Anxiety, Gen Z, and Smartphones

Kasey Olander: 

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. 

I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. 

Today, our topic is anxiety, Gen Z, and smartphones, how do those things relate together and how do we engage with this topic that has been trending lately, and as Christians, how do we help to shape the people around us. 

Today, we have two esteemed guests with us who I'm going to let introduce themselves. 

First, we have Dr. Gary Stidham. 

Gary, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

 Gary Stidham: 

Thanks, Kasey. Happy to be here. 

I'm Gary Stidham. I work for Texas Baptist. Texas BSM is a college ministry organization, so I've served college students for 25 years on the college campus in a campus ministry environment. And I now work in a network role where I train college ministers, leader and intern program, and also am adjunct professor at Southwestern Seminary teaching college ministry there. 

Kasey Olander: 

Okay. So just a few little things. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Just a few hats to wear. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Just a couple things going on. 

And our other guest is Dr. David Sanchez. Can you tell us a little bit about you? 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah. I'm the director of ethics and justice for the Christian Life Commission with Texas Baptist. 

The Christian Life Commission, we try to help our churches live out Micah 6:8 to do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with our God. 

We do justice by advocating for Christian values at the state capitol. Part of our loving kindness is helping oversee the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering and then walking humbly with our God. We try to teach our churches to be in the world but not of the world as they try to walk worthy of the gospel and share the love of Christ with others. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's awesome. Sounds like shaping compassionate, courageous leaders, which is what we're doing at The Hendricks Center. 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Very cool. 

I mentioned that our topic is anxiety and smartphones and how those impact young people. We have seen the rise of mental health conversations and even crises over the past several years. Technology is making a huge impact on everyone and uniquely for young people. 

As we've talked about each of your professional experiences, could you highlight maybe a little bit more about how you've related to young people and how you have a heart for the next generation? 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah, sure. 

I've serving on campus ministry for 25 years. The very first students I had were Gen Xers, believe that or not, for my first couple of years. And then I worked 15, almost 20 years with millennials. 

But something changed on the college campus about eight or nine years ago when Generation Z came to campus. There were conversations we weren't having before we're having now. Mental health became far more prominent. Students became more risk-averse. Campus counseling centers became overwhelmed. 

There are some wonderful sides to Gen Z, but they certainly have struggled to deal with what in previous generations was ordinary life stress. Even though in our organization we're there to do discipleship and evangelism on a college campus, but just ministering to the emotional needs and mental health needs of students became a tremendously larger portion of our work as campus ministers a decade ago when Gen Z got to campus. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

David Sanchez: 

I would say that in my role, I'm called a lot right now to be speaking to youth ministers and youth about LGBTQIA issues and how people struggle with those. 

And just as you were talking, Gary, it was making me think, I remember being a teenager and the thing that the education was pressuring me to do was to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, what kind of job I wanted to have. Now the pressure is to find out who you are. 

And that just sounds like so much more burdensome. I knew who I was and it was just, "Huh, what do I want to be?" Instead of all of these ways that we quantify ourselves now based on who we're attracted to, how we fit within gender norms of our culture and politically, fandoms, it's all of it, it's all meshed together in a way that just seems very disorienting. 

Kasey Olander: 

Even the career stuff alone is still stressful. 

David Sanchez: 

No, you're not wrong. It's still stressful too. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Much less adding all of these compounding issues on top of that. 

Gary, could you speak a little bit more to that shift? Yeah, I should mention that I loved my experience in campus ministry, and even though we were on different campuses, I think it was still so significant and formative a time for young people, their experience on the college campus. What do you think happened? You mentioned eight or nine years ago. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. Well, that change coincided with the generational change, Generation Z, as opposed to the millennial generation coming on campus. Those lines are fuzzy, it depends on which sociologist you talk to, where the break is. 

But the way we were saying it early on is this was the first generation that from the time they were old enough, they had a smartphone in their hands. Their mom put them in the shopping cart and to pacify them while she bought groceries, she put a game on her iPhone and let them play with it while she bought groceries. So there was something different about them in at least that regard. 

And when that generation who were 10 in the 15 years ago came to the college campus, they had some struggles with technology addiction and mental health and just identity crisis like David brought up. 

There was some trouble making relational connections, which is even more profound now than it used to be. It used to be... 

Some of our campus ministries now do friending lessons. First week of school, we're going to do a seminar how to make friends. It's almost so basic that the lessons will be like walk up to someone, make eye contact, put out your hand, shake their hand, introduce yourself. 

Now, obviously, Gen Z, it's a range of people. Some are incredible, wonderful socially. 

Kasey Olander: 

Of course. 

 Gary Stidham: 

But just the baseline, that average or aggregate socially, they struggle far more than previous generations did. 

