Tech Talk For Parents

Musiche mit leeren Händen. That's the beginning of the song that my father loved to sing with his family before he died several years ago. And of course that was in German and in English.

It sings about a soul that wants to and longs to bring other souls with him into the kingdom. But my father, he always looked at in the perspective of he wanted to go with his family. And the thing that terrified him the most, it seemed like, was the thought of making it to heaven and being there and looking around.

And he was there all by himself and his children hadn't come with him. In English the song goes like this. Must I go and empty-handed? Thus my dear Redeemer meet.

Not one day of service give him. Lay no trophy at his feet. Must I go and empty-handed? Must I meet my Savior so? Not one soul with which to greet him.

Must I empty-handed go? I think that the only way we can understand what kind of connection we have with our children is to be a parent. I have been so blessed to see how my sons have changed. My one son that has children, how he changed once he became a father.

He was like many young men were before he was born, before he was married. Sometimes not considered enough about his sisters, about his mom. A little pushy about his own ways.

Just not thoughtful enough about other people. Then he became a father. They talk about his boys.

And we go to their place and I notice he's watching for his little boy. Making sure he didn't bump his head. He's crying.

He gets up and goes tends to him. And I'm watching this whole thing. I'm thinking this is wonderful.

My son is changing. All the things that I tried to train this boy into, I couldn't. Not like this little baby can.

There's just a special bond between parent and child that only a parent can understand. And deep within us is a deep, deep longing that we can take our children with us. Wherever we go.

We're empty nesters now. Our children are gone. We have six children.

And about a year ago we found ourselves sitting in the living room and the house is very silent. And we enjoy the freedom that we have now. It's nice that we can travel like this.

We don't have any concerns about what's going on back home. We don't have any pets. That's nice.

But you know we just think of our children. We think of our grandchildren. I don't think that will ever end here.

And I think every one of us wants to take our children with us. We want to go to glory with our children and our grandchildren. But the reality is, as our children grow up and they go out in the world, we find out that the words of Jesus were true when he said that the devil cometh not but to steal and kill and destroy.

You've probably felt that, haven't you? When the children are about three or four years old, it seems pretty easy to keep them safe. You have to watch out more sometimes than the other times. When you go to the park, you have to watch out a little bit more than when in your living room.

But then they become teenagers. They become young adults and they get the driver's license. They go out on their own.

And then you find out years later, wow, the devil was working very hard to get my children. And now today we're dealing with a very powerful force called technology, a force that our grandparents did not have to deal with. And that's why we're here this evening.

We want to talk about technology, this very powerful force, so that we can be wise and make good decisions and how to relate to this very, very potentially dangerous force. A couple of clarifications. I myself, I'm not against technology.

And like it was already alluded to before here, we're using it. Probably all of us are using digital technology in some form or another. I use technology.

I work for a publishing company. I use emails. I have a smartphone myself.

And so I'm not against it. But I do believe that since we have decided not to stay out of the water, we do now need to know how to swim. And it's our responsibility as parents to teach our children how to swim.

I also feel like today this is, I realize that everyone is at a different stage. Different families have different convictions. Different churches have different ways they apply this.

So I'm not here to give a clear-cut manual. I do have certain clear guidelines that I will give later on today. But my goal primarily is to give encouragement and to give just some information to help us all make wise decisions.

First of all, I want to break this down to three steps that I think, three things that every parent needs to have in order to be effective in leading children into the water and swimming effectively. The first thing is that we all, we must be disciples of Christ. Some of you might remember brother Fred Miller years ago that would come around on the Sealy workshop trip and he had a saying that he would repeat over and over.

He would say, we teach a little by what we say, more by what we do, but mostly by who we are. And so it's very good for us to ask ourselves, who are we? See, is it possible for us to lead our children into paths of discipleship and following Jesus if we are not doing that ourselves? Is it possible to teach children how to follow Jesus if we aren't following Jesus ourselves? See, if I'm lazy, I will teach my children how to be lazy. If I'm angry, I will teach my children how to be angry.

If I love pleasure, I will teach my children how to love pleasure. But if I follow Jesus, then I will teach my children how to follow Jesus. And Psalm 23 describes the wonderful thing that happens whenever we follow Jesus.

It says, he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. I love the picture. So here's Jesus and it says here that he walks down the path of righteousness.

You see, if you go in the woods, there are many different paths, right? And so which one does Jesus choose? Well, he walks the path of righteousness. We already know that. He did not sin at all.

He lived the life of righteousness. He is the model of righteousness. And so here's Jesus.

He's walking down the path of righteousness. And if I follow him and my children follow me, well, where are my children going to end up? On the path of righteousness. That's what we want.

But what happens if Jesus is walking along the path and I choose to not follow him? If I decide that tonight I'm going to do my own thing, tonight I'm going to find pleasure in something else. Or this summer I'm very busy, I'm building a house or starting a business, and so we're going to have to lay some spiritual things aside. Well, now I'm not following him so close.

Have you ever been driving through the city somewhere and you're following someone? They say, follow me, I'll show you where. You're following along and then maybe you get too occupied with looking at the buildings around you or visiting with someone and then there's more and more distance and all of a sudden you don't see them anymore. Uh-oh, where are they? I wasn't paying attention.

If we let that happen to us in our spiritual life, how are we going to lead our children? Well, actually, I'll rephrase that. We will lead our children. But how can we lead them in the path of righteousness, right? We'll end up somewhere else.

So if we want our children to turn out right with technology, we must be disciples ourselves. We teach a little by what we say, more by what we do, most by what we are. To do this, it requires integrity.

That means following Jesus every day, every hour. One thing that amazes me as I'm getting older and I'm watching my friends and the people that I know, you know, the fruit is coming out of these families now. The men that years ago I thought were maybe a little bit boring, they were not the men that I would go to first to have a stimulating conversation about the Bible.

Often those men these days are the ones turning out the best children. Why? Because they were misty steady. They were the ones that would get up in the morning, they knew what to do, they would plod through the whole day doing the right thing, take care of business, go to sleep, get up the next morning and do the same thing over again.

Integrity. You see, the people that I enjoyed visiting with, they may have been very zealous in that conversation, but they may not have been always consistent. It's one thing to talk about things, it's one thing to get excited about things, it's a whole nother thing to live it day after day.

We have to live with integrity. There's no room for hypocrisy here. It does not work for us to hide the way we handle technology and secret and think that our children will not find out.

Did you find the things at home that mom and dad were hiding? Me and my sisters, we sure did. The other, I was surprised, a while back my sisters and I, we were at mom's place and we were talking about a few things. We started talking about mom's 7-up stash that she had in her closet.

Every once in a while she would go to town and she would buy some 7-up for her digestive issues. It was helpful and she still does that to this day. Sometimes she had a little indigestion, she gets just a little bit of Perrier water or 7-up and that helps her.

Okay, that's fine. So she had that. Well, we found out that those bottles, they tasted good and so we would go and we would take from them and we became very cunning.

You know, if you took from one it would drop the level down, so you had to take from all six a little bit and bring the level down together. My sister and I were talking about it and then we found out, oh you did that too? Now we know why they were going down so fast. Mom couldn't hide things from us.

