Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

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...

Paul Kingsnorth has written an engaging and thought-provoking book on technology which serves to warn us by looking ahead to the dangers that are coming due to our un-thinking embrace of all things digital. The book is titled Against The Machine: On The Unmaking of Humanity . Kingsnorth’s analysis should serve as a wake-up call to all of us, especially parents, as he shares how the individuals beh...

As a parent, what is your posture regarding how your kids will best navigate today’s youth culture? I want to warn you against two dangerous postures. Some parents take the approach I call false optimism. It’s an approach that looks at the world and with a shrug of the shoulders says, “No need to worry, Everything is going to be alright.” Truth is, the collective lot of children and teens hasn’t g...

The title of a research study from the University of Hawaii recently caught my eye. The study title is this: “Frequency of Negative Adult Spectator Behavior at Adolescent Sporting Events.” Any of us who have attended a youth sporting event or who are raising young athletes know the sideline behavior of parents is often concerning, and sometimes even appalling. The introduction to the study recogni...

Are you aware that Time Magazine’s 2025 Person of the Year is actually a group, rather than an individual? Named as winner were the “Architects of Artificial Intelligence,” an award which is given for the transformative impact AI is having on our culture and lives. Being given the title does not always signify a positive contribution, but rather the most influential contribution.  AI is truly chan...

Parents, do you understand that seeing your kids come to Jesus is not just about belief, repentance, forgiveness, and eternal life? Something else has to happen after our kids accept Christ as their Savior. Salvation is not just about justification, but about a lifetime of sanctification. We become followers of Jesus who integrate the Christian faith and kingdom of God into all of life. Theologian...

All this week we’ve been looking at barriers to lasting faith and the reality that far too many kids are leaving high school, home, and church, then heading off to college and walking away from their faith. In his helpful article, Why Youth Stay In Church When They Grow Up, Pastor Jon Nielson lists three reasons that are present in the lives of young people who continue to embrace and grow in thei...

All this week we’re looking at barriers to lasting faith and the reality that far too many kids are leaving high school, home, and church, then heading off to college and walking away from their faith. Pastor Jon Nielson believes that one of the foundational reasons for this is that our kids have not grown up in homes where their parents have preached the Gospel to them. My own forty years of expe...