I think you're probably a millennial, Kasey- 

Kasey Olander: 

I am. 

 Gary Stidham: 

... your generation by and large were extremely social and very optimistic. They wanted to be where the party was. 

Gen Zers, far more cautious, far more risk averse. Holding themselves back. 

It was almost palatable when that generational shift happened on college campuses. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's a great point. 

Let's just say for the sake of this conversation, estimate that Gen Z was born maybe 1997 to 2010ish. Is that fair? 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yep. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's when the iPhone launched in 2007. That's when they were about 10 years old. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Think teenager, early teenagers up to age 28 to age 30. 

Kasey Olander: 

Now, they're not only on the college campus but also entering the workforce- 

 Gary Stidham: 

They're young adults- 

Kasey Olander: 

... for the first time. 

 Gary Stidham: 

... young 20 somethings. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

I like that you highlighted the smartphone and it's from when they were so young that it's been just this way of life, that this is kind of a given. 

Go ahead. 

 Gary Stidham: 

No, no, no. 

It is almost ubiquitous. And they had it from an early age and usually, they had it without parents being aware. 

Now we can talk about the Jonathan Haidt book, The Anxious Generation. Now there's a growing body of evidence for the harm and the limits and restrictions that we should have on technology, but they didn't have those when they were... 

They got a tablet. It was often unfiltered internet access from a young age, which meant not only were they on apps, but they had access to pornography. Some of them had it before their brains were developed enough to really handle what they were consuming. They were flooded with it. They were set up for failure in a lot of ways. 

Kasey Olander: 

This is not to impose guilt on anyone or to shame anyone. Now, it's just to bring awareness to this facet that nobody could have anticipated probably. 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah. I try to equate it to how many laws we have for cars, how much effort it takes just to get a driver's license and you have to have insurance, and there's all these traffic laws that we follow, and there's cops who hopefully are helping enforce those laws in a fair way. There's just so much in place and there's so much to deter you from doing the wrong thing, like the person who drove the wrong way on the road while I was on the way to the studio here today. But that doesn't happen very often because we've got all of these structures in place. 

We are like back to when cars had first been invented in the first 10 years. There weren't any rules and there weren't stop lights or stop signs or policemen standing in the front of intersections. We're in a wild, wild west still and we can't even get companies to do the bare minimum of making sure kids are of a certain age to be accessing social media apps, which the book, Anxious Generation, talks about being so damaging to them. 

Kasey Olander: 

Well, let's go to that because that book was so fascinating to me when I read it. 

Jonathan Haidt is not a believer, so he doesn't claim to be a Christian or anything like that, but he's highlighting this pattern of harm for technology that's become so ubiquitous. 

Why don't we start with that? What is some of the, I guess, basis for the childhood that Gen Z grew up with? You highlighted the specific of the smartphone and the shopping cart, which I think we've all seen, but what are some other ways that their childhood was a lot different from the generations that came before? 

 Gary Stidham: 

It's a good question. 

Haidt would say two major causes for the mental health crisis among Gen Z... 

And just some statistics, we haven't mentioned statistics but 2023, 50% of Gen Zers reported mental health struggles. Half. 

Kasey Olander: 

A lot. 

 Gary Stidham: 

It's an unprecedented amount, and that's self reporting which is not always the most accurate, but even diagnoses... Young women of actual diagnoses 39% of Gen Z women meet thresholds for anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder. Neurodivergence is included in that number, so autism or ADHD diagnoses. Off the charts diagnoses. 

Haidt says, here are two things in his accounting that make it up. He says, "One is the shift from a play-based childhood to a screen-based childhood." 

For probably most of us, Kasey, it could be a little different for you, here's what our parents expected of us when we were younger. Go outside and entertain yourself. 

David Sanchez: 

And don't come home until the sun goes down. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Don't come home until the sun goes down. 

So go out, free play, creative play with friends. So you're getting socialized and you're doing some things that could cause you to get a skinned knee or get a little dirty. 

And he said, "But that has shifted as technology has made it easier to stay in," so you've got more options to stay in. 

He would trace in American history certain advocacy agendas that made parents more fearful to let their kids play outdoors. So things like child abductions and- 

Kasey Olander: 

Stranger danger. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah, stranger danger. And so parents became more aware of the dangers out there so they said, "Just stay in here." 

They went from a play-based childhood to a screen-based childhood, which meant that they weren't out there taking risks. They weren't out there building resilience. They weren't out there getting socialized with peers in the ways that maybe a previous generation was. 

That's one shift, as he said, the shift from play-based to screen-based. 

And then- 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah, I'd also add to that, just one little thing- 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah, absolutely. 