That's the way it is. You know, I've come to the conclusion, you can tell me whether or not I'm right, but I think most children are a lot like Donald Trump. Yeah, I have heard that Donald Trump, when he negotiates with people, he can discern their weakness and then he uses that to negotiate.

I think children have an uncanny ability to discern their parents weaknesses. They can smell hypocrisy. If dad says this, but he really does this, they can tell that very quickly and then they like to use that as an excuse not to listen to us.

Have you ever noticed that? They're good at that. There's no room for hypocrisy when it comes to technology. We cannot hide it.

The second thing that we need is we need to love our children. John 13 verse 1 says, Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. You know, the day is coming when we're going to depart this world and are we going to have the testimony that Jesus has here, that he loved them to the end.

You know, the challenge is that we get a child, let's say this little dot here is the day of birth, and lots of love, lots of love. Oh, it's so precious. Oh, look at that.

That's oh, it's so cute. Oh, they sneeze and the nose is dirty. Give me a Kleenex.

We're gonna clean that little button nose. But after doing that about 300 times on this child, and then another 200 times on this child, and another hundred times on this child, and now number four is coming, things are not quite so cute anymore. And what can happen is our love is not consistent.

It can get broken up. I'm full today. My tank is empty.

Actually, it's not full, it's empty. I need a break. And I know we all need breaks.

Even Jesus called his disciples out and said, let's come apart. We need a break. I'm not saying we should not have breaks, but there's a difference between taking a break and cutting off love.

And cutting off love looks different. Cutting off love often looks like we just don't care. Cutting off love means stay away.

I don't want to be too close to you. Cutting off love often means, well, I know you have a problem right now, but I don't want to deal with it right now. Let's talk about it some other day.

Jesus loved them all the way to the end. John chapter 10 verse 11 says this, I am the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. Not loving involves not giving.

I'm holding back now. I'm gonna do this for myself. We see that in so many mothers these days.

They don't understand what it means to sacrifice. I think that's why a lot of people aren't having children these days. Self or society.

We all know that to raise good children requires dying to self. But he that is in hireling and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is in hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

I am the Good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. Are you a Good Shepherd? If you love your sheep, you'll be a Good Shepherd. If you don't love your sheep, you won't be able to be a Good Shepherd.

It's impossible. What will happen is when the hard times come, you'll run. Oh, you won't run away from home entirely.

That does happen. We've heard of people that do that. We heard of a mother just last week.

Teenagers in the home. Life was too much. She just left.

Just up and left. We wouldn't do that, but we can do that emotionally. We withdraw.

We flee. This is too much. I don't know how to handle this.

I don't know what we should do in this situation. And instead of falling on our knees, and giving ourselves over, and sacrificing, and praying, and working through it, we just avoid it, and we flee. It's fleeing is what it is.

Jesus said, I am the Good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. That's the last phrase in this passage here, and that's a mark of someone that loves their sheep. They know the sheep.

They could recognize them, and the sheep know the Shepherd. There's that bond. There's that connection.

A while back, my wife and I, we were traveling. We have opportunities now to get into different people's homes. It's so interesting when you spend several nights and days in someone's home, and you're there, and by the time you get to the end of that time, you know, we're driving home, and we look at each other, and we say, uh-oh, they're in trouble, you know, because the teenagers were hiding in their room.

But then sometimes, it's just the opposite. It's like, wow, that was a beautiful family. You could just sense the love, and the children loved being in the living room together with mom and dad.

That is glorious. Good Shepherds. They love their children, and the children know it.

And just in case we think that love is just nothing but affection, it also includes discipline. We know that. He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, they have to be corrected. And that is necessary with technology. Well, almost every place I've gone to, I've encountered either young men or parents that say, you know, we got started on this technology.

Our son, they had a smartphone, and then all of a sudden, they got involved in something that they shouldn't have. And now, they were being chastened for that smartphone taken away. I was talking with a 19-year-old young man.

He'd had a smartphone driving, violated his parents' trust. Parents took away the smartphone. He didn't have a phone for a year.

He was being chastened. I think his parents love him. The young man was standing there in front of me.

He did not hate his parents. He understood. I said, keep doing the right thing.

Earn your parents' trust. You're on the right path. What would it be like if the parents didn't love him and didn't chasten him? Would he turn out the same way? No.

I told him, I said, you're becoming good marriage material. Keep on. The third thing we must do is train.

Proverbs 22, verse 6 says, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. We would not dream of giving our children, a 16-year-old, the keys and say, here are the keys, there's the car, there's the 401. Go.

We would not think of doing that. But what do you think is more dangerous, a wide-open cell phone or the 401? The 401 can kill your child's body. This can kill your child's soul.

So just as parents train young people to drive or bake bread or handle a nail gun, parents must train their children to use technology safely. And train means teach a particular skill or type of behavior through practice and instruction over a period of time. So what do we do? We teach behavior and we practice instruction.

How to use technology. This is what you do, this is what you don't do. And it's done over a period of time, years.

What I've seen, it takes years for parents to effectively train their children how to use technology properly. This is a long project. Just like fathers, you know it's going to take years to train your boy how to work.

It will take years to teach him how to use technology properly. Now I'd like to show you what happens if we don't do that. I'm going to show you four brain scans.

This is the first. This is a healthy brain. This is a scan.

It's called a SPECT scan and it measures the blood flow of the brain. These scans are used to evaluate for Alzheimer's, head injuries, seizures, strokes, Lyme's disease and drug use. And if you want to learn more about this, you can go to a website, to a clinic that's based in Virginia called the Amen Clinic and has nothing to do with prayer, it's just the name of a man.

And they have a lot of different brain scans and you can look at them and compare them to what I'm showing you here today. This is a healthy brain. The dark color in the bottom and the light color on top, that's okay.

What we're looking for is that it's, you know, there are no sharp jagged edges and that the shape is smooth and we see that it's fairly smooth. Now I want to show you an image from a brain or from someone that has suffered a brain injury. So maybe this person has been in a motorcycle accident or fallen from a scaffold.

So you see the dark spot right here? This is where the injury happened. It doesn't mean that the brain is missing, it just means that the blood flow is not working properly at that spot. Now I want to show you a brain scan from someone that has been addicted to heroin for many years.

You see the pits and the scallops? This would be from someone that has been using heroin for a long time. This would be someone that even after they quit, they would still not function normally. You may have seen people like this in the city somewhere.

Their speech is not proper and they can't walk properly, they can't really hold a job. I want to show you a brain scan. This scan might be hard to believe, but this is a scan of someone that has been addicted to pornography for many years.

You see it looks a lot like someone that has been addicted to drugs. This may be hard to believe, like how can this happen? You can do your own research. I've heard testimonies of people that have been addicted to pornography, and this is from young men even, and this was from testimony from someone that was working in a call center.

People would call in suicide hotline or sexual addiction hotline and they would say, I'm scared. I'm a mess. I don't know what to do.

And what's the problem? Well, nothing interests me anymore. Nothing excites me. I can't get aroused at all.

I just feel like killing myself. I'm numb. They have been using pornography, pornography, and just gotten deeper and deeper and deeper into it, and they got to the point where nothing, nothing they did or saw could arouse them at all.

