We (Even Churches) Have Abandoned Our Children to the Algorithm: What the Research Actually Says
A list of resources
The accumulating evidence on social media and adolescent mental health has reached a threshold that serious people can no longer responsibly minimize. While public debate has circled endlessly around screen time guidelines and parental best practices, the major health institutions of the Western world have arrived at conclusions that carry genuine moral weight. What follows is a summary of what that research actually shows, presented without softening. At the end there are about 11 links to articles with good data about impact on social media on the brain of children. This data and no longer be ignored.
I want to be clear on this: churches and ministries that use social media accounts to communicate with children under the age of 16 are acting in a morally irresponsible way and are putting children at grave risk. A church with a youth Instagram account is like a church that would put Bible verses on crack vials and hand them out to the homeless. The social science data supports this equivalency, as you will see below. Parents should not tolerate it.