David Sanchez: 

... and that's that it also takes away their creativity because you go from using your imagination to come up with five different ways to use a stick. 

For a guy, it's always going to be a gun or a sword or something, but five different ways to use a stick to just consuming. 

You're not creating anymore. You're not building with Legos, you're not making things. You're watching other people make things. 

 Gary Stidham: 

And that robs them of something important for their development. 

David Sanchez: 

And I think something important in being made in God's image is our ability to create. You're taking that away from somebody. 

Kasey Olander: 

And the embodied activities of playing outside, skinning your knee, riding your bike because you realize, "Oh, the street lights are coming on and I got to get home." That relational dimension that is built with being with people. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah. Shortchanges all of it. The communal aspect and the creative aspect. 

 Gary Stidham: 

And it's almost impossible to overcome the draw of screens, especially if you're a preteen without a prefrontal cortex fully developed. 

One way I like to think of it is 75 years ago, the best minds in America, they went to Caltech, they went to MIT, and they put their talents to use, putting a man on the moon. That's what the best minds did is they went into that kind of industry. 

Well, now the best minds in America, they go to work for the social media companies. They learn how to write algorithms just to keep somebody on the app two minutes longer. The best minds in the world give their attention to that. 

Some ways, our kids, they don't have a prayer not to get hooked because we've set them up for it. 

Kasey Olander: 

And adults do too. 

We see... I don't want to talk about how much people are on their phones while they're driving. I just stopped looking at other drivers because it's just terrifying how many people are not watching the road in front of them, how many people are... I don't know what they're doing. But yeah, just that addictive component that you said the best minds are thinking of even ways without you realizing it to capture your attention. 

The documentary, The Social Dilemma, talks about how if you're not paying for the product, you are the product, which is very terrifying that these companies are calling the people that they serve users because they're trying to draw them into this addictive component, and that's how they make money is by capturing people's attention. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yep. 

David Sanchez: 

And they're really good at it. 

Adults don't have much of a chance either. So what chance do the young people have? 

Kasey Olander: 

Right, exactly. 

So what difference does it make to have these things developed so young for their developing brains? They don't have the decision-making ability, but also what impact does it have to have a smartphone in the hands of a child as opposed to an adult? 

 Gary Stidham: 

Oh, man, that's a great question. David, I don't know if you have thoughts. 

David Sanchez: 

Well, I'm not a child psychologist. I took a course like that once in college and I probably remember nothing of it. 

I'll just say from my own experience raising a daughter who is 11 years old, doesn't have a smartphone, we don't even have a gaming console that's just for her. Anytime we're playing video games, it's together. It's co-op, it's on the couch. Anytime we're watching TV, there's only one TV in our house and it's on the couch. 

Seeing the difference between her and some of her friends at school, when I try to interact with them, you can't get them to look at you. They'll walk away from you mid-sentence. That's not manners, that's just not knowing, "Oh, I'm actually in a conversation that I'm expected to participate in." 

I have to try to not take it personally and be like, "Okay, but this is a kid who's probably on their phone being neglected at home most of the time, this could be unfair, but maybe doesn't even know what it's like to have an adult giving them unfocused attention for a long period of time." He's a kid didn't even realize I'm wanting to know about you and mid-sentence walks away. 

I think it's the social aspect of it. I don't know what to say about how it's going to help their brains with even critical thinking and things like that in the future. But I could say at least from the social side, you see the social deprivation that's caused by it. 

That's one of the four things that he says are caused by the social media. Social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. I feel like I felt all of that in that one interaction with that child. 

Kasey Olander: 

I love that you talked like there's the shift to instead of, "Wow, that was a little rude," the empathy of thinking about the circumstances that may be surrounding it. 

David Sanchez: 

Right. Because in effect, what happened was this child didn't find me interesting and just scrolled me away- 

Kasey Olander: 

Exactly. 

David Sanchez: 

... to something that was interesting. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah, you guys used the phrase embodied existence, and there's some youth who have never thought through what it means to have an embodied existence. It's all... Even when they're in person, they're viewing it through the programming that's in their mind is, "This is just a person to swipe on if I get bored." The attention span is shorter than it's ever been and... 

David Sanchez: 

Maybe this is a boomer rant, but even anything I'm experiencing right now, it's not about me living in this experience. It's about me documenting this experience because I'm a celebrity and I need to get likes and comments from this experience that's happening right now. 

I like to use the example of when Justin Timberlake sang at the Super Bowl and he went up into the audience. Almost everybody else had their phones on recording him, but there are these two young ladies there who didn't and he handed the mic to them and they sang one of the lines to, I'm not going to sing it, but they sang one of the lines to- 

Kasey Olander: 

Bummer. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Come on. 