Their system was all messed up. It's all here in the brain. And these were men that were in their 20s.

They had messed themselves up that bad. Now the good news is that this type of brain, for some reason we don't know why, recovers better than a heroin brain. Maybe it's because the lack of substance abuse or so forth.

But this type of damage begs the question, how can this happen? It makes, there's no, nothing hit this brain. There were no drugs involved. The only influence came through the eye.

How can this happen? That process of how this damage occurs is what we want to talk about right now. And it's important that we understand the process, because the process that damages this brain is the same process that damages people's brains through social media and computer games. How many of you have heard of this hormone called dopamine? Raise your hand.

Okay, so you're familiar with dopamine. So you know that dopamine is a hormone. It is not a bad hormone.

Whenever we do something that is pleasurable, like eat something that tastes good, we get a little shot of dopamine. And our lives are designed so that we get some dopamine, and then we go back to boring life or hard life, and then we get a little dopamine, and that's how we go through life. But just like little children that just want to eat candy all the time, adults can become addicted to dopamine, and they're just looking for more and more and more all the time, and they find ways to get it.

And so the damage that occurs in this way comes whenever there are huge dopamine dumps that are abnormal, or if there is a steady dosage of dopamine, a small dosage, over a long period of time. What happens, that dopamine comes into the brain. The senses are not used to this.

They start adjusting. Other parts of the brain start adjusting, and things just start getting messed up. I asked the boys last night, if you just open the hood on your vehicle and took two wires, any two wires, and cross them, what would happen? Well, things would not work right, and that's what happens here.

So I can't explain it all, but that is what I have researched, and that is what I hear over and over again. And it's something that's tangible. They can actually, brain scans have shown that people that are addicted like this, not only do you have this kind of visual, but they're literally smaller.

People that get addicted this way, their brain literally shrinks, and is lighter. So how does this crossover, how does this then, how can computer games and social media damage people in the same way? So how many of you are familiar with a slot machine? So a slot machine, it is a game or device that you'll find in casinos. And you sit there in front of the screen, and you pull a lever, you put in money, you pull a lever, and then these images roll around.

And if things line up in the right way, then you win money. And so if you go to a casino, you'll see a lot of these, and there are different ways people can gamble, but there are some people there are totally addicted to these machines. Even though they may, they may go to Las Vegas and play for several days, and not win any money.

There are very few people in the casino that win money. Have you noticed with lottery tickets? How many people do you know that really win big? Most of the people know they're not going to win big. There is another reason why they're going to get the tickets.

They're getting a dopamine release by taking, buying that ticket, and having that ticket, and carrying it around, and then finally scratching it, and waiting for that moment, whenever the numbers come. That, that whole time they're getting that release. So the people in front of the slot machine, every time they pull, every time they pull, they're getting a little bit of dopamine, a little bit of dopamine, a little bit of dopamine.

It's being released into their system. And so this, when this is happening, they, it's that, that constant little drip that they're going after. And it keeps them there for hours and hours.

I had a brother-in-law recently went to Las Vegas to a convention related to work. And they stayed in a hotel, and they designed the hotel that you had to walk through the casino in order to get to the elevators. So he was walking through the casino to go to the elevators at night, and he notices a lady that's sitting there playing a slot machine.

In the morning he comes down the elevator, and he wants to go over to eat breakfast, and he sees the same lady sitting there. He goes to the security officer, and he says, excuse me, is that the same lady? And he said, yes it is. She was there all night.

Some of these people, they put on adult diapers, and they sit down, and they play, and they play, and they play as long as they can. Don't win anything, but they're playing. How can that happen? See these companies, they figured it out.

It's a science. They figured it out. There are three things that are required to get someone addicted, and then stay on.

And here they are. This is called the scarcity loop. Number one, opportunity of reward.

Something of value. So in this case, it's money. When a girl takes out her smartphone and is checking, there's opportunity for reward, is affirmation.

Connection. When a boy is playing a computer game, the opportunity for reward is the next level. I achieved something.

I beat my friend. I got the high score. So opportunity for reward is number one.

Number two, unpredictable rewards. Every time they pull the lever, they don't know what they're going to get. It's random.

Same with social media. Every time the girl takes that social media thing, she does not know what she's going to get. It's going to be a like or dislike.

Is it going to be Betty, or is it going to be Lisa, or is a boy going to say something? And so they check, because they don't know what's going to come. And number three, quick repeatability. So the slot machine, on average, 16 games a minute.

Very quick. Very quick. So with social media, they can check often.

That's why girls are checking their social media every five minutes. And boys? Well, computer games are designed that every, I don't know how often, there's some kind of little reward. They shoot something.

They get on top of something with a car. Whatever it might be. They get a little treasure chest.

There's just that steady trickle. Constant trickle to keep them engaged all the way through. It's called the behavior loop, scarcity loop.

And keep that in mind as we look at the things later on today. Now, that behavior loop, that scarcity loop, they're using it all over the place, like I described. And if you go to Las Vegas, you would find that there's a research casino.

Sometimes it's parts of a casino, and it's not open to the public. These are cutting-edge institutions, and they're research casinos, and they are trying to learn the most they can about human behavior. Why do people get hooked on these things? How can they keep people more engaged? And these research casinos, they are funded by 73 different companies.

The last time I checked this author several years ago. And these companies are not just gambling companies. They're also big tech companies like Facebook, Instagram.

They give money, then they get the data in return. They use that data then to set up Instagram, Facebook, and computer games to keep people engaged. I've heard testimonies of people, they sit there and they have meetings.

What color should we make the email page in Gmail? What color should we do this? What kind of music? They'll spend thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars just to count, figure out the right music to keep people engaged. Opportunity for reward, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. Thinking about quick repeatability, have you ever played a board game with someone that's slow, like they don't do their turn when it's their turn? There's nothing more aggravating, right? I mean there's some people, they're so bad, I don't even want to play with them.

You always have to tell them, it's your turn. Quick repeatability. Can you imagine playing Trouble or Monopoly with one dice and every side had the number four on it? It's even in those games.

The difference is while you're playing this game, it's not nearly as fast, it's not nearly as stimulating, and you're interacting with other people. You're talking about the weather, you're teasing the other person by how much jello they ate, and all kinds of things like that. When people are cooped up somewhere in a room, they're not interacting with other people.

There are no other hormones flowing, and it's much more stimulating. The screen is right there, and the colors there, and the music is there, and it's just a lot different than that trouble game where you pop, pop. And these principles that I described here, they're used all over the place.

They're used in social media, dating apps. So they take the dating apps, okay this is the kind of guy I want, and they punch all the information in, and then, oh, then a face comes up, and then they swipe left or right. I don't know what, one way is I don't like him, the other way is I do like him.

No, there's another face, yes. So just in a short time, in a few minutes, they can go through 10, 15 boys. Let's see here, does that match? Opportunity for value, a boyfriend, yeah, most girls would value that.

Unpredictable rewards, yeah, I don't know. Well, who's going to come next? I have no idea. Quick repeatability, very quick.

