The Media May Be Killing Your Children.

Here are 3 things you can do about it.

There’s so much in the media today that’s downright wrong. Too much. From LGBT values, sexual perversions, and hard drugs, to witchcraft, occult, and mysticism, to excess shedding of blood, destruction, and cheapening of human life.

You name the vice, you can easily get plenty of it in today's media. It's in movies, music, reality shows, books, cartoons, and even some children's educational content.

Now, though there’s plenty of clean and beneficial content in the media, there’s also a lot of horrible stuff.

Search engines like Google, YouTube, and social media sites like Tittok, Instagram, and Facebook make it worse.

Once the algorithm has observed you’ve searched for or watched a kind of content a few times, it keeps feeding you more content that looks like it; so if what you saw at first is crap, it will keep feeding you more crap, so your feed becomes an endless stream of nonsense, so it’s easy to get addicted to content that poisons your mind.

These are the struggles our young people are grappling with. Many of them endlessly consume rubbish online. And these things they consume are deeply damaging to them and society.

Here's how:

The content a person consistently exposes themselves to shapes them, either for good or bad. And the effect on young people is even greater, because at their age they are still very impressionable, so they are more easily influenced.

Their consistent exposure to the wrong content distorts their perception of reality, corrupts their values, dulls their judgment of what’s right and wrong, and makes them normalize what’s abnormal.

If you were to open the minds of some of our young people, it's worse than a gutter, it's like a pit latrine, filled with lots of garbage and septic thoughts and feelings.

I believe this is a major reason we have more young people today getting into all sorts of vices: internet fraud, rape, homosexuality, drug abuse, etc.

Also, I believe it's partly why we're seeing growing numbers of clinically anxious, depressed, and drug-addicted young people.

What's the solution to this epidemic? 3 things I suggest.

1- Limit Media Exposure:

We need to limit the exposure of our young people to media, and that includes Television, social media, Netflix, YouTube, etc. Generally, we need to limit their phone usage or access to other smart (internet-enabled) devices i.e laptops, iPads, etc.

Note, the idea is not to completely cancel it, it's to limit or control it. Have a conversation with your children where you both agree on the times they can browse and the kind of content they can search for.

Help them understand that while the internet is a great tool it must not become an idol, and it can have devastating effects if used without discernment, boundaries, and self-control

I believe young people should not have uncontrolled access to smartphones until they are 15-18, around when they go to college.

It's expected that by that age they will have built a significant level of morality, judgment, discernment, and self-control, which will help them stay safe online and use smart devices in a healthy way.

2. Teach your children their identity.

Seize every opportunity to creatively tell your children about their identity in Christ. Use stories and examples they can understand.

When they know who they are in Christ, it will be harder for them to fall for the lies the Media throws at them, because they will know whose they are and what they stand for.

Don’t only teach identity, model it. Be an adult who knows their identity in Christ and who walks the talk of their faith.

If you’re wondering how to teach your children their identity in Christ— what stories, videos or analogies to use, check this out: WHO AM I?

OR Email me.

3- Use Affirmations.

Affirmations are a powerful way to guard the heart against wrong ideas and impress the right ideas on it.

Positive affirmations are statements we repeat to ourselves to compel our brains to think differently and replace wrong mindsets.

By teaching young people to consistently declare godly affirmations on identity and other godly principles, we will impress the right values upon their hearts, and displace the wrong values being projected at them by the media.

For more on Affirmations, read this

A lot of things in today’s media are dangerous to our young people, and it’s our duty as adults to protect them from these things until they are ready to handle it.

Do you have a comment on this article? Or maybe other tips on how to prepare our children to handle the media? Please share with me here

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Hi. I’m Dipo. I write, speak and train on soft skills and overcoming limiting emotions such as anxiety, fear of failure, rejection, the feeling of not-being-good-enough, low self-esteem, doubt etc.

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