For girls ages eleven to thirteen, the number feeling the same wariness about the future is sixty percent. The s...

From time to time I have given you updates on teenagers and drug use. The latest data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse show us that while the use of drugs and alcohol continues to be a problem among our kids, there is some good news. The majority of our teenagers report no use of substances during the previous thirty day period. Ninety one percent of eighth graders, eighty two percent of...

Something is trending among British teenagers that has left us wondering if we will ever see it here. A survey of two thousands parents and their teenage children offered some insight into how social interactions are changing in our increasingly digitized world. Ninety two percent of the teenagers surveyed said that they are much more comfortable and at ease communicating with someone via text or...

There’s a common scene in old western movies where a weary traveler comes into town, ties up his horse in front of the tavern, and steps to the bar. The bartender always asks, “What’ll you have?” If you ask that question of teenagers looking to quench their thirst with something other than water in today’s world, the number one beverage of choice is energy drinks. Researchers at Piper Sandler say...

Some new research reported in the World Journal of Pediatrics offers some compelling data regarding the connection between the borders and boundaries put on screen time use, and a child’s video gaming behavior. Researchers found that greater screen time on the part of parents, combined with the habits of allowing screen use at meals and in the bedroom, and using screens to manage behavior, was lin...

Last year, the Gallup organization released the results of their latest American Values Index. Respondents were given a list of twenty-three values and were asked to choose all of those values that were important to them. Finishing at the top of the list were family, with forty nine percent placing that as most important, and Freedom, with thirty-percent placing that at number one. Rounding out th...

All this week we’ve been looking at some great quotes that help us to look deeply into who we are and how our culture has shaped us and our kids. Here’s quote from C.S. Lewis: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." These words are especially helpful as we live in a  materialistic, market-driv...

All this week we’re looking at some great quotes that help us to look deeply into who we are and how our culture has shaped us and our kids. Here’s one from writer G.K. Chesteron: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” Chesterton’s words hold true today in a cultural climate where the threats to deep and meaningful Christian faith ru...

All this week we’re looking at some great quotes that help us to look deeply into who we are and how our culture has shaped us and our kids. Journalist Dorothy Day wrote these thought-provoking words: “If I have achieved anything in my life, it has been because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God.” Parents, how much time do you spend talking about God? And when you talk about God, what i...

All this week we’re looking at some great quotes that help us to look deeply into who we are and how our culture has shaped us and our kids. Here’s one from C.S. Lewis: “A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world. . . and might even be more difficult to save.” What do Lewis’...

Here’s a thought-provoking quote that I recently ran across from Ralph Waldo Emerson - “A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.” You may now be wondering why I would use time on a...

This is a big weekend for those of us living here in the United States. Tomorrow, we celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our nation, or, what’s called our Semiquincentennial. You’ve no doubt experienced the buildup and even some anniversary events, where the main theme of these celebrations is freedom. This weekend’s events give us a great opportunity to teach our kids about true...

One of the great responsibilities we have as parents raising kids in today’s screen-saturated world is the prevention and treatment of what’s now known as digital fatigue. Also known as “tech burnout”, digital fatigue occurs when the excessive use of digital devices like a smartphone and the constant connection to the online world becomes exhausting. We live in a world of over-stimulation, where n...

The latest “State of Today’s Family” report from Barna includes some interesting insights into how Gen Z is thinking about and practicing marriage. In the years since nineteen fifty, the average age of first marriage has increased by about eight years for both men and women. The average age now for men is thirty, and for women it’s twenty-eight. They seem to be waiting longer in order to become mo...