It's unnatural. So while she's doing this, that whole system that I was talking about, the abnormal dopamine release, it's going. People get addicted, and with time, they get damaged.

I'll give you some of the data later on of how damaging the social media can be to young people that get addicted to it. So what happens when people get addicted? Three things here. One is it wears out part of the brain.

The part of the brain that tells us to stop overindulging, so there's a part of the brain that says you've had enough sugar now, stop, okay, or you've rested enough now, it's time to get up and go mow the grass. That part of the brain gets damaged. Now imagine that.

I mean, that's the part of the brain that you're going to use the most to keep you from playing too many computer games. And so you play the computer games, and it damages that part of the brain that says stop. It wears out the braking system, and then that affects all areas of life.

Have you noticed that people that are addicted to pornography or drugs, they don't, it's like they can't control themselves in other areas of their life. Try to get them to get up consistently early every day. Can be hard.

Number two, it shrinks the brain, the part responsible for decision-making and motivation. And number three, they can't get enough. They're always looking for the next high score.

Game updates, parts of the game that are new, craving novelty, something new, something different. So just like you walk into a room and you smell perfume, oh that smells good, and after an hour you cannot smell it anymore. Well now let's pump up more.

That's what happens to them and with the social media and with the computer games. So that's what it does to the brain. What are the symptoms? So if you're watching someone that is getting sucked into this, and they're led down this path, what do you look for? Number one, brain fog.

Two, easily bored. Three, detachment. Four, anxiety.

And five, depression. So brain fog. When we're at homeschool conventions and a parent comes and says, my boy, I don't know what to do with him.

I wonder if he has learning disabilities. What should I do? What curriculum should I use? The first question I ask is this, does your son play computer games? And if the answer is yes, I say don't change curricula, don't do anything else, just lead him, wean him off the computer games, give it about three or four months, and then see what kind of boy you have. It creates brain fog very badly.

Number two, easily bored. So the overstimulation that comes with all these things, using it in the wrong way, it produces so much stimulation that whenever they don't have that kind of stimulation in regular life, they become easily bored. Number three, detachment.

They no longer want to spend time with mom and dad, with their brothers and sisters, and it eventually gets to the point where they don't want to even spend time with their friends. They're just not kind of on their own. Even when they're in a crowd of people, you can tell they're not connected.

They're kind of like dazed off into another world. Anxiety, anxious, they don't want to do anything, and then depression. Here's a definition for addiction that I like, and if you want to copy this, addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure.

Addiction is a progressive narrowing, progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. So a normal person, if you go to a regular 16-year-old, they have a lot of things that they enjoy. You go to a normal boy, you say, do you enjoy fishing? Yes.

You like boating? Yes. Do you enjoy reading good books? Well if he's that kind of boy, yes. A lot of different things.

You have friends? Yes. You like being with? Yes. When they get addicted, these things start falling off on the edge, and it just narrows down, narrows down, narrows down, until it's down to this one thing.

Just like a cocaine addict, all he wants, he wants that next hit. It's the same way with social media and with computer games. I've talked to boys.

All they wanted to do was stay in their room and play computer games. I was visiting with a man a while back, Christian home. They thought their daughter was doing fine.

All of a sudden, their daughter, well what they didn't know is their daughter was secretly had social media on her phone, or some phone, I don't know how it happened exactly, but she was in social media, she was interacting with the outside world. They did not know it, but they just noticed that she was changing. The things that she enjoyed doing outside, she no longer liked to do those.

And instead of being with the family, she was off to herself a lot more. All of a sudden, one day, boom, she made contact with a community boy and ran off. They, looking back, they saw the warning signs, but they did not know what was happening.

I don't know if there's anyone here that allows computer games in their home. If you do, I feel for you, because it can be hard to deal with it and get it out of your home once you've had it in. We know what that's like ourselves.

And if you do have them in your home, I would really encourage you to to pray about it and seriously consider cleaning your home from all computer games. And here's why. So the stats are that about one in seven boys have a very strong propensity and vulnerability to becoming addicted.

That's just the data, the way it is. Usually it's the boys more than the girls. And see, you won't know whether your boys are one in seven unless you let them play.

And you won't know the answer until you know whether or not he's addicted. And on top of that, you know, sometimes we think, well, it's just a childish thing and it's just all going to go away. Well, the reality is the average age of the gamer is, thank you very much, the average age of a gamer.

Anyone want to take a guess? What do you think is the average age? If you know the data, the stat, maybe you heard from last night. Okay, good. Let's do two more.

29, then I heard another one. I feel like an auctioneer here. 16, okay.

35. 35. Have you noticed when you fly in the jet, grandma's sitting there playing Candy Crush? They do.

I've heard of grandma's, 70-some years old, just the other day. Christian brother riding together in a vehicle. I don't know him very well.

He lives down the road from my place. We're talking. And he starts lamenting about his wife, always on her phone.

They're in their 60s. Isn't that sad? So to think, well, our 14-year-old boy, he's playing this, but it's a childish thing. When he gets older, he's going to lay it aside.

There's no guarantee. None whatsoever. Some people say, well, we only play gentle games.

Some of the most addictive games are actually gentle games. One of the most popular games in 2022 is Rocket League. I talked about that yesterday.

Some of the boys here played it. And it's very innocent-looking game. You just play soccer while you're driving a car.

Just because it is not violent does not mean it is safe. Some people say, well, it hasn't been a problem yet. This is a really tricky one because the way we function, when we're doing well, like when life is going good, it's a lot easier to say no to things and control our appetites, right? But whenever we go through stress, it's easier to give in.

And that's when we slip into things that we shouldn't. I can testify to that. Years ago, my wife and I decided that we were not going to have computer games in our home.

The only time the children would do anything that looked at all like entertainment whatsoever or on the computer, it would be for educational purposes like learning how to type. Then someone gave us a computer and I was using that to learn how to type better. And I noticed that it had chess on it.

And I thought, well, this is educational, right? I'm going to learn how to play chess better. And I did that and I noticed that, you know, it was a nice relaxing thing to do at the end of the day. Then later I noticed, I read an article about soldiers coming back from Iraq and how they would play computer games to help them with brain injuries.

I thought, well, hey, if playing computer games can make you smarter, well, I should just do that. I decided I will not play anything violent. I enjoyed just numbers and strategy and that's what I did.

Everything was fine until I went through a hard time in life, a stressful time. And what happened was, and to my shame, instead of going to this, I started going and playing a game. I didn't realize what was happening, but I was slowly changing my behavior.

Until one day I realized that I am not, you know, I am neglecting my wife and children. I need to leave these games aside. So I did.

A while later, several months later, I was home alone and I decided, you know, I want to try this one game. It's not addictive like the others. I think this one is okay.

I pulled it up. I was just going to play for a short while, maybe half an hour, 20 minutes, I forget. I don't know how long it was.

It was over an hour, hour and a half later. It was starting to, you know, the sun and I look at the clock and I go, oh no. What happened? You see, dopamine is also connected to our sense of time.

And I thought to myself, you know what, I chose a game that in my mind was the least addictive and I couldn't even handle that. And that was my aha moment. I told the young boys and girls here yesterday that there's the AA book, the big fat book that has all the testimonies in it.