David Sanchez: 

<< Got this feeling in my body >> 

Kasey Olander: 

That was awesome. 

David Sanchez: 

He handed it to... And they sang it and I'm like, "These were the people who enjoyed the moment the most because they weren't documenting it. They were living in it, whereas other people became memes because they were on their phones while Justin Timberlake was right behind them." 

Kasey Olander: 

What a good analogy for what- 

David Sanchez: 

Yes. 

Kasey Olander: 

... we're missing out on in life when we're staring at our screens. 

I think there's an author who talks about how we spend too much time looking at small things, but the enormity of something like the Grand Canyon or the sky is what really reminds us of some of our humanity and some of the goodness of being alive and the world that God made. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. One thing we've done... 

Up until this point, we've talked about screens, but really on our phones, there's three categories of things we're doing on our phones. One is social media. One is gaming. We do video games on screens. So those are two big parts of the conversation. 

David Sanchez: 

Guilty. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. And one is pornography. 

With social media, and even with video games, and especially with video games, not all platforms, social media platforms are created equally and certainly not all video games are created equally. There's some that have more sinister and more addictive qualities than others. 

I'm a father of two sons myself, college age sons, and we were... Intuitively, my wife and I knew we wanted to limit screen time for them, so they got no screen time during the week and only a limited amount on weekends. Before the Haidt book, they had no smartphones till high school, or actually 16, I think, sophomore year. 

David, like your observation was, just socially, they did better than some of their peers did who were just immersed in the technology. Even to this day, my youngest is not on any social media. He's a college student, not on any social media platform except Discord, which it's a messaging app but it's also a social media platform, which is a far cry from Snapchat or TikTok in the hierarchy of addiction and bad behavior. 

I think the Snapchat and TikTok are way over on one end. Twitter's maybe two-thirds of the way there. Facebook's in the middle. Discord- 

David Sanchez: 

It depends on what group you're in. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah, yeah. 

David Sanchez: 

It really does. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. It lets you interact with the people you've chosen to interact with but you can choose to interact with the wrong kind of people. 

And then video games, there's a difference between video games that really hijack your attention and get that versus what I've heard David talk about story-based video games, which you play more communally, you are engaging other people, it's engaging your mind in a different way than just flashing lights and bells and whistles and achievements to get to the next level. 

The discerning for parents, not just how much screen time somebody gets, but what they're allowed within on the screen, what platforms they're allowed to use is important. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. I'm sensing a level of discernment that we need to pray for and ask the Lord for, because it's not just, okay, we all need to abandon all screens. Obviously, we're okay with people listening to podcasts but... Yeah, that's a good point that it's not just the device itself that is inherently evil or something. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. 

David Sanchez: 

Right. But what's usually going to capture our attention is not what's most wholesome and the algorithm, it's just trained to our human fallenness because we've trained it by what attracts us the most. 

I can get on Facebook to look at what your latest post is with the BSM, and that may be the first thing, but the next three things are like ads, and then the next one is follow somebody else and before you know it, I have to stop and ask myself, "Okay, wait. I've got to..." For myself first before I can teach my daughter how to do this. 

One thing I'll do is in the midst of it, I'll stop and think of Philippians 4:8 and be like, "All right. Is this true? Is this lovely? Is this admirable?" A lot of times, that gets me off a lot quicker because the algorithm is trying to give me the opposite of that. 

And then when I'm done, I'll often ask myself, Galatians 5:22-23, "How do I feel right now? Do I feel like I'm filled with the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness." I'll stop there. "Or do I feel like I'm filled with hate, discord, peace, anxiety, impatience." 

 Gary Stidham: 

The opposite. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

David Sanchez: 

Really, usually it's the opposite of those and if I'm not being filled with the spirit, then I'm clearly not using it the way that would be honoring to the Lord. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to ask how we, as adults... It's not just that we're trying to help childrens to do the right thing or... I said childrens, that was the wrong thing. 

But it's not just that we're trying to impart boundaries for other people but also for ourselves. What are some other things that we can do? 

I love the idea of being steeped in scripture so that you can ask yourself those kinds of questions. 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah, we've got to model it. I think those are some important memory verses to give to our kids. 

But Gary, you remember the commercial about drugs where the dad finds the drugs that the kid has and he says, "Where did you learn this?" And what does the kids say? 

 Gary Stidham: 

"I learned it from you, dad. I learned it from you." 

David Sanchez: 

"I learned it by watching you. 

We've got to remember. We've got to model well for our kids what it looks like to put the phone not just down and not just face down, but completely away to have a conversation with them so that first of all, they know what it feels like to be given their full attention and then to go from there. 

What else do you think? What are some other good ways we can model both for ourselves and for our young people to help encourage them? 

 Gary Stidham: 

It's good. 

