We started these articles with the comment that ‘protecting your family online’ has four components, or steps.\u00a0 In the first three articles we mentioned the importance of taking inventory of your electronic devices that can access the internet, and installing and configuring three essential tools.\u00a0 In this article we want to discuss the remaining two steps.\u00a0 These two are the most difficult and most important.<\/p>\n
Step 3: Staying Informed<\/strong><\/p>\n Staying informed involves more than knowing what our children are doing; it includes knowing what is available to them\u2014what is \u2018out there\u2019.\u00a0 Both of these are parental responsibilities we cannot excuse ourselves from, and which are no different now than in generations past.\u00a0 Society has changed dramatically over the last decades, however, and with it have our family lives.\u00a0 More disposable income and time have given increased access to entertainment and opportunity to associate with people who hold other views and values.\u00a0 Ironically we seem busier than ever.\u00a0 And also ironically, the more \u2018connected\u2019 some people have become via social media and mobile devices, the less in touch they are with their children or know what they are doing.<\/p>\n Staying informed of developments in media and technology can be looked at from two angles, and both are necessary.\u00a0 First<\/em><\/strong>, we can look at individual developments or devices and ask on a per case<\/em> basis if these are acceptable to buy or use.\u00a0 Questions guiding such an evaluation might include:<\/p>\n Sources for learning about new developments are technology sections of news sites and newspapers, specific websites such as wired.com<\/a>, gizmodo.com<\/a>, engadget.com<\/a>, ted.com<\/a> (which tend to promote acceptance of new and often useless gadgetry), or (more realistic) browsing your local computer store.<\/p>\n Evaluating new technologies to see if their use is permissible or will present unacceptable influences is not easy.\u00a0 Virtually all tools can be used for good and bad purposes.\u00a0 Inventions themselves are not evil, but often they increase our ability to express the evil that is within us, and access that which is around us.\u00a0 This led many to view bicycles in the 1890\u2019s and automobiles in the 1920\u2019s with much suspicion, expecting them to facilitate all manner of sexual immorality.\u00a0 It is also nearly impossible to predict what a device will be used for, as one development rapidly leads to another.\u00a0 A. G. Bell probably did not envision the smart phone, or the designers of ARPANET in the 1960\u2019s the Silk Road and bitcoin.\u00a0 The engineers at Remington-Rand who made the first computer printer in the 1950\u2019s did not anticipate today\u2019s 3D printing of human organs, guns, and drones.<\/p>\n Second<\/em><\/strong>, developments in media and technology should also be viewed thematically<\/em>.\u00a0 Individual inventions are part of larger processes and trends.\u00a0 From a materials <\/em>point of view, most new technologies serve to automate and complicate machines, and increase our connectivity to and dependence on the internet.\u00a0\u00a0 Both of these make us increasingly helpless when our machines fail, or the internet breaks down.\u00a0 The latter has led to sufficient concern from governments to research the implications of large scale outages of the internet resulting from cyber-warfare or natural calamities such as major solar flares (i.e. \u201cCarrington events\u201d), as such outages could cripple military operations, hospitals, electrical grids and other utilities, our food supply, communications and navigation, etc.\u00a0 From a moral <\/em>point of view, many new technologies increase the ability of the evil that resides in each human heart to be expressed.\u00a0 What people share on their social media sites and blogs, on forums, and in their comments to newspaper articles is often shocking.\u00a0 The opinions and personal information shared indicate a rapidly decreasing tolerance of Christian values, and that we live in a \u2018post-shame age\u2019.\u00a0 This is true regarding sexual mores, disrespect for authority, worship of self, and desire for instant gratification.\u00a0 With this in mind, to stay informed means recognizing the \u2018big picture\u2019 of what our society as a whole is like and how it is becoming increasingly hostile to those who hold our beliefs and values, and to evaluate how individual technologies and developments will likely be used to further this moral decline.<\/p>\n Step 4: Family Discussions <\/strong><\/p>\n This is the most important step, and it requires all three of the previous parts: taking inventory; installing tools; and being aware of what your children are doing, what new technologies are available to them, and how society is influencing them.\u00a0\u00a0 What<\/em> is discussed will depend on your family\u2019s situation, and must be age-appropriate.\u00a0 It is important that our children know the world is a hostile place, particularly so towards Christians, and that evil often comes looking for us, also on the internet.\u00a0 Our children should be aware there is no privacy on the internet, and that what is posted today can haunt us later when we apply for a job or try to establish relationships.\u00a0 With this in mind, there is in no reason our children should assume they have the right to keep what they do online or with their mobile devices private or hidden from their parents.\u00a0 Parents should feel free to monitor their children\u2019s online activities whenever they want to.\u00a0 The same is true for spouses.<\/p>\n The nature<\/em> of the conversations should be open and reasonable.\u00a0 Our children should feel comfortable asking questions as to why certain things are not allowed, and the answers should be based on our values.\u00a0 If something is wrong, it is wrong because it is sin against God and ruins our soul.\u00a0 But the baser things presented on the internet can also permanently damage us in this life: they can ruin our ability to have good relations by twisting our views of sexuality and women.\u00a0 Images \u201cburned on the retina\u201d remain with us for the rest of our lives.\u00a0 Habitual viewing of violent or immoral materials causes many to progress from one evil to another, as viewing eventually no longer satisfies, and it lowers the threshold towards acting.\u00a0 In this context may, must we not tell our children from Proverbs 9:18 that the guests of \u201cMrs. Wanton\u201d are in the depths of hell?<\/p>\n It is often said that our children grow up in a complicated time, complicated in part by today\u2019s unprecedented technological developments.\u00a0 There is no escaping this; it is the world in which we must live and for which we have to equip our children.\u00a0 People from many different denominations are struggling with this, and the consensus appears to be that it is far more important to inculcate a sense of right and wrong in our children than to forbid them an endless list of specific activities.\u00a0 Examples of literature developed to help parents with this are A Guide for those who Guide<\/a><\/u> and (in Dutch) Eigenwijs<\/a><\/u> and Gewetensvorming<\/a><\/u>; these and others are on this website.\u00a0 Teaching them values will help them determine for themselves what to do when they face situations parents could not have prepared them for, or understand.\u00a0 This is of huge importance.<\/p>\n Without negating the above, we may not overlook the unspeakable evil that dwells in each human heart and the power and variety of Satan\u2019s temptations.\u00a0 These remain unchanged, no matter how society and technology evolve.\u00a0 We are fully inclined to the evils encountered in our everyday lives, regardless of the medium through which these evils present themselves to us, but we still act as free and voluntary agents and are therefore responsible (and accountable) for everything we do, for every decision we make.\u00a0 Only the true love to God will make us hate sin, and only His restraining grace can prevent us from falling into sin.\u00a0 How necessary, then, always to ask the Lord for wisdom and grace to recognize and resist temptation, and to enable us to deal with the unprecedented challenges we and our children face (Psalm 127).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We started these articles with the comment that ‘protecting your family online’ has four components, or steps.\u00a0 In the first three articles we mentioned the importance of taking inventory of your electronic devices that can access the internet, and installing and configuring three essential tools.\u00a0 In this article we want to discuss the remaining two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-resource"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134,"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.media-aware.net\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n