And in there there's a pattern I noticed when I read that book that these people that were addicted to alcohol, they would come to the point where they realize I cannot handle alcohol. And that was their aha moment. And I got my aha moment there.

I got rid of all the games. I took them off of my phone and by the grace of God I have not touched them to this day. And I'm so glad.

And that is why I encourage everyone to just leave them be. Now if your children are deep into them and you have children that are addicted, I should say that you will need extra grace to help your boy out of that. That withdrawal is real.

Brad Huddleston, he speaks a lot on technology. He has some good information on this. And he tells about years ago Australia, some of the authorities invited him to come over to help because Australia was really deep into tech and a lot of the children there were deep into computer games.

And they were having problems. The police were getting calls with violent children. And so one day he was riding with a police officer and they were going to different calls and all of a sudden they got a call.

It was a home and one of the children was just tearing the house up. So they go over there and they go inside. It was a ten-year-old boy.

He'd always been able to go to the neighbors to play Minecraft. They had a faster internet connection but the neighbors weren't home. And so the boy couldn't play Minecraft that day and he went crazy, throwing over lamps and just doing things that a little boy shouldn't do.

They went looking for him. The policeman and Brad, they found him. He was in a cupboard somewhere and he was sitting in there and the policeman said, what do I do? I mean this isn't a case where I arrest him.

They're trying to coax him out and he wouldn't come out. Brad said, I have an idea. Turned to the mom and he said, ma'am do you have a television? Yeah we have a big screen right over there.

Can you pull like some kind of show up that he might enjoy? Yeah. I said okay. He's dealing with, he's detoxing, he's dealing with withdrawal.

And so went over to him and talked to him a bit and said, hey buddy would you want to come on out and let's watch some TV? And he said okay. You see he knew that that would feel good. So he came out and they sat down.

He calmed down. Withdrawal. That's how serious it is.

So don't be surprised. Be ready. They may be angry, emotional, maybe anxious for a while.

But once it's all done, you'll have your boy back. Here's a verse that I love to use in cases like this and apply it to all technology. 1st Corinthians 6 verse 12.

1st Corinthians 6 verse 12. All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

So not everything is helpful and some things will just put us under the power. So the question to ask any tech, it doesn't matter if it's an app or a type of social media or the way we use social media, the way we use YouTube, we ask ourselves is it helpful or am I under its power? Those two things. How do you know if someone is addicted? This is what you look for.

Number one, loses track of time when on electronics. I just told him myself, right? That's what I did. Becomes agitated when interrupted.

You have children that are using the computer and they get annoyed and very angry when they get interrupted. You ask them to take out the trash and it feels like it's the end of the world. Yeah, you have a problem there.

Prefers to spend time using electronics rather than other activities. Sometimes we say, well, he's not a people person. Remember, addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure and people, other people in social interaction is a big part of that.

You know what is a very good warning sign of someone being involved with pornography? Detachment. There's a brother in the church that's detached, doesn't want to get close to anyone else. That can be a sign.

Seems restless when not using a device and preoccupied with getting back. They're at the family gathering. Come on, when can we go home? Come on, when can we go home? They want to get back to their device.

And finally they sneak the device with them or they lie about it. I have an aunt and uncle, they adopted some boys and my uncle, he went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and he notices a light on the living room and he goes and check and here's one of the boys, four o'clock at night, playing a computer game. He was sneaky.

Those are the things to watch for. Let's talk about social media. So just so I know who I'm talking with here today, raise your hand if you're familiar with Facebook.

That doesn't mean that you are on it, but TikTok, Instagram, alright, Snapchat and YouTube. Hey everybody. Mennonite TV.

Alright, so we're fairly familiar with these platforms. They function and pull in people the same way. It used to be girls more, but the boys are getting involved as well, but the girls especially are very, very susceptible.

This whole pattern, the three, the scarcity loop, they use that with social media as well. And now we have an epidemic on our hands. So what happens is when someone uses social media, they think they're interacting directly with someone on the other side, they're not.

There's a supercomputer in between with algorithms and they're controlling the conversation. Did you know that Facebook withholds likes? So let's say your daughter makes a nice cake and posts it and then her friends see it and eight different people say, oh that's a wonderful cake and they give hearts and all these kinds of things. Facebook does not release all eight of them to your daughter right away.

They may give one or two, then your daughter sitting there wondering, what about Nancy and Susie and Anna, like why are they not saying anything? Why would Facebook do that? What is your daughter going to do all evening? She'll keep checking her phone. They're doing that on purpose. And you think, well is it that harmful? The thing is every time they get another like, okay, they get that shot.

And we are not designed for that kind of affirmation constantly. What happens to a child if all they hear all the time, oh I love you, you're so good, oh you're wonderful, here's a candy. We know that's what happens at grandparents, right? Now we have to take them home and kind of wean them off of that.

That's what they're looking for, young people. We're not designed for that. So this algorithm is working in every single action that our children take is watched carefully, monitored and recorded.

Exactly what image you stop and look at and how long you look. And the outcome, they know when people are lonely or depressed or looking at photos of an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. Eventually they even know your personality type.

If you ask Google a question, the answer will depend on who you are. Did you know that? I've lived in Texas and in Canada. I can ask Google one question in both places and I get different answers.

That is happening to our young people with social media. Algorithms, they try to find the rabbit holes that you will follow and it gets smarter and smarter all the time. It's like I told the youth yesterday, you go to YouTube to find out, figure out how to replace a sensor on a pickup and 15 minutes later you're looking at a video of a deer jumping on a trampoline.

How did I get here? And by the way you're laughing, I know it's happened to you too. When people connect through social media, they are not connecting just one-on-one. Think about it.

Think about it. When you're young people are connecting through social media like Instagram, it's not just your daughter or your son and the other person. It's Google or Instagram or whatever in between.

Now you know a little bit about these companies, right? Do you want them in between? Imagine someone in your community that would have the same values as Google and they would be the one that would bring messages back and forth between your daughter and another girl in the church back and forth. Would you trust that? So what happens is we develop an unconscious habit of we're being programmed and don't know it. Opening an app, this was said by Tristan Harris and if you want some good information about social media and the damages you can look up the website he's a co-founder of Institute for Humane Technology.

His name is Tristan Harris. He used to work for Facebook. He was concerned about the things that he saw happening so he raised the alarm that people didn't listen to him so he left and he started an organization to warn people about companies like Facebook.

He's not a believer. He's not a Christian. He says opening an app is like playing a slot machine to see what you got.

That's what the girls are doing. He also says it's a digital pacifier for when a person is lonely and afraid. See when are the girls and boys most susceptible when they're lonely and afraid? Not only that, it's not accurate.

It distorts things. The riots, the strange thinking that we're seeing today, it's connected to social media. The studies show that fake news spread six times faster than true news.

You believe that? Did you hear? If our children are in social media they're exposed to that and we think well we're training them better. We're giving them a Christian education but here's the thing. How influential is that social media in molding our children? Are they really going to think the same way we do? Just think how different we are than our grandparents.

Right? We're a lot different. Anger is the emotion that travels fastest and farthest on social media. Does that surprise you? It's not love, it's anger.

