Raising Boys in the Age of Digital Addiction

Confronting the Hidden Enemy in Our Homes

Digital Technology is changing the landscape of raising children and especially boys.

I remember the first time I witnessed a ‘cellular’ phone. I was traveling with a friend here in Chester, VA, and he had a box in his car between the seats. It was the size of what I remember being an old military first aid kit; clunky and bulky. It was nothing close to the sleek products we have now. He pulled a rather large receiver out of the box and put it to his ear….as he was driving; which alone made me nervous. Then, he proceeded to make a call using numbered buttons on the base unit which was still between the seats. There was a wire connecting the base to the receiver. Considering what we use now, it was completely archaic and yet I was astounded then that he was having a conversation with someone in his office from his car.

That would have been in the mid-90s. Now, that cellular device fits in our pockets and contains 50+ items that would weigh 50-60 pounds if we had to carry those items around. And this is NOT a phone anymore. But what is it exactly?

“God only knows, but more importantly we don’t know how to manage the unintended consequences of our technology prowess” according to Jordan Peterson.

Brad Huddleston calls it Digital Cocaine. He’s written several books on the subject including “Digital Cocaine: A Journey Toward Balance” and “Restoring Balance in the Digital Age”. His website is www.bradhuddleston.com and he offers many resources to leaders, parents and students who are concerned about the problem. He summarizes that digital media is a new drug that is accessible, free, and widely accepted as normal behavior. However, the results from overuse are no different than a cocaine addiction over the same period of time and can do the same damage to the brain. That is a subject we talk more about in our new book, “Boys Have a Dam Problem: Examining the Faults Which Have Put Our Boys in Crisis.”

One of the many reasons that our boys are not progressing into manhood is due to this senseless addiction. They are withdrawing into their rooms (in the basement of parent’s homes) or camped out on the couch hiding behind their cell phones. And what are they doing? Video gaming; Pornography; On-line gambling and more. It’s a constant barrage of entertainment that pulls them further and further away from the fight at their doorstep. It’s destructive. It’s passive. It’s contrary to God’s purpose and plan for their lives. Our children are not being disciplined or discipled by the church or by their parents. They are being transformed by the culture they live in through their devices.

Another byproduct of cell phones is what Karl Marx referred to as ‘Alienation”. It was part of his critique of capitalism, exploring how labor under a capitalist system estranges workers from the fundamental aspects of their human nature. According to Marx, alienation occurs because the capitalist mode of production forces individuals to work in ways that disconnect them from the the fruit of their labor. Of course, it’s also much more efficient and helps people dig their way out of poverty; a point that Marx missed. (The assembly line transformed the car manufacturing industry.) His point, however, is that unlike a farmer who plants the seed and then harvests the fruit of that seed, a worker on an assembly line is far removed and disassociated from the ‘work’ of his hands. That connection is a little lost on me, but none-the-less, the point is that our boys (children) are not dealing with a real world end product. They are interacting with a cold, mechanical entity that is virtual and mostly unrelated to the environment they are in. They are not learning to be relational and resilient because they are not dealing with real people.

You can see it everywhere, can’t you? A family having a meal together and everyone is on their cellphone; Teenagers are at a basketball game together and everyone is on their phone. (So, are they even ‘together’?) We are not teaching our boys how to be ‘present’ with real people. How do we/should we manage a power that has such unintended consequences?

And there are other issues brewing. A few years ago, I went to a children’s ministry conference to speak on the boy crisis. I had fully expected to find an audience there that was interested in curriculum, VBS, volunteer recruitment, and perhaps new software programs to facilitate check in. What I found was an audience hungry for information on dealing with children and anxiety, depression, and suicide. Are you kidding me? The Covid-19 epidemic only exasperated the problem.

Jonathan Haidt has a book entitled “The Anxious Generation”. In it, he explores the surge in anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues in kids, attributing at least some of the increase to this "great rewiring" of childhood which has been marked by excessive screen time, overprotective parenting, and constant digital connectivity.

The central thesis of the book is that the widespread adoption of smartphones and social media has profoundly disrupted the developmental environment for children and adolescents, contributing to this mental health crisis. Haidt argues that an over reliance on digital interactions, combined with "safetyism" (a cultural trend prioritizing protection from all potential harm), has led to a decline in resilience among younger generations. This shift has reduced opportunities for unstructured play, manageable risks, and in-person social interactions, which are critical for building coping skills and independence​.

In a recent interview, Haidt shared what he saw happening:

“We’ve had a play-based childhood for literally 200 million years because we're mammals and all mammals play. That's how we wired up our brains. Somewhere in the 1990s, it stopped—and stopped dead by 2010. It faded away and was replaced, very suddenly, by the phone-based childhood between 2010 and 2015. What it meant was that if you went through puberty on a flip phone, you're probably a Millennial, and your mental health is probably okay. If you went through puberty on a smartphone with a front-facing camera and Instagram and social media, and five hours a day of social media, nine hours a day of screen time, you are at much, much higher risk of being anxious and depressed. And you're probably Gen Z. So that's the big picture of what I think has happened. Another way to say this, and this is more for the parents in the room, is that we have overprotected our children in the real world, and we have under protected them online. And both were mistakes. We have to reverse both of them.”

What to do?