Parenting on Purpose

Online gaming site Roiworld surveyed 600 teens ages 13 to 17 in late April and found that teens spend two hours per day online on average, 80% of which is spent using a social network. These same teens are, however, showing signs of “Facebook Fatigue.” Nearly one in five (19%) who have an account no longer visit Facebook or are using it less.

Of the group that are saying goodbye to Facebook, 45% have lost interest, 16% are leaving because their parents are there, 14% say there are “too many adults/older people” and 13% are concerned about the privacy of their personal information.

While interest in Facebook may be waning, it’s still the most popular social network among teens — 78% have created a profile and 69% still use it. YouTube ranks second; 64% of teens claim to have a YouTube profile and continue to use the site. MySpace comes in a distant third (41%) and Twitter takes the fourth spot (20%).

The study also suggests that the teens that continue to stick to Facebook do so primarily to play games. Roiworld found that more than one-third of the teens who play games on Facebook admit to spending at least 50% of their time on the site immersed in gameplay. The online gaming trend extends far beyond Facebook, as 75% of surveyed teens claim to play games on the web.

It seems obvious that the newest generation of online users would have few qualms about spending money online, and this study supports that theory. The research purports that 43% of teens using social sites have spent money within a social network. They’re purchasing items such as currency for virtual items (35%), music (33%), avatar accessories (30%) and points to level up (23%). Nearly half of this crowd (49%) indicate that they have an allowance for such expenditures.

LAKE CHARLES, LA (WCSC) – A new trend is emerging on the internet that has the attention of teens in various parts of the country, but it’s flying under the radars of most adults.

Teens are trying to get high using nothing but sound.

They don’t need a street dealer or to drive through dangerous neighborhoods; the new so-called drug can be procured with a computer, a credit card and a pair of headphones.

I-Doser, an online retailer of the binaural sounds, sells the digital drugs. I-Doser claims with just a few dollars, their service will alter peoples’ moods, making them feel uplifted, confident, or even more relaxed.

Other sounds, however, promise to make listeners feel like they are on strong mind-altering drugs, from strong prescription painkillers like oxycontin — a $4.50 download — and Demerol to illicit drugs like cocaine and crystal meth.

These digital drugs are nothing more than binaural beats, which have been used since the 1970s by the military and by doctors to help patients with hearing problems. The sounds are created when two different sounds are plated at slightly different frequencies in each ear.

The differing frequencies create a pulse sensation, or beats, which some people believe give them the illusion they are on drugs. Each sensation is created by focusing the sounds within a certain frequency range. As the chart below indicates, “relaxing” beats would have a lower frequency and those associated with greater mental activity would have a much higher frequency.

Frequency range    Name    Usually associated with:
> 40 Hz    Gamma waves    Higher mental activity, including perception, problem solving, fear, and consciousness
13–40 Hz    Beta waves    Active, busy or anxious thinking and active concentration, arousal, cognition
7–13 Hz    Alpha waves    Relaxation (while awake), pre-sleep and pre-wake drowsiness
4–7 Hz    Theta waves    Dreams, deep meditation, REM sleep
< 4 Hz    Delta waves    Deep dreamless sleep, loss of body awareness
Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Sreela Pulakhandam, with the Institute of Neuropsychiatry in Lake Charles, La., said not many studies have been done over the long-term effects of casual use of binaural beats. However, constant exposure to binaural beats does give Dr. Pulakhandam some concerns.

“Even though this is safe, it has been noted that it could be a precursor to actually start using the real drugs,” said Dr. Pulakhandam.

He went on to say that the beats should not be used by children.

In a non-scientific test conducted with two volunteers, the test subjects had dramatically different responses. Trevor* remained relaxed and calm throughout the entire process, but the reaction from Charles* was erratic.

“All of a sudden I just felt sick. I just felt really sick and I knew I couldn’t keep it up,” said Charles, who started laughing at one point uncontrollably.

Many teens have posted videos of themselves listening to binaural beats to YouTube. The reactions range from visible boredom to over excitement.