Setting just personal limits was... It's easy for me at the end of the day just to scroll, but when my kids watch me scroll, then it justifies them spending time. "Why can you tell me? I have limit my screen time when you have unlimited screen time." Just some self-discipline that I want my kids to emulate, having that for myself for sure. 

And some discernment in content. There's some terrible stuff online. If I have no limits for myself, but I say, "Do as I say, not as I do," it doesn't carry moral authority with my kids. 

David Sanchez: 

My daughter knows that I have parental codes on my phone and I have my app store locked because I was exposed to pornography at age seven. I just can't have the opportunity. So my wife has my... 

I've explained to my daughter as an adult, this is what my victory over pornography looks like. To get in her mind that there's not a point where you grow up and you no longer struggle. But what does victory over that struggle really look like? 

Of course, you got to find when it's age appropriate but because kids are being exposed so young, I think six or seven is age appropriate with a book like Good Pictures Bad Pictures. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. Do you want to say more about that book, David? I feel like that's a helpful resource people haven't seen. 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah. I think it's a book... That's the way it addresses the topic is just so right for kids. There's a junior version that's kids aged four to six, I think, and then seven to 11 or 12. 

It's just teaching them to identify the difference between what a good picture does and what a bad picture does. It explains what pornography is, but it also explains how it fires off neurons in your brain and becomes addictive so they're aware of its addictiveness before they're even exposed. And then when they see it as opposed to just saying, "Oh, that's a dirty picture," they're supposed to say, "That's pornography. Don't show that to me." 

I've experienced this firsthand driving with my daughter down the road when it was just a decal of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes peeing on something on the back of a truck. My daughter, she yells, "It's pornography." And I nearly drove off the road. 

But I was like, "You know what? I've gotten so desensitized, but you're actually right. It's showing his bum and that absolutely is. You're right, sweetie. Let's try to think about something else. Let's think about what's good instead." 

It's such a good book though. Yeah, it's helpful for that purpose. 

Kasey Olander: 

That is a really helpful resource. 

We have a couple other episodes on pornography, I think they're called Freedom from Pornography, and there's several other ones that talk about how important this is to address with children. Even like you said, because of the exposure a lot of times is so young. 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah. If I could go back just to the modeling thing and what we can do ourselves, another resource that I love is Andy Crouch's a Tech-Wise Family. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's a great one. 

David Sanchez: 

The recommendation he gives that as a family together, you make a commitment to not look at phones one hour a day, one day out of the week, and one week out of the year and just... 

Gary, you could probably express more eloquently than I can, the importance of just having a time of detox. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. Well, I can express the importance better than I can observe the practice. 

But, yeah, taking a social media fast, it really is detoxing after some addictive behaviors. You really notice if you take a week off of social media, the urge to grab that phone and pull it up and start that scroll is there but after about three days, the urge goes away. It's just very healthy to do that periodically. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And then your mind may not be so cluttered with, "What was that girl I knew in seventh grade doing?" 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yep, yep. 

Now, before we move on from screens, I'd love to just say a couple things about pornography because I think... It's connection to mental health for our students. 

I've watched... So we've got a generation who didn't have a prayer. They had unfiltered access from before puberty. Before they knew what it was, they saw it. 

David Sanchez: 

And in a way that we didn't. 

 Gary Stidham: 

And not still pictures of individuals but graphic video depictions. 

David Sanchez: 

Often violent. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. Sometimes violent, degrading, all of that. They've been desensitized and deprogrammed from a young age. 

One fun part is... One of the changes that happened a few years ago is we started getting college freshmen who had already fought their pornography addiction and overcome it because their addiction started so early. 

David Sanchez: 

Gosh. 

Kasey Olander: 

Oh, wow. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Which is bad and good at the same time. 

Kasey Olander: 

Right. 

 Gary Stidham: 

But pornography addiction's probably even different than just strict smartphone addiction in that the amount of neurochemicals involved and the actual addiction, clinical addiction that it can cause are pretty profound. 

In our experience, most people, they're daily users of pornography, they're going to need professional help to overcome that. 

There's some great discipleship programs. We use a free app called The Freedom Fight. We use... We steer students towards blocking and reporting software like Covenant Eyes. 

Like David said, I use those myself just as a good witness to my students. 

But there's just something about young men who walk in, you watch them walk into your ministry meetings and their shoulders are slumped forward and their heads bowed down and their self-esteem is really low. It's in part because of shame is heaped on their shoulders. 

When you watch them over the course of weeks, then months, and then years fight and get freedom, both from the addiction and the guilt and shame that come with it, their shoulders go back, their head lifts up, their confidence increases, their desire to pursue the Lord, and discipleship and in ministry service increases and goes through the roof. Their mental health gets better because that weight of shame is lifted. 

