Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

Somewhere there’s an assumption flying around that Christian kids are somehow immune from being vulnerable to the growing tide of negative influences in today’s rapidly changing culture. Many of us have bought the lie that “those things don’t happen in Christian families,” or that “they don’t happen to Christian kids.” Believing that lie can lull us to sleep, keeping us from realistically recogniz...

Parents, some new research on the effects of social media, screen time, smartphone use, and videogaming on eleven to twelve year olds warrants our attention. Reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study set out to examine associations between problematic screen use, and behavior and mental health outcomes one year later. Problematic screen use occurs when kids can’t control t...

One of the cultural pressures that’s trickling down quickly from our adult world into the world of children and teens is what’s become known as hustle culture. Hustle culture is a fast-spreading mindset and lifestyle that glorifies non-stop work and constant productivity in an effort to achieve professional success. One’s self-worth easily gets tied to this, leading to a relentless pursuit of what...

I was fortunate to have Christian parents who modeled Christ-like grace in our home. When I think of my parents’ grace, one specific instance comes to mind. It happened late in my teenage years. I had hurriedly left our family dinner table to meet a friend. In my haste, I failed to look in the rear-view mirror while I sped in reverse out of our driveway. My progress was interrupted abruptly with a...

Would you agree with this sentence: “It is becoming common knowledge that social media use has led to harmful psychological consequences, including the amplification of a psychological phenomenon known as FOMO, or fear of missing out.” Those words penned by professor Keith Hess of Oklahoma Baptist University in a recent edition of Salvo Magazine, in an article entitled “Beware the Other Attention...

All this week we’ve been looking at how smartphones are cutting into the sleep time our kids desperately need, and what we as parents must do to remedy this problem. Because we as Christian parents must teach our kids to glorify God in every nook and cranny of their lives, we must set the table for them to sleep counter-culturally, worshipping God through good stewardship of their bodies by gettin...

All this week we’re looking together at how smartphones are cutting into the sleep time our kids need, and what we as parents must do to remedy this problem. Parents, here are just some of the dangers associated with digitally-interrupted sleep. First there’s anxiety and depression. Counselors who screen patients for these issues will oftentimes first ask patients if they are getting enough sleep....

All this week we’re looking together at the issue of how smartphones are cutting into the sleep time our kids desperately need, and what we as parents must do to remedy this problem. Parents, I want to share with you some realities that demand your attention and response. Researchers tell us that eighty-nine percent of our teenagers keep at least one electronic device in their bedroom at night, us...

All this week we’re looking together at the issue of how smartphones are cutting into the sleep time our kids desperately need, and what we as parents must do to remedy this problem. For our kids today, uninterrupted sleep is about as familiar to them as pay-phones, black and white TVs, transistor radios, and other artifacts that they see as part of their parents’ olden days. Researchers tell us t...

Are you a parent who laments the fall-out from smartphones and how they’ve permeated and changed not only youth culture, but your very own children and teens. When we notice the negative effects these devices are having on our kids and we choose to intervene by setting up borders and boundaries, arguments are sure to ensure. In fact, recent research says that the most common point of parent-child...

Our children need parents who will openly explain and discuss what is happening to their bodies as they pass through puberty. We live in a world that constantly sets unrealistic standards regarding physical beauty so that only a handful can measure up. Teenagers spend hours in front of the mirror looking for facial and body flaws. Figuratively speaking, they look over their shoulders and see image...

One of the subtle, or maybe not so subtle, traps of social media is the way that we use it as a digital megaphone to trumpet ourselves. And because we all need to look good on social media, it’s usually not our real selves that we put out there, but our idealized selves. I have often said that if you seek the spotlight, it will blind you. That’s a mantra we and our kids should all embrace, knowing...

I was recently at a social function where I asked a mother how her fifth grade daughter was doing. “Well”, the mom replied, “She’s a little bit sad. She just broke up with her boyfriend.” The fact that we were talking about a fifth-grader got me to thinking about how much the world of kids and their dating relationships have changed over the years. Not only are kids dating younger and then marryin...

Parents, did you know that understanding the world of your kids is a part of your parental calling? Youth workers, Sunday School teachers, pastors, and other significant adults all play an important role in the spiritual development of children, but Scripture is clear: The primary arena for Christian nurture is the home. Parents are called by God to teach the truth of God’s Word by precept and exa...

Meta is the company that owns Facebook and Instagram. While there might not be too many teenagers hanging around on Facebook these days, our kids are engaging for hours a day with a variety of other social media platforms. In recent months, there’s been well-deserved pushback on the movers and shakers at Meta regarding the ways in which their social media platforms harm our vulnerable children and...

Parents, today I want to ask you a question that you might find a bit odd. The question is this, Are you doing what you can to convince your kids that they are indeed sinners? Listen to these words from the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I cannot imagine a worse state for anybody to be in than for him or her to say he or she does not feel he or she is a sinner. The Holy Spirit convicts and convinces us...

Recently, the Center Against Sexual and Family Violence in El Paso, Texas, began raising awareness among their constituency about a new type of dating violence they were seeing among teenagers. It’s being called digital violence, a name that captures the changing realities of life for children and teens as they grow up in a smartphone and social media saturated world. Using the digital tools they...

One of the most essential lessons we need to teach our children and teens is that God calls them to be responsible stewards and caretakers of their bodies. In First Corinthians Six, the Apostle Paul tells us that we are to honor God with our bodies. We are to care for them as an act of worship. For parents, this means that we must warn them about being careful about what it is that we put into our...

It’s a fact that many of you who are listening to my voice right now are weighed down under the burden of a child or grandchild who has entered into rebellion and walked away at some level from you and from the Church. I know that this is a heartbreaking load to carry. And when you are carrying it, you are often led to feel like nobody understands or nobody is willing to step up and carry the load...

Are you, like me, tired of all the boasting that goes on on social media? Are you tired of having to face the temptation of giving in to the pressure of comparison which fuels that broken human desire of working to keep up with the Joneses? For those of us who are old enough to remember what life was like in a world without the distraction of social media, we long for those days when boasting and...

As we get ready to celebrate power of the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus this weekend, I want to ask you if you’ve taken any time to talk with your kids about the earth-shattering significance of what it is that we will be celebrating. The fallout from our culture’s growing reality of biblical illiteracy hit me hard when a couple of years ago on the day after Easter my daughter-in-law, an ath...

The TikTok video was titled, “Go to bed old, wake up hot.” The video is just one in the growing number of online tutorials posted by social media influencers to get women and girls using what’s called “the morning shed” routine. Wanting to know more about this new viral trend, I watched as the girl on the screen removed and peeled off all kinds of multi-colored patches, masks, wraps, mouth tape, c...

For those of us who have experienced the death of someone we love, we spend more time thinking of them when the calendar turns to the anniversary of their death. On this day in twenty twenty, my father died and went into the presence of Christ at the earthly age of eighty-eight. The late Tim Keller penned these words about death: “Rather than living in fear of death, we should see it as spiritual...

It’s spring and the farmers are out in force prepping their fields and planting seeds with the hope and anticipation of a bountiful harvest. There’s a new trend among our kids that’s all about farming, but not in the way our professional farmers are now farming here. No, our kids are involved in what’s called “aura farming.” In the teenage world, someone who has aura is someone who has the same ki...

The beverage coolers in one of our local quickmarts take up almost two entire walls. There’s everything in there from a variety of water products, to carbonated soft-drinks, to energy drinks. Many of the beverage products in those coolers are what would be known as SSB’s, or sugar-sweetened beverages. It’s no secret that our children and teens largely favor these ssb’s, as they are packaged and ma...