Dr. Pulakhandam said the best way to prevent any behavioral changes in teenagers is for parents to monitor their children closely.

“Just being careful and monitoring and understanding what the children are on is the best thing,” said Pulakhandam.

I-Doser does list several disclaimers on its website and said its products should be used for entertainment purposes only.

With the surging popularity of social-networking sites, chances are that your teenagers spend the bulk of their online time connecting and chatting with friends. (Chances are that you’ve jumped on the bandwagon, too.)

All this online friend-forming is affecting teenagers’ development, according to experts. Researchers say social-networking sites are shortening attention spans, encouraging instant gratification, and making young people more self-focused. A British neurologist warns that extended use of the sites actually rewires the brain, causing teenagers to require constant reassurance that they exist. Other dangers are more subtle. Kids may no longer spend time completely alone, enjoying the benefits of reflection and solitude. Yet they may feel isolated because they’re less likely to be communicating with the real humans in their homes, schools, and churches. Finally, teenagers may focus even more on all the worries that accompany adolescence. So instead of escaping from their problems, kids dwell on them even more.

Teenagers longing to be loved and admired may find comfort in having large numbers of online “friends.” But they also need authentic friendships with people who can help them grow. Consider these insights:

It’s important to be known in a personal and meaningful way. The world sends the message that more is better, but God’s Word says that “many companions” won’t lead to anything good. The outcome is much different for the person who has a friend that is closer than family (see Proverbs 18:24). To make friends that last, teenagers should…

1. Be wise in choosing friends. Friendship can’t be rushed. Pick a friend you can trust.
2. Be authentic in your friendships. You can only be as close to your friends as you’re willing to allow them.
3. Be willing to be held accountable. A friend can provide helpful perspective. Truth can hurt, but it can also help us grow.

Start a conversation with your teenagers about their communication habits.

1. How much time are you online each week? How many online friends do you have?

2. How many genuine friends would you say you have? Is social interaction easier for you on-screen than in person? Why or why not?

3. Do you have friends who keep you accountable, and vice versa? How well does that work?

Millions of teenagers now expose themselves, their feelings, and their thoughts in personal blogs posted on one of the many social-networking websites. Public online journals have replaced hidden, locked private diaries. Today, both teenage girls and their male peers are openly sharing their “secrets” for anyone in the world with Internet access to see. Kids use blogs to vent and share commentary about every aspect of teenage life. They also post pictures of themselves, artwork, and personality profiles. Self-expression is encouraged, and the sites are highly interactive. Here are a few suggestions for understanding and dealing with social networking…

First, know what your kids are doing online.
Second, read carefully without overreacting.
Third, carefully and prayerfully prepare your response.

Have fun networking.  See ya online

Greg

OMG, W8 til U read this: one in three teenagers sends more than 100 text messages a day, and 72 percent are now text-messagers, compared with 51 percent in 2006, according to a recent Pew Internet report. Nearly half who take phones to school text at least once a day in class.

Texting trumps all other forms of communication, with only 38 percent and 30 percent of teenagers talking daily on a cellphone or landline, respectively. One quarter of teenagers interact daily on social networks, and just 11 percent e-mail each other daily. Teenagers with unlimited texting plans text 14 times as often as those who pay per message.

Although accessing the Internet on a cellphone is often expensive, teenagers with black and Hispanic parents are nearly twice as likely as teenagers with white parents to do so, as are teenagers from households making under $30,000 a year. This may be because of lack of Internet access on computers in these households.

Even with unlimited plans, “adults aren’t texting in the same way adolescents are,” Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew, said. “Teens don’t expect people to call — texting has become the default way to connect.”

Zondervan is is offering a free preview app featuring the Book of John for customers interested in purchasing the Read it/Hear it NIV GoBible iPhone App. The NIV GoBible is a comprehensive Bible program that lets the user read and listen to the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. The program has been developed with the goal of making the Bible as accessible and enjoyable as possible.