I used to assume it was a young men's problem but statistically it's like, I just assume, it's 90-plus percent of our young men and 60-plus percent of our young women that are using it regularly. So even with women, it's less, but it's still the majority. 

One way we're going to help students address the mental health crisis is to help them address this area. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's a great point I like that you tied it to this again, back to embodiment, that things such as mental health we can't always see things like depression and anxiety, but we can see the effects of it. 

You talked about the slumped shoulders and the posture and the way that people carry themselves because we are holistic creatures. Material and immaterial is just God's design for humans and that design is good. 

If that's something that you can see and move towards somebody with compassion, then that's an area where you can see an area that Jesus can heal for them 

David Sanchez: 

I'd say on a much simpler level, as important and as glorious as that is, he mentioned sleep deprivation. 

It's amazing what a good night's sleep does to your mental health. If you didn't go to sleep with your phone next to you and wake up in the middle of the night and check it, but you actually put it away or even had it on a schedule so that it's not going to wake you and you get a good night's sleep, I think that would help tremendously with people's mental health. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yep. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Things that are as straightforward as diet and exercise and sleep a lot of times get neglected the easiest. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Haidt, I think we mentioned earlier, he says he finds two big causes to the mental health crisis. One is this shift to screen-based childhood, but the other is, his word is, safetyism. We might call it overprotection. 

His contention is that overprotecting a generation has caused risk aversion and fear in that generation. We tell them they can't, we tell them the world's scary, we tell them to stay in and then they believe us. The world is dangerous. 

In the last six or eight years on the college campus, a shocking number of students who don't have driver's license, not because they don't have the funds for a car, some of them own a car, but they don't have a driver's license and you say, "Why not?" And they say, "Well, I want to, but I'm just not sure." "Why aren't you sure?" "Well, it's scary." It is what it comes down to. 

There was a generational trend where parents became following some social trends said, "It's scary out there. We're going to keep you in here." So instead of free playing in the neighborhood with fellow kids, which that was never an option for some people, depending on if you had the privilege of growing up in a safe neighborhood or a small town versus the inner city, that was never the option for some people. But more and more families live in safe neighborhoods yet still shelter their kids. So you have a group of students now who are averse to taking risks because they've never been allowed to take risks. 

Kasey Olander: 

Some of that might be healthy, like a sense of self-control and not going wild with something like gambling, which is very risky. But what is the flip side of that, too much risk aversion? 

David Sanchez: 

The flips to too much risk aversion, I say we're seeing a lot less of that than we are of the former. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Gen Z in general, they're far more conservative in their behavior. They drink less, they have less sex, they do less hard drugs. But marijuana is a soothing drug, so they do more marijuana. 

But what's underneath that data though is they have less sex and drink less because those are social activities, things you've got to leave home typically to do and so because they're afraid to go to the party, they're afraid to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, they're doing less of those things. 

Kasey Olander: 

And less of the play-based activities that we talked about earlier, being creative and being innovative and less of the... Like you said, it's risky to ask someone on a date, but also even risky to try to approach someone you don't know or try to make a new friend or any of these normal childhood experiences. 

David Sanchez: 

I'll sympathize with them a little just because if you're developing socially so much less, how hard is it going to be to find someone who's socially mature enough to even know what it means to be in a healthy romantic relationship. 

Kasey Olander: 

Or a friendship. 

David Sanchez: 

Or a friendship. Yeah. 

 Gary Stidham: 

An anecdotal story. 

I've got... My oldest son just graduated college. He's doing well. He's walking with the Lord, engaged to be married. 

Kasey Olander: 

Awesome. 

David Sanchez: 

Woo. Congrats. 

Kasey Olander: 

Congratulations. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Thank you God for all of that. 

But when he was eight years old, we worked and worked, built up to him riding his bicycle to the grocery store to buy something. We live in a safe neighborhood in DFW. So disclaimer and all of that. 

But the number of skills that had to stack, one on the other for him to be able to do that, he'd be able to ride his bike, cross street safely, chain his bike up, use cash at a cash register, talk to adults, find it. The big day comes and he rides his bike. It's about eight blocks, crosses one street. He buys soy sauce, he brings it home, and he's beaming with this accomplishment. He realized he could do hard things. 

Kids need to learn that they can do whatever the hardest thing they can do at their age. We need to be nudging them to do that thing. And then they get older to do something else harder. Otherwise, they don't learn to do hard things, they turn 18 and move away to college and everything crashes down because they can't take social risks. They can't take physical risks. 