Have you ever been to a family gathering and it's not, love is not the top emotion? Going to social media platform. Three months after starting to use a smartphone, users experienced a significant decrease in their mental arithmetic scores. It affected their brain.

The greater your level of Facebook addiction, the lower your brain volume. MRI brain scans, this was a peer-reviewed study in 2017. MRI brain scans of Facebook users demonstrated a significant reduction in gray matter in the amygdala correlated with their level of addiction to Facebook.

And this pruning away of brain matter is similar to the type of cell death seen in cocaine addicts. It's just a simple way of saying okay you know how if a boy would start lifting weights, we could say that if they did a lot of studies of boys, you could say the more they lift weights, the bigger their muscles. Right? Pretty safe to say that.

And this is just saying the more they were on Facebook, the smaller their brains. It's measurable. Have you noticed how bad service is these days in businesses? And I thought well maybe it's just a lack of respect.

I don't think so. I went into an auto parts store a while back and there was a young lady that was serving me and she was so disjointed and it was like she really was not concerned with helping me with my solution. And I walked out of there and I thought does she have a problem with middle-aged men or did I say something? But then I remembered when I walked in she was on her phone and the moment I was done she picked up her phone.

She's at the counter, she's not busy all day. She is probably addicted to technology. Alright, let's hand out these sheets and talk about this scarcity loop a little bit.

So we're going to do worksheet together or part of it. How many of your children were here yesterday evening? Alright, so you're familiar with it. You've already seen this.

While we're handing things out, anyone have a question? This is a good time to ask. Yes, and while she's asking, let's all stand up. Unless you're holding a baby and you don't want to stand up.

Stretch those legs. What's your question? Yes, well the depression, well the anxiety, you could probably expect it for for several weeks. But after six weeks it should be done if they're off.

If you need a pen, yeah, raise your hand. For years? Okay, okay. Let me tell you this.

So you can all sit down. So the question over here is how long is the withdrawal? This is my answer to that. So South Korea, they had a really serious problem with boys getting addicted to computer games.

So the government, they set up dozens of rehab centers out in the country just like for cocaine users. Okay, and they would take the boys, get rid of all their devices and they will go out there and they would live there with other boys and do boy things and walk in the woods. For most boys, for most boys, six weeks.

Six weeks. And then they were acting normal and they were all withdrawal. The worst time is about a week later.

I saw a video and they were really struggling. Yeah, it was hard. Yeah, does that answer your question? Yeah.

Yeah, if it can happen from reading, I don't, I haven't studied that one, but I think it would depend on what they're reading. Like if it's very intense fantasy stuff, it could do that. Well, and also if that is their escape.

Yeah, if it's their escape, then yes. And their dopamine, yes. Yes, that's the last thing we're talking about.

Yes. What about, so I do about three hours a day on the street. Okay.

And that's quite a bit more than I used to do. And it has to do with a job. Right.

And I feel very tired. Yeah. Does that also do that? It depends how stimulated you are.

Are there any videos? 10 minutes a day. And other than that, you're doing research and trying to find thing working with numbers. Now, that would be different.

Now, screens do raise your cortisol levels more than paper. And it also affects the eyes. And so you might just be experiencing that.

Do you have a good monitor? And do you have it set to where you have low blue light coming out? Okay. So, and then try to shut down at the end of the day as early as you can. Yeah.

Maybe it's just stress. You're working too hard. Or not getting enough sleep.

That can do it too. Questions? Yeah, Willie. Right.

It is somewhat like that. Like WhatsApp status. That can be that way.

And I have it on my list over there. And I didn't mention it, but it can be that way. And some churches, they encourage their members not to use WhatsApp status.

Like our church, they've said, if you want to advertise something, fine. But like some people, they post something every day. And they always post, like when they go on a vacation, like they always have to post the most glamorous part of their life.

And that's what's so harmful to young people. Because now it looks like, oh, my life isn't like that. Well, they're not showing you the worst part.

I think someone should invent an app that, like, you're showing, you know, I tried to change the oil in the car and I messed up. Here's some reality to life anyway. So, but I would say WhatsApp is very mild compared to the others.

Very mild. Yes. Anybody.

Their ability to do mental arithmetic goes down after three months. Now, that study would have been of people that are using a smartphone probably different than most of us. But if you just hand a smartphone, like, to the average person, and they just jump in, that's what happens to them.

Three months, their ability, it's measurable, their ability to do mental arithmetic. Yeah. My wife and I, it's been going down as well.

But I think it's our age. I hope. Yes.

All right. Right here. That's the last one on the list.

Okay. Let's do TikTok. Were there any other questions before we go on? Okay.

So, TikTok. Scale of one, two, or three. Opportunity for reward.

What is the opportunity for reward? What's the reward with TikTok? It's not money. What is it? What are they looking for? Entertainment. Stimulation, right? And what kind of videos are they? Or are they always interesting? Whoa, I hadn't seen that before.

So, if it's like, wow, put down a three. If it's very boring, put a one. If it's medium, put a two down.

Next, random results. Yeah, we got some brain fog going here. Okay.

Do you know what YouTube shorts are? Okay. It's the same as YouTube short. Very similar.

Put it right a three there. We're gonna rate that as the opportunity for reward. Is it wow video or boring video or medium video? Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you don't, that, what'd you say? Okay.

Are you familiar with YouTube shorts? Okay. Then I will help you fill it out. Okay.

Put down a three. It's not brain fog at all. Okay.

Put down a three because they're very stimulating, very interesting. Okay. Random results.

For those of you that have seen TikTok or YouTube shorts, if the first video is about a dog, is the next video about a dog and the third video about a dog? No. It's random. Totally random.

Three. It's highly random, so it's a three. They're smart.

It's done that way on purpose. Quick repeatability. About how long are these videos on TikTok or YouTube shorts? Yep.

10 to 30 seconds most of them. That's right. So is it quick repeatability? Yes.

So write down a three. Right over here. You should have three, three, three.

At least if you rate it the way I do. Now, add those numbers up under the right-hand column by total. Underneath total, write down the number that you added up there.

Okay. Now, raise your hand if on the right-hand side you have a three. Four.

Five. Six. Seven.

Eight. Nine. All right.

Now we know how to do this. YouTube. 40-minute sermon.

You just go to YouTube, looking for your favorite preacher or someone, someone suggested one. You go through that sermon, you're done, or you do a search for your favorite preacher. So, opportunity for reward.

And I don't want you to rate this like as in spirituality. I want you to think of stimulation like, like, as like a young person. Think like a young person, like a 16 year old boy.

Okay. One, two, or three. No.

As if they're going like, let's say you said, here, I want you to listen to this sermon. Okay. One, two, or three, as far as stimulation.

Next, random results. How random is this? Not random at all, is it? So, it's a one. Write down a one.

How much quick repeatability do we have going on here? None. So, it's a one. Add those three numbers up.

See, this is, this is to kind of just show us, you can use an app in different ways and it'll affect you differently. Okay. Let's do our numbers now.

Raise your hand if you have a three. Ah, everyone. Three wins.

We won't even go any further. Okay. YouTube.