Users may navigate the menu and begin simultaneous audio and text play at any of the 31,000-plus individual verses in the Bible with just a few clicks. The user may also browse and play through the Story Index, which has more than 225 of the most popular Bible stories arranged by testament.
The app also contains a Topic Index, which gives scriptural guidance on approximately 30 different circumstances and emotions. Another popular feature, the Holiday/Events Index, offers passages relevant to more than a dozen important Christian and secular holidays, as well as important days that mark our lives.

The Read it/Hear it NIV GoBible App also has a Bible-in-a-Year plan, which allows the user to read and listen to the entire Bible in one year in 10-15 minutes increments.

“This technology is fantastic in that it allows the user to customize in so many ways how he or she wants to access the Bible and use in daily life,” said Chip Brown, Zondervan Senior Vice President of Bibles.

To help organize Bible study, favorite passages can be marked. The app has the capability for the user to mark an unlimited number of bookmarks, which are easily accessible at all times. In addition, there is a keyword search feature that offers the ability to search the Bible text for certain words and phrases.
The text and audio of the app is the NIV Bible, the most popular modern English Bible translation in the world. The narrator is Charles Taylor, whose voice-only reading of the NIV is rich, focused and soothing to the ear. The Read it/Hear It NIV GoBible iPhone App costs $44.99 and can be purchased through the Apple iTunes store.

After a seven-year hiatus, Christian folk singer Jennifer Knapp is back with new music, a new understanding of herself and a barn-burner of a reveal: She’s a lesbian.

People had speculated on Knapp’s sexual identity for years, and the singer decided to put those rumors to rest for good. “For whatever reason the rumor mill has persisted for so long, I wanted to acknowledge,” she says. “I don’t want to come off as somebody who’s shirking the truth in my life.”

She also says that she’s never “struggled” with her sexual identity.

“The struggle I’ve had has been with the church, acknowledging me as a human being, trying to live the spiritual life that I’ve been called to, in whatever ramshackled, broken, frustrated way that I’ve always approached my faith,” she says. “I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it’s difficult for me to say that I’ve struggled within myself, because I haven’t. I’ve struggled with other people. I’ve struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.” – Christianity Today

College students struggle to go without media for 24 hours
By Casey Johnston

Internet and media addiction is not officially a psychiatric disorder, but many college students still seem to be suffering from it. In a recent study done by the University of Maryland, students who were asked to give up their media connections experienced withdrawal symptoms similar to those seen in drug and alcohol addicts, including cravings, anxieties, and preoccupation to the point of being unable to function well.

The students were asked to give up all media for 24 hours, including text messages, TV shows, music, e-mail, and Facebook, and to do so on all sources, including cell phones. Some of the students equated the stipulation to being entirely socially closed off from friends and family.

Many experienced cravings and anxiety because of their temporarily cut ties. One student called their dependency “sickening”; another spoke of texting and IM-ing giving him “a constant feeling of comfort” and said that the moratorium made him feel “alone and secluded” from his own life.

The results of the study are hardly surprising, and on their face appear to support the notion that Internet addiction could be classified as a disorder. The Internet “detox” centers cropping up will likely seize upon the study’s results as well. The centers often cite nightmare scenarios rising from media addictions, like significant debts and dropping out of college or losing jobs.

The authors collected some other interesting (though expected) information about its participants, including that few of them watch news on TV or read a newspaper, and like the general population, have very little loyalty to news sources or platforms. They also don’t discern between news and general information, but that may just be a function of being the young, carefree addicts they are.

Five Myths about Emerging Adult Faith

New research on 20-somethings gets past
the hype and offers a reason to hope.

Collin Hansen.  Tuesday, April 13, 2010

If you want to rile up church leaders, drag out dubious statistics about how many Christians fall away from the faith after high school. We fear for our youth, that they’ll rebel against what their parents and churches taught when they leave home and the youth group.

But what if we’re wrong? What if our particular fears about “emerging adulthood,” the period between the ages of 18 and 29, are unfounded? The National Study of Youth and Religion provides us with a treasure trove of valuable information based on interviews with thousands of emerging American adults. Noted sociologist Christian Smith has teamed with Patricia Snell to analyze the data and publish Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, a follow up to the groundbreaking 2005 book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.

