Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions: Why Can’t I Have Screen Time All the Time?

This article is part of the Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions series.

Safeguard Your Heart

Parents, has your child ever said, “No! Don’t turn off my screen!” Why is too much screen time not good for your child? We have some thoughts that the Bible has pointed us to. As we think about how Christians evaluate technology and screen time, it’s admittedly challenging because there’s no Bible verse that says, “Thou shalt not use an iPad,” or a commandment that says “You can have twenty-five minutes of screen time per day.”

So as we think about this issue, there’s prudence and wisdom involved. I think wisdom and prudence are best informed by what we see in Genesis 1. When God creates us as human beings, our existence is an embodied existence—meaning, it’s something that is real, it’s earthy, it’s there—which means our best attempts to remove real friendships and real relationships and exchange that with a Zoom screen or a FaceTime call is never going to be truly adequate.

What Do I Say When . . . ?

Andrew T. Walker, Christian Walker

In a world filled with cultural confusion, this book provides busy Christian parents with quick and trustworthy answers to questions their children may ask about life’s toughest topics, including abortion, sexuality, technology, political engagement, and more.

Please hear me: I’m not saying we can’t use Zoom or that FaceTime is bad. No, those things can actually be really good. But they shouldn’t be substitutes for what God has designed for us, which is to honor the reality that this life is meant to be lived in fellowship with our friends and like-minded brothers and sisters in Christ.

As we’ve thought about technology in our own home, we’ve thought about it less as an on-off switch and more as a dimmer switch. And so as we’re training our children, we are trying to give them a little bit more responsibility over their technology that they can handle. As we’ve been working with our thirteen-year-old daughter, we’ve been trying to train her with technology a little bit at a time. As we're training her, we’re trying to help her understand that technology is not all bad. Technology can actually be used as a good thing. God gave dominion over the earth when he gave it to Adam and Eve. He gave us dominion over things in order to create with the human creativity he designed us with. And so technology is flowing out of that creativity.

But technology can also be dangerous, sinful, and unrighteous. And so we have to train our children to start to see those differences and be responsible for those. We also want to help our daughter understand that there are going to be times when she has to be aware that what’s going inside of her heart may not be good, and she has to start safeguarding her heart by limiting what’s going in and seeing that what goes in comes out. We are a part of that training of safeguarding her heart and her mind.

God wants us to have physical, intimate, face-to-face community.

We also don’t want her to get so caught up in digital relationships that she loses her face-to-face relationships. God wants us to have physical, intimate, face-to-face community. And so we want to help her limit her technology so that she can have real, live, intimate community relationships.

And finally, we have to parent, and she has to obey. God has authority over us. He safeguards us. He limits us in different ways. And we have authority over our children, to limit and safeguard them. There are going to be times when they don’t agree with what we say when we tell them to turn off their devices, but they have to obey us, because we are doing what we feel is right for them. They are required to obey us just as we are required to obey God—even though sometimes we might not like the limits that he puts on our lives as well. So parents, stand strong against the technology that is looming in your household, and do your best to help transfer the responsibility to your kids, and guard them while you’re doing that.

Andrew T. and Christian Walker are the authors of What Do I Say When . . . ?: A Parent’s Guide to Navigating Cultural Chaos for Children and Teens.

Andrew T. Walker (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is associate professor of Christian ethics and public theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an associate dean in the School of Theology. He is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. He resides with his wife and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky.

Christian Walker is an accomplished curriculum writer and educator with experience both directing a large children’s ministry in a local church setting as well as spending numerous years in elementary education. She is a teacher at a classical Christian school in Louisville, Kentucky. She resides with her husband and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky.

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