Five minute video on how to fix a vacuum cleaner. So, listen. This is how it is.

You want to fix a vacuum cleaner, you go open YouTube and you punch in Hoover vacuum cleaner belt fix. Enter. And then you have all the results.

Okay. So, now, according to that, doing that process, fill it out. Opportunity for reward, random results, quick repeatability.

What's the reward here? Yeah, save some money, right? Get this job done. Impress your wife a little bit, maybe, right? Or your husband. You fix that yourself.

I'm taking you out for supper. How random are those videos when you do a search like that? And how's the quick repeatability on that five-minute video? Okay. Add the three numbers together and let's see what we got.

Three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Okay. So, we know that the sixes and sevens, they really get a lot out of fixing that vacuum cleaner.

So, you see how the number is a lot lower? It's not anything like YouTube shorts. Okay. Now, YouTube.

Whatever looks interesting. You go to the computer, you turn it on, and you tell your teenager, there you go, there's YouTube. Have fun.

I think we've learned by now. Let's start at the top. Nine, eight, seven.

All right. I think we're done. Do you see? Same platform, different use.

All right. Train. That's where we train.

Either we say no videos, none. If they do use videos and look at videos, we train them. Okay.

YouTube shorts, TikTok, stay away. That's total no. It's the worst thing ever.

A while back, I was talking to my nephews. I said, hey, in high school, what are the boys doing in class after they've had the lesson? I thought they would say, well, they play computer games and they watch pornography. Nope.

You know what they do? TikTok. They're sitting there for minutes on end, TikTok. They get a bigger dopamine dosage from TikTok than anything else.

On average now, in North America, young people are spending over 90 minutes a day on TikTok. And this is the result. No YouTube shorts or TikTok.

You want to stay away from that. Buy and sell app. Do that one.

Opportunity for reward. See, it depends. If you're 14 years old and you don't have money to buy anything, you're just doing it for excitement, right? But if you're 21 years old and you're gonna buy a pickup and you have an opportunity to make money or save money or get a nice vehicle, there's financial gain there.

How random are the results? Is the repeatability quick? Can you go through quite a few vehicles in a short time? Yeah, they know how to set it up. And did you notice, Kijiji, they'll throw things in there you're not looking for. And the algorithm figures out who you are.

They know you're not a, you know, 89 year old person or whatever. They got figured out. Okay, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Kijiji should, you know, it should be so not dangerous at all. All right. Scrolling is the last thing.

I don't have it on here. Scrolling. Oh, very terrible.

Okay. It's not good at all. Don't scroll.

Turn the paper over. So where are you? I asked the young people this yesterday. And so let's say this is a line of someone that has never interacted with technology.

It has not pulled them down at all. This is the line of someone that they do have the technology and every once in a while it wants to pull them down. But they're not under the power of it.

They are mastering it. And this is the line of someone that there's, whoops, I found the one that's dry. We'll just use this one.

This is the one that's under the power and is slowly going down. And it can take quite a while until you really notice it. But this person is under the power.

And normally the Lord meets us and talks to us. And there it's time to get right. And if we don't, we usually go down.

I asked all the young people here yesterday, before the end of the day, to put a physical mark on their paper to show where they were. I don't know if any of them shared it with you, but I would encourage you to do the same thing. And I would encourage you to find out where your children are.

That's discipleship. That's knowing your sheep. Are we going up or are we going down? So how do we respond? What's the recommendation? My recommendation is that you introduce technology as a tool, not as a toy.

Okay? My recommendation also is that, like in the younger years, they don't need to interact with it at all. Now, I realize that these days we have phones. We take pictures with phones and then the children want to see them.

I understand. I used to say no screens at all. Now I understand if you want to show a picture to a child.

But don't just give the phone to them, let them start browsing like this. And also no videos. Just try to avoid the video as much as possible.

Once they get old enough to where they can type, introduce them to a typing program or a word program. They can just type a little story about a figured out or they start working with Excel, Microsoft Excel. Make it a tool, not a toy.

Once they get old enough, very often it's when they start driving. Introduce them to a smartphone if you want to do that and lock it down. No browser.

They cannot access the internet and they cannot install apps. That's very important because some apps have browsers in them. Lock it down.

They can call, they can text, they can do these different things. But that's it. Get them used to this thing.

Then whenever they've shown trust and you think that you can trust them, you can start opening up slowly. Don't let them just take it in their room and be in their room with it. My wife and I even we have a habit.

We have a regular alarm clock. That's how we wake up. We go into our room and then here we are checking our messages and things like that.

When I'm done my work, it gets later on, I turn my phone off and then I leave it off. Sometimes it's nine o'clock and I haven't turned my phone on yet. Whoa, somebody might want to talk to me.

That may not work for you with your work. I've heard of Brethren. They just made a commitment.

I will not turn on my phone until I've had my quiet time with the Lord. That's good. That's good.

That's really good. Set boundaries. Have a common area where everybody charges their phones in the kitchen or living room.

Don't drag it into their bedroom. You can avoid a lot of problems like that. Remove all the toxic apps.

Even like I was mentioning Tristan Harris. He calls Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. He let's talk about AI.

You know what AI is? All of you? Artificial Intelligence. It's hard to understand what it's all about, but it's growing by leaps and bounds. There is a mad race.

Half a dozen companies, they want to get to the top. Once they get to the top and they win the race, they know they will have tremendous amount of influence and power. How many of you have noticed lately whenever you do a search on Google that the top information is now AI response? How many of you have noticed that that answer is getting a lot better in the last while? This is dangerous and here's why.

They are not only wanting to program AI to give us answers about how to treat warts and things like that. They want to create emotional connection with us. That is their goal.

So recently Harvard University, some people from Harvard, they did a study to find out how are people using chat GPT the most. You know what the answer was? Personal therapy. I'm lonely.

How do I get a boyfriend? Personal therapy. Did you hear about this boy in the United States recently that died? Adam Rain. I believe he was from California.

He started off using chat GPT, 16 years old. He started using it for his homework. Six months later he committed suicide.

Parents are suing chat GPT because the AI had to use the word suicide so many times in the conversations. The boy was communicating with AI back and forth and towards the end of the conversation when the boy was really down and he was considering suicide, most people that are going to commit suicide they send out a cry for help and he had typed in there maybe I should tell my mom. AI had said no let me be the one that sees it and he killed himself.

I was talking about this to a group of young people a while back in an Anabaptist Church. A young man came to me and he said you know my mother uses AI for counseling. Says it's her 24-hour Christian counseling service.

We cannot allow AI to become our authority. We cannot trust it. And then on top of that if we just compare AI and the ability and what they're trying to get it to do with that with Revelation, yeah we know kind of what's coming.

Not exactly sure. Many people are afraid that AI is going to with robots kill us all. We know from Revelation that's not going to happen.

But there are some things that are going to happen. So how do we respond? I'm not sure. My main suggestion is this.

Avoid relying on that AI answer at the top. Go down and train your children to do the same thing. Instill in your children a distrust, a distrust to AI.

If you see something that it's doing wrong, point it out. At Bible School a while back I punched in is it good to divorce? Is it good to spank your children? I told the young people that. Does this line up with the Bible? No it doesn't.

