Corrupting Our Young Through Smart Phones

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, has been meditating on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1–7:29). Meditating on the words of this most glorious of magnificent sermons is transformational. In this sermon, Jesus famously asked, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” Hank was thinking about these words when he happened upon an article, “Of Smart Phones and Snakes,” by Grazie Pozo Christie, who writes, “Every time I see a little hand holding a smartphone and childish eyes staring mesmerized at the screen, I remember those Gospel words [from Luke 11:11 and also Matthew 7:9–10] and imagine the phone is a rattlesnake.” In the early stages of their development, we’ve handed impressionable children over to the greed of big tech—“luring them into ‘rabbit holes’ of coarse sexuality and drug use” and transgender traps. Twelve- and thirteen-year-olds—even younger—being groomed for radical hormonal treatments and devastating surgical alterations. While the bottom line for tech giants is quite promising, the resulting top and bottom surgeries, woke ideologies, and cultural confusion wreaks inestimable harm. Older tech addicts fare little better. Our overstimulated constitutions are increasingly devoid of critical thinking. We’ve substituted quick answers for critical thought. Information substituted for reflection and true wisdom. Solutions are not to be found in more screen time, but more Scripture time—meditating, mining, memorizing the wisdom of Scripture for all its substantial worth. Perhaps start by reading a chapter a day of Proverbs. See Grazie Pozo Christie, “Of Smart Phones and Snakes,” Angelus, September 9, 2022, https://angelusnews.com/voices/of-smartphones-and-snakes/