7 Days to Dethrone Social Media in Your Children’s LivesSample

Reorder Priorities

Priorities are the coordinates that set the course of our hearts. What we value determines what we prioritize. What we prioritize determines how we spend our time. How we spend our time determines how we spend our lives. All of this impacts our sense of self and identity as image bearers of God. Disordered priorities can lead us to lose ourselves. Naturally, then, priorities impact our walk with Christ.

The problem is that our relationship with social media scrambles the coordinates of our hearts. It disorders our priorities and makes us care too much about the wrong things. Perhaps you’ve seen this in your children. Do they care more about YouTuber drama than their relationships with their real friends? Are they scrolling TikTok in bed as they should be trying to fall asleep? How might we reorder the priorities of our children as their relationship with social media disorders them?

1) Disciple with eternity at the fore.

I’ve served in student ministry for over a decade now, and whenever I have the chance to teach in student ministry, I always make a point to fix the students’ eyes on eternity, as it is so easy to lose sight of the eternal amid the teenage years. I remind them that we often live like eternity is the epilogue to our book of life, when in reality our blip of life on earth is only the introduction to our book of eternal life.

To help reorder the priorities of the people we lead, we must first pull their eyes away from the manufactured light of their phones and point them to the eternal light of the Son.

2) Disciple them toward discomfort.

The problem is that when social media can make us feel good at any given moment, for free, and for as long as we want, we become allergic to anything that may make our lives uncomfortable or more difficult.

As you shepherd and lead the people God has entrusted to you, you will likely find yourself at war with a culture of comfort above all. Discipleship that calls to mind the sacrifice of Christ and the discomfort He endured on our behalf allows us to combat the ways social media scrambles our hearts. Comfort is not the pinnacle of life. Christ calls us to something more difficult and more beautiful.