Nurturing Human Values in a Digital World: Book Excerpt #1

Dear Readers,

Happy Fall! I hope you are all enjoying the excitement and energy of the new school year and are finding moments to refresh and renew. Chelsea and I have been traveling and presenting to schools across the country and continue to be moved by the continuous investment of time, care, and love that teachers and administrators pour into their work. We are inspired by the parents, who show up to our presentations, after a full day of work, hoping to find ways to better help their children become healthy, responsible human beings.

We live at a time when values, like saying what you mean and being accountable for your words, can seem arcane.  And we are all witnessing what happens when words no longer matter. But how do we convey our values to our children, who more and more live in a digital world? Wherever Chelsea and I go,  whether we are presenting on Sex and Sexuality or the Freedom of Self-Control, the questions return again and again to how we can teach values to children in an internet driven culture. Nothing seems more relevant.

Chelsea and I have spoken on this topic throughout the country.  We have so much information to share. Many of you have asked for the book. For the next few months we are going to be blogging excerpts from the book we’ve been working on: Who’s Raising Our Kids? Nurturing Human Values in a Digital World. We would love your feedback. This is a large and complex subject, so please bear with us, as we break it down and construct what we hope will be practical information that you can use with your child, today. Let us know how it goes!

Excerpt from Who’s Raising Our Kids? Nurturing Human Values in a Digital World (©2017):

“You have to understand that [my daughter] Laura is an ‘A’ student. I never dreamed that I should be looking at her texts or emails. Then, last night I get a call from the parents of one of her guy friends; I knew she had a crush on him. His parents found nude pictures of Laura on their son’s computer. Why would she do that? I can’t get her to talk to me, and now she won’t even go to school. Do I take away her phone? It doesn’t seem possible to keep her off of social media.”

Our children live in a different world than we do. For that matter, our younger children are growing up in a different world than their older siblings. High school students in my private practice are stunned by what their middle school brothers and sisters are doing online. Whether it’s shock over a daughter’s sense of privacy (or lack thereof), fear of a son’s rage when removed from his video games, or dismay over students’ inability to sustain focus, parents and educators are swimming as fast as they can to keep up.

We all work hard to provide our children with the amazing tools of technology; we understand that giving them access to technology is vital if they are going to succeed. But what we are not prepared for is how these tools have morphed into a cyber environment that is altering our children’s behavior and changing how they interpret reality. Media technology (MT) is shaping how our children know who they are and what the world is about, how they form and understand friendship, how they determine right from wrong, and how they define happiness and success.

It is easy to get caught up in all that MT offers and lose sight of what is missing. Who hasn’t been captured by the magic of a new app that can find a song, identify a bird, locate the best restaurant, or tell you which constellation you are looking at on a star-filled night? How can we not be in awe of the human potential that is unleashed when so much information can be shared in every corner of the globe?

As we embrace this new technology, it is important that we are not blind to the limits of the cyber world. MT cannot provide the human context that helps our children understand what has meaning and value. Families transmit this human context from generation to generation through traditions, stories, conversations, and family relationships. It is this web of experiences that acculturates each generation of children to what the family understands is good and true. From this foundation, the child develops his personal values and identity, and learns how to make sense of the world.

In the accelerated world of the internet, it has become harder for families to provide this human context. As media technology consumes more and more of our time, human values like integrity, generosity, and respect for privacy compete with the cyber world that values fast, new, stimulating, and busy. We see the shift in our children’s attitudes and behavior but we don’t know what to do. (To be continued…)
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As parents and educators, how do you sustain this human context and support your children in bringing human values into the digital world?