By Rick Plasterer, Juicy Ecumenism.
Raising children has become a challenge in a culture that is no longer supportive of and in some respects hostile to Christianity. Clare Morell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and director of its Technology and Human Flourishing Project believes that the elimination of smartphone and social media use by children and teenagers is important in forming decent, responsible citizens. She spoke at the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women on her new book, Tech Exit: a Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones on July 18.
While Morell believes that minors should completely abstain from smartphones and social media, she could find no book saying this. Instead, advice to parents was to limit use. It should be limited in the time spent on smartphones, and the resources available to children. But this is woefully insufficient to deal with the harm to the socialization of young people that social media is causing. Indeed, existing advice said or assumed that exposure to social media is inevitable for children and teenagers. Her interviews with “dozens of families, plus hundreds more” she’s heard about who pursue a smartphone free childhood show otherwise, she maintains.