Tag Archives: technology

Challenge, Children, Encouragement, In the news, Issues of the Day, Parents, Training

Our Children and Their Tech Devices

I am using a tech device as I write this blog. I check my phone for messages multiple times in a day. My only telephone isn’t really a phone but rather a minicomputer. Screen time for many of us has steadily increased year after year. 

And so, we introduce technical devices to our kids. They’re using them in school, and they’re glued to them after school. We’re trying to get them off their devices to eat dinner or do their homework while we’re glued to a screen ourselves. What is the irony in telling a child their screen time is limited when our eyes are attached to our own screen?

A 2016 study by Common Sense Media found that one half of teenagers felt addicted to their mobile devices. And a 2021 study by Common Sense showed a 17% increase to that addiction. They also found teenagers are picking up their phones over 50 times per day!

Children are dying due to social media posts. In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child online safety, Meta founder Mark Zucherburg apologized to parents who say their children experienced bullying or died due to social media content. He said, “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through.” Unfortunately, that apology takes no responsibility for change. 

Social media heavily used by our kids is now connected to mental health issues. Evidence through multiple studies reveals that our children are suffering from cognitive function and compromised learning. Kids are suffering from insomnia, weight loss or gain, vision issues, headaches, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. *

Both South Korea and China now officially recognize “Internet Addiction” as a psychiatric disorder. The Korean government has started “internet rescue camps” for kids “detoxing” from their devices.

Dopamine fuels this addiction, and it is affecting the natural growth of a child’s brain. We are teaching our youth that when stressed, when depressed, or when anxious we can fuel that feeling with some of our own brain chemicals through screen time. Will this addiction lead our children to other addictions with alcohol and drugs, tobacco and food? The research is now showing this to be a strong possibility.

Parents, find activities for your children that are not device related. Get them into sports, science clubs, horseback riding, 4-H, fishing, reading books, hunting, bike riding and the like. Send them out to the woods, the creek and the park to play and to interact with real relationships. Give them your time in teaching them to maintain the yard, wash the dishes, make their bed, wash the car and change the oil. Take them hiking on Sunday afternoon or to a professional baseball game. Find a local church with children’s programs that includes boys’ and girls’ camping and other outdoor challenges while reinforcing godly values. 

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

*Dr Maria Azaret, 2.21.24

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Challenge, Encouragement, History, Men, Parents, Women

Growing Creative Ideas and Inventions

I have never seen myself as an artist or very creative. That is, until people began commenting that some of my hobbies are very artistic and creative. It actually surprised me, in a good way of course. 

The lightbulb has become a symbol of creativity or ideas. Creativity with invention symbolizes ingenuity. 

A friend of mine quilts scenes from a picture.The headboard is my design.

Thomas Edison was a record-setting creative inventor who has 1,093 different inventions. On one single day in 1888 he recorded 112 different ideas. He patented something every eleven days. When he died, it is said that 15 billion dollars of the national economy was a result of his innovations alone. He employed thousands of people who became known as his “muckers.” 

We use many of the items, or variations thereof, that Edison invented to this day. Items like: the phonograph, the kinetoscope (an early motion picture device), the dictating machine, the alkaline battery, the electric meter, a sap extractor, a talking doll, rock crushers, electric pens, and a tornado proof house. 

The Creator of our world gives us the ability to create. His gifts are given to us to use for the benefit of others, for income to feed our family, for teaching and instructing others (multiplying our gifts), but ultimately for His glory and His purposes.

A baseball bat headboard created by my son-in-law for my grandson.

Exodus 35:35 reveals, “He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers–all of them skilled workers and designers.” 

We each have a level of creativity and design because we each have a Designer. We are created in the image of the Designer. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Funny thing though, Edison did not invent the lightbulb. Incandescent lights began in 1761. Edison prided himself in making things better–perfecting them. His first patent did not come until 1869, an electronic vote recorder. But Edison did create a lightbulb that would burn for hours, prolonging daylight on the street and in the factories.

What are those gifts He has deposited within you that others confirm in your life? Make your world a better place by using those gifts for His honor and His glory.

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