Kasey Olander: 

Adulting is hard. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Adulting is hard. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And then if they don't find out until it is the time of adulthood, how to do all of these things to maintain a life or what if a crisis happens, a friend needs help, any number of hard things can happen, but if they haven't had the training and the practice with the smaller scale buying soy sauce, then that's a nasty surprise whenever something really comes crashing down. 

 Gary Stidham: 

We were shocked how countercultural that was when we did it and how much flack we got from neighborhood friends who said he could get abducted, he could get hit by a car, how would you ever know? But just statistically, it was a pretty safe thing for him to do and the reward was way bigger than the risk in that case. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Absolutely. 

What do you think it would look like for people to give children more independence, whether they're parents parenting their own children, or even just people who are neighbors or in a community, like a church community, or something like that? 

 Gary Stidham: 

David has an 11-year-old. David. 

David Sanchez: 

Oh, yeah. 

I would say it's going to take some energy and mental energy and creativity, I think, on the parent's side with each individual child how to push them or what interest to push them towards. 

With my daughter, it was something as simple as she wanted to be on the roof while I was putting up the Christmas lights and before I read this book. "Absolutely not, you could fall. After reading this book, "Yes, sweetie and while I'm up here, could you please take all of the twigs out of the gutter?" She realized on her own it's scary to be at the gutter as opposed to here... Instead of trying to instill that fear, she's able to figure it out for herself and realize, "There are some risks I can take and some things I can do. And there's also a line that I should learn on my own and not to cross." 

But I think one of the things the book really emphasizes is if you can get a community, even just a couple other families that as a group are going to work on these things together, it's a lot easier to tell your kid, "You can't have phones," if at least a couple of their friends can't have phones as well. It's a lot easier to get a kid to go and play safely within a safe area where we can step back more and more and more if it's with other friends that are also doing it and you're on board doing it together. 

I know the director of the CLC, Dr. Katie Frugé, she has a daughter who was born missing an arm and a leg. In our podcast where we talked about this topic, she said that she let her daughter and a friend go down to the 7-Eleven in a little bit more dangerous neighborhood probably than what you grew up in at the time to get some ice cream, to get some dessert for both of those families. But they went together. So it was still... 

You find ways with each kid in each situation, but you also just look for them and you look for where the kids are wanting to take risk and then realize, "I need to recognize when I'm being overprotective." 

My daughter wanted to get on the roof and I was telling her no. I was instilling that fear in her when she was trying to test her independence. I need to realize maybe there are ways where I can let them stretch and now we go rock climbing, so she got what she wanted. 

 Gary Stidham: 

I think another piece of it is parents have to be willing to let their children face the consequences of a risk. If there can't be a consequence, there's actually no risk involved and they can't build a tolerance to that risk. 

If you want your kids to mature physically, you need to let them be able to take a risk that they're going to fall down playing sports or athletics and get a skinned knee or even a broken arm. But if there's no consequence to the activity you're letting them do, they're not actually learning, developing any tolerance to learn to do something harder. 

An anecdotal example working on a college campus are the number of parents who engage the faculty, the professors of their children when their children don't get the grade that their child feels like, or the parent feels like they were due because for that child's entire life, they've been able to not turn in an adequate assignment. The parent goes and deals with the teacher rather than either teaching the student to deal with the consequences of their bad grade and ask for some extra credit or the parent going directly to the teacher. 

We've got to be able to let our kids face negative consequences from the risk taking. It needs to be age-appropriate risk, not risk their life, but still take a risk and face consequences if they don't follow through or it doesn't go right. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's a boundary for you as the responsible adult and not reach in and save. You're not going to always be there to save them. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yep. 

Kasey Olander: 

Are there any... I'm trying not to use the word risk because we've said that a lot, but is there any danger in overprotecting children? 

We've talked about how maybe there has been some underprotection in the virtual world and some overprotection in the physical world. Is there any danger of maybe the reverse? 

David Sanchez: 

Of overprotecting in the digital world? I think that's actually possible. 

I think a parent could read this book and then have the same response where, "Okay, well, you're on a flip phone until you're 18," or "You're going to be on the type of software that has me looking at every single text you send." I think just with every kid needing to be raised differently, you need to gauge the maturity of the kid and realize maybe we'll start strict at the beginning, but we're also going to work towards a journey of you gaining more and more independence. Recognizing that that's something you should be working towards. 

Maybe you have a flip phone when you're in seventh grade and you finally get your smartphone when you're in high school and you finally are able to use social media when you're 16, but it's marked to private. Then there's just so many layers which you can slowly be scaling back. 

But it can also be a source of acknowledged development and pride of, "Hey, sweetie, you've earned this. You've been very mature. I think you can try this. And I think you can monitor for yourself whether or not you would need to remove the app." 

