Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

All this week we’ve been looking at David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock’s book Faith for Exiles, and the five ministry practices churches and families must pursue to lead kids into life-long faith. The research done by Kinnaman and Matlock indicates that in order to form a lasting faith, we must curb the cultural tendency toward entitlement and self-centeredness by getting our kids engaged in counter-...

All this week we’re looking at David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock’s book Faith for Exiles, and the five ministry practices churches and families must pursue to lead kids into life-long faith. The research done by Kinnaman and Matlock indicates that in order to form a lasting faith, we must ground and motivate our kids through training for vocational discipleship. This means that they know and live ou...

All this week we’re looking at David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock’s book Faith for Exiles, and the five ministry practices churches and families must pursue to lead kids into life-long faith. The research done by Kinnaman and Matlock indicates that in order to form a lasting faith, we must work to create a church and family culture where rather than separating the generations, meaningful intergenerat...

All this week we’re looking at David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock’s book Faith for Exiles, and the five ministry practices churches and families must pursue to lead kids into life-long faith. The research done by Kinnaman and Matlock indicates that in order to form a lasting faith, we must lead our kids into developing the muscles of cultural discernment. Exercising cultural discernment means that we...

With so many of our young adults graduating from high school and walking away from the faith, what can we do to lead them to embrace a lasting faith? All this week we’re going to look at David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock’s book Faith for Exiles, and the five ministry practices churches and families must pursue to lead kids into life-long faith. The research done by Kinnaman and Matlock indicates tha...

Concentrate hard as I tell you about a new word that’s appeared in the always changing lexicon regarding sexuality and gender in today’s world. The word is “allocishet.” It’s spelled A-l-l-o-c-i-s-h-e-t. It’s actually a combination of three words. Allo, which means other describes those people who experience romantic attractions to others. Cis is short for cisgender, which indicates a person whose...

One of my own kids favorite events during their elementary school years was the annual book fair. A section of the cafeteria would be set up with a huge display put on by the folks at Scholastic Books. On their website, Scholastic Books tells us that just last year alone, twenty-eight million kids attended school book fairs, and that one hundred million books got into kids’ hands from the fair. If...

Imagine a factory where the workers come in for eight hour shifts. At the end of each shift, a whistle blows to signal that it’s time to pack up and go home. It’s eight hours of work and then time to punch out. There’s a new and different working trend among young adults that’s been labeled as “grind culture” or “hustle culture.” Works days are marked by a work hard and don’t go home mentality, al...

Today, I want to talk about a research finding that might make your kids angry, but it might also help your kids perform better in school. A study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that a student’s cognitive performance may be improved if they walk to school, rather than be driven to school in a car or on the bus. It seems that God has wired our bodies in such a...

Last month, a bipartisan group of attorney generals from the District of Columbia and thirteen states came together to file lawsuits against TikTok, a social media platform popular among kids which they say was designed to be addictive to young users, and which harms the mental health of the developing young people who use it. At issue is the algorithm TikTok uses to customize which video content...

How easy it would be if adolescence were an overnight phenomena. But the process of moving from childhood to adulthood takes time. In today’s world, the assumption that the adolescent years cease and a teen becomes an adult at the age of 18 is no longer valid. New discoveries regarding the human brain, along with a host of cultural forces, like later marriage, extended college education, massive d...

If you remember back to your own adolescent years, you probably remember how your emotions were at times like a roller-coaster. One minute you were happy. The next minute you were sad. Sure it differs from person to person and day to day, but those of us who work with or are raising kids know that teenagers can be up and down. A new survey from the Gallup organization has looked at the emotions of...

A Reddit user recently threw out this question to school teachers: “What screams ‘I have unlimited screen time’ in students?” Their answers give insights and warnings parents should hear and heed regarding digital addiction, distraction, attention deficit trait, relational breakdown, cognitive decline, the power of influencers, desensitization, and more. One second grade teacher responds, “I hear...

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease found in those who have had repetitive brain trauma, which cannot be diagnosed accurately until one’s brain is examined after death. Looking back over the histories of deceased athletes, researchers have discovered that there are cases of CTE in athletes who never experienced a concussion. A connection has now been made between...

One of the many new time-taking activities afforded to us by our ever-present smartphones is scrolling through online videos and reels. If you only take into account the YouTube video platform, about three-point-seven million new videos are uploaded every day. Talk about a rabbit-hole! Add to that Instagram and tiktok videos, and we could spend a lifetime looking at people scaring other people, pe...

All teenagers face great temptation. All teenagers make sinful choices that are at times devastating to themselves and to others. It’s who we are as broken human beings. But here’s some great advice for parents: The most important factor in determining whether that bad choice turns into a situation that gets better or worse is parental response. What would happen if your goal would be to redeem th...

If you don’t think that marketing to kids and concerns about body image aren’t having an impact on children when they are of elementary school age, think again. Thanks to kids using smartphones and gaining access to TikTok and YouTube influencers, even pre-pubescent girls are concerned about the effects of aging on their skin. Consequently, many are spending large amounts of their parents’ money a...

Have you ever thought about how to best teach your kids about the proper balance between faith and works? In First Peter two ten we read that God has shown us great mercy and grace by giving us new life in Christ and calling us into God’s family. But we tend to forget that as God’s people we are now sojourners and exiles in this world, Peter goes on to tell us to abstain from the passions of the f...

In a recent article in USA Today, dermatologist Dr. Brooke Jeffy talks about the recent obsession among Gen Z with getting Botox injections to correct perceived cosmetic flaws. Concerned about starting to look old, these young people are getting hammered with social media posts and videos that are fueling their anxiety about aging, and promoting Botox as a remedy for their concerns. Dr. Jeffy says...

The folks at emarketer.com recently released their list of Gen Alpha’s top coolest brands. Gen Alpha is that cohort of kids born between 2013 and now. These are the kids we call digital natives, as they have never known life without smartphones, and as a result, they are heavily influenced by the marketing and content they encounter online. The streaming services YouTube and Netflix come in at num...

Earlier this year, the American Bible Society released their fourteenth annual State of the Bible report, which is put together to track cultural trends in the United States regarding spirituality and engagement with the Bible. This year’s report shows some encouraging trends regarding Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – and their relationship with the Bible. The folks at the American Bible...

The office of the United States Surgeon General recently released a report entitled, “Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents.” In his introduction to the report, Surgeon General Murthy writes these words: “Raising children is sacred work. It should matter to all of us.” Of course, those of us who understand God’s design for the fa...

When you were growing up, how many times did you hear your parents begin a sentence with these words: “When I was your age. . .” What usually followed was some kind of revelation comparing the relative ease of teenage life in your world, with the unimaginable difficulties your parents faced during their own adolescence. This includes the stereotypical account of walking ten miles to school in sub-...

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Kelsey Hansen writes about social media addiction as something that her younger self struggled with, even though at the time she didn’t realize just how addicted she was becoming. She confesses to noticing that her attention span and mental capacity were suffering. She’d be working on her school assignments, but constantly and repeatedly interrup...

Much of the research on kids and play indicates that our children and teens are spending more and more time involved in sedentary activity, and less time engaging in active play. It should come as no surprise that engaging the God-given gift of play will result in good outcomes both now and for the rest of their lives. The folks at project play tell us that the benefits of childhood physical activ...