Myth 1 – Emerging adults serve out of concern for the common good.

College campuses are wallpapered with fliers promoting service opportunities. Churches send their youth on local and foreign mission projects. Political analysts credit youth volunteers and voters with helping to elect President Obama in 2008.

It’s mostly a mirage.

According to Smith and Snell, emerging adults are far less likely than their parents or grandparents to volunteer or contribute to charitable causes. They share no qualms about materialism and long to someday live the American dream with a large salary and large home.

“Few emerging adults are involved in community organizations or other social change-oriented groups or movements,” Smith and Snell observe. “Not many care to know much of substance about political issues and world events. Few are intellectually engaged in any of the major cultural and ethical debates and challenges facing U.S. society. Almost none have any vision of a common good.”

Myth 2 – Emerging adults reject their parents’ religious influence.

As children approach the teenage years, their parents anticipate conflict. Because many parents worry about dragging their teens to church against their will, many resign themselves to parental irrelevance. Yet Smith and Snell find that most emerging adults fall into their parents’ religious patterns one way or another. Still, parents are slow to realize they need to change how they relate to foster maturity and independence.

“So just at the time when teenagers most need engaged parents to help them work out a whole series of big questions about what they believe, think, value, feel, are committed to, and want to be and become, in many cases, their parents are withdrawing from them,” Smith and Snell lament.

Myth 3 – Emerging adults behave similarly whether religious or not.

Actually, emerging adults devoted to religion are significantly more likely to give money, volunteer for community service, decline alcohol and drugs, and abstain from pornography and premarital sex. For example, 35 percent of non-married emerging adults who are devoted to religion have had sexual intercourse, compared to 67 percent of emerging adults only regularly involved.

Trouble is, only 5 percent of emerging adults are so devoted to their faith that they attend religious services weekly or read Scripture as much as once or twice per month. And that group includes Mormons, Muslims, Jews, and all Christian denominations. Another 14 percent regularly attend religious services a few times per month. But their behavior often resembles the irreligious more than the devoted. They practice a different creed: so long as you don’t hurt others, almost anything goes. And since every single person is different, different rules apply, depending on the situation.

“This, it seems, is not merely basic American individualism,” write Smith and Snell. “It is individualism raised on heavy doses of multiculturalism and pumped up on the steroids of the postmodern insistence on disjuncture, difference, and differences ‘going all the way down.’”

Myth 4 – Emerging adults have abandoned liberal Protestantism.

Some evangelicals enjoy pointing out rapidly declining attendance at liberal churches. But Smith and Snell temper that enthusiasm. Even those who check the right boxes on Jesus and heaven do not heed God’s call on their lives. No matter their professed beliefs, emerging adults tend to live for jobs, money, fun, and friends. At the gut level, liberal values trump biblical doctrine.

Smith and Snell observe: “Individual autonomy, unbounded tolerance, freedom from authorities, the affirmation of pluralism, the centrality of human self-consciousness, the practical value of moral religion, epistemological skepticism, and an instinctive aversion to anything ‘dogmatic’ or committed to particulars were routinely taken for granted by respondents.”

Myth 5 - Emerging adults tend to fall away from faith in college.

Many parents fear their children’s going off to college, where peers and professors deconstruct everything they learned growing up. But Smith and Snell echo other studies that show emerging adults who do not attend college are more likely to fall away from faith. Why? There are a greater number of evangelical faculty members who support like-minded students. The modernist enterprise with its secularizing agenda has all but collapsed. And evangelical campus groups flourish.

Yet there is cause for caution. Smith and Snell found that 85 percent of emerging adults who have committed their lives to God did so before they turned 14. No matter how much campus groups try to evangelize, they tend to offer safe haven for students who grow up in Christian homes. Like so much else revealed by Souls in Transition, there is much cause for both congratulations and consternation.

We cannot confuse biblical knowledge with spiritual maturity. Just because we or our students can quote, teach and argue the Bible does not mean we are transformed by it.

Mike Severe