Even there I think there could be a danger of going too far and not equipping them to self-filter and self-monitor because there's no filter that's going to filter out everything. And even if there was, your kids are smarter than you, and they'll find a way around it. 

We've got to give them the ability to recognize you have your own conscience and if you're a believer, you have your own, the Holy Spirit within you speaking to you to listen, to say, "Get off of this and don't look at this past a certain time." 

Kasey Olander: 

And then maybe they can have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. 

David Sanchez: 

As we all should. Right? Yeah. 

 Gary Stidham: 

And with physical safety, there's obviously the danger of being underprotective. That's what CPS is for, neglected kids. 

But I would say most highly invested parents in today's culture, that's not a major risk. We're probably, as a culture in general, if you're a parent who really cares about your kid, you're probably shielding them from too much physical risk. Not across the board, but probably in general that's going to be the case. 

Kasey Olander: 

Right. Yeah. Throughout this episode, we've spoken of some generalities. This may not apply to every single human or every single child or even every single Gen Z but, yeah, by and large, these are the trends that are being seen and how they influence us as people, how they influence parents, but then also I think of so many people who are involved in the lives of young people like youth ministers and teachers and even friends and neighbors, and church community who all have a vested interest in the well-being of the next generation. 

Do you guys have any resources that you would recommend for people related to any of the things we've talked about, whether it's social media? I know you mentioned the TechWise family and Good Pictures Bad Pictures. Any other resources that come to mind? 

David Sanchez: 

That's good. 

 Gary Stidham: 

For our digital devices, for our kids when they were young, we had monitoring and blocking software set up. I think that's just a given. That's level zero, beginner level. 

Kasey Olander: 

Like Covenant Eyes. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Norton Family is a good family app. 

Covenant Eyes is a reporting app, but not a blocking app. 

Norton Family, and there's some... You research probably better ones now but does some tracking. It does reporting. It does blocking, it's a whole suite. 

David Sanchez: 

A lot of people I know use Bark. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah, Bark. 

David Sanchez: 

B-A-R-K, that's a common one. Yeah. 

 Gary Stidham: 

And then other resources... I don't know. David's mentioned some great ones already with the books. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's great. Yeah. 

David Sanchez: 

I'm trying to think off the top of- 

Kasey Olander: 

That's great, I just wanted to give you guys the opportunity. That's fine. 

David Sanchez: 

Can I plug my own book? Is that possible to do? 

Kasey Olander: 

You can. 

David Sanchez: 

We were just talking about identity and how the young people today part of what's making them so anxious is that it's on you to find out who you are, not just what you're going to be when you grow up and what you're going to do. 

I feel like oftentimes the church is somewhat insensitive towards that struggle and just says, "No, that's not who you are," instead of talking about who we really should be, it's saying, "Get rid of that other way you identify yourself because that's wrong. That's of the world," but it's not showing how we can have a better foundation. 

I've recently written a book. It's actually just came in to us from the publishers. It's called Your/Our Identity in Christ, Finding Who We Are in Who He is. 

Gary wrote the foreword for it. 

 Gary Stidham: 

Yeah. Hey. 

Yeah. I would say there's so many more causes to student mental health we could get into, but I do think this is a huge one, is students are paralyzed by the number of options out there. 

You guys have probably talked on this podcast about the Carl Trueman book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self and the transgender issues. There's a crisis of what it means to be human. 

It used to be in societies that my identity as a person was formed by my relationships. I'm a father, I'm a son to these parents, and a husband to this wife and a father to these children as part of this community. I worship this God. But now they're just told, "Figure it out. Look inside yourself. There's a million options." Just like walking into the toothpaste aisle at the grocery store is overwhelming because there's so many options. 

With identity, the culture tells them it's an infinite number of options. They need to know that their identity comes from their relationships predominantly, primarily the relationship to an Almighty God who made them in His image, who wants them to have a good foundation under their feet knowing who they are, who they belong to, and where they're going. 

Kasey Olander: 

Any other closing thoughts as we land the plane here? 

 Gary Stidham: 

It's good. It's an honor to be here, and it's a relevant topic. Thanks for the chance. 

David Sanchez: 

Yeah. Thank you so much. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Well, thank you, guys, so much for being here. Really enjoyed and appreciated the conversation. I think we've talked about a number of different dimensions of what it means to be human. We actually have an episode called Human Ontology. 

But we've covered embodiments and also how we interact with screens and devices and the expectations that we place on young people and also, hopefully, as you've been listening, have gained some more empathy for what Gen Z has gone through, and also what children are going through as they're navigating this technological world, and even gain empathy for parents as well as they're trying to navigate how best to help their child and help them to flourish as a human who's made in God's image. 

We thank you guys for joining us. We thank our listener for being with us. If you like our show, leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app so that others can discover us. And we hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life.