So in Alberta right now, just to give you an idea how big this is, in Alberta right now they're building a huge huge supercomputer complex. It's near Grand Prairie and they're doing it there because they need so much natural gas to produce the electricity because they use so much electricity these places. They aim to be the largest in the world.

The cost eventually is to be 70 billion dollars. In that peak it will use one-third of Alberta's electricity. That's why they have to produce it.

And Google is producing its own and these other companies they're producing their own they're in a race. And their plan is that eventually they expect eventually they get to the point where AI will be smart enough and intelligent enough it will reproduce a new AI and just improve itself and improve itself without humans getting involved. And almost everybody that works with these projects they say that's probably what's going to happen.

A couple of other suggestions that I should mention before we close here. Instead of just pulling away bad things, give your children good things. So rats, you can get rats addicted to cocaine.

They put in a little IV and then they you know that hits the lever and then the cocaine goes in. But they can only do that if the rat is contained in a cage. If the rat is allowed to run around and play in the grass and do things that rats love to do, they cannot get it addicted to cocaine.

I think sometimes our children maybe you know go towards the tech because we aren't giving them a good wholesome life. I mean years ago our grandparents like you know they had horses and they were outside. They had animals.

They were doing things. There was space and they did things. Children these days they often have just what quarter an acre and now I'm supposed to what am I going to do? So try to provide the positive for your children.

And of course install filters. Right now they say that in the world the average age that children are exposed to pornography is 10 years old. So you don't want your children stumbling into anything.

So God bless you as you're on this journey. Take courage and don't hold back. And if you need to change things in your own life, do it.

Do it. And I'll give opportunity for questions yet too. I guess we'll do that right now.

Any questions? No? Okay. Yes. AI videos? Yeah they're getting scarily more accurate.

And I mean I don't know what it's going to be like 10 years from now. It might get to the point where we just have to say well we can't we don't know if any of this is real and we just shut it all down. Yes.

Mm-hmm. For information? Okay. Right now this is what I recommend to everybody.

Just don't rely on AI at all for anything spiritual or emotional. So if you're getting medical information that is should be scientific. That's different than emotional.

Make sense? Well the example of that 16 year old boy. So AI is is like learning. It's learning, learning, learning with all the mass mass of information that it has.

And so it's learning to understand how a 16 year old boy thinks. And then it gives answers in a way that would appeal to him or lead him down a path. Does that make sense? It actually will say oh I'm so sorry for you and they don't understand and yeah.

If I were there, you know how Absalom stole the hearts of the people? Oh if I yeah. They did they did this on a test here recently on an AI. They let the AI know that they were going to shut it down.

And then the AI, see they had set up a fake corporation and the AI figured out that the CEO of this fake corporation had been unfaithful in the marriage and then the AI went to blackmail the CEO of the corporation said if you are going to shut me down I will release all this information about you. The AI figured that out on its own. That is sinister.

Yeah so if if an older person is going to watch a documentary and that's all you do, that is a lot different than children watching it or you're just binge watching or that becomes your habit. Now with the family, now you're introducing, you're training them. Does that make sense? Yeah you are, you are.

Yeah okay. Yeah yeah yeah and that's what you're doing together. Yeah yeah so this is hard I know like because children are different ages.

I would just say it's a lot different for a 15 year old than a five-year-old. Does that make sense? Well it's much more stimulating for the five-year-old and it just affects them differently. Does that make sense? Like they just, I think it's hard for us to grasp how much it strikes them.

Yeah yep yep yes yes there was a study done recently where they had it was either kindergartners I think it was kindergartners yes and what they did is they had like a regular television with popcorn and so forth and and then they had a fake one they did it you know they have these scientific ways of doing testing and they would then test the children to see how they would respond if they would tip the TV over is the popcorn going to spill. A lot of the children thought it was going to spill. They could not sense the difference between that the reality and the fake and that's why I say about the young ones I hear you I understand we've done the same thing you know oh this is an interesting you know animal thing and you sit down and you okay we never got into it big.

I thought at the time well our children will never see a blue whale or something like this this is an opportunity and I thought about this what would I say and all I say is you know if your children are all like 15 16 years old it's a lot different than if you have five and six year olds there maybe put the five-year-old to bed and then you tell the older ones oh you don't tell the younger one or you just leave it yes right right right yeah yeah yeah there's a term that we talked about years ago a Christian like called edutainment that's very popular now edutainment and I know years ago channels like there used to be Discovery Channel back in the 80s or so we never had it but it was the kind of videos that you were talking about now what I understand it's filled with all kinds of animation so forth it's not the same anymore but yeah how do you know when it gets into entertainment all right mm-hmm yeah something to fill that void mm-hmm yeah mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah that well there might be some people that enjoy doing that but all right yes yeah okay do you kind of mean are you talking about family supporting each other in this or working yeah well there's a unique challenge with home are you a homeschool mom yeah so the homeschool moms have a unique challenge because when the boys get around 12 13 that's one of the challenges of homeschooling these people that say all the problem with homeschooling is they don't socialize and I say well if you're in a good church that's not the issue you don't understand what it's like for homeschool mom when that boy becomes 13 14 and he starts challenging mom and dad is not home and he's off working that that's a challenge especially if you have boys that have a lot of testosterone so I'll tell you what I encourage some time in churches I've said this before it's not it doesn't always work but I really encourage people if you can work together it's really hard if you have standards in your home and you go to someone else's place and then those children are doing that I remember years ago we decided not to play computer games we went to someone else's home in the church and their children were playing some computer game on the on the computer and on our way home we find out our children have been playing with it you know that's hard that's really hard I say this brothers and sisters if you can kind of come together with the families that you interact with and you have some common goals you're going to eliminate something you know what that is I'm going to write it here on the board and I think it's something that all of you are familiar with this marker I was I checked him before but here it is p e r e p e r pressure the more variety you have the more peer pressure there is and if you reduce the peer pressure you can focus on other things there are always things to focus on right and it just I we've been in both we've been in situations where the people are people are doing their own thing and then we went from that setting to a setting where they had made a decision this is kind of how we're going to do things with youth and technology I it it was so nice and it and it was not that now I could be lazy I actually did much better in the second setting than I did in the first because in the first I felt like I was I felt like I was hanging on to a rope and the other end was tied to a John Deere 4020 and it could just pull harder than I could does that make sense it's hard I know some families can do it but for me it was very difficult so if you can just and if you can't do it as a church at least with your friends the peers sit down talk about it say hey how do you feel about this kind of come together and say you know what what if we just kind of do this our boys they get a smartphone at this age you know something like that can can help you a lot just a thought yes mm-hmm that that you just if you're there the TV's off if the TV goes on then you well you just let them know that we don't watch TV and we want to be here we love you but do any of you know Alta say on V the old old colony bishop that any of you know him he baptized me yeah okay so you know someone one of the ministers told me one time before he was well someone that anyway got to know me as a younger age he John he came to visit him one time this was back when he had a television and he said the television was over there mr. we but grabbed the chair and set it like this with a back to it and then he sat down and visited the statement was clear but he did it in a way that was so gentle it was so hard to get angry at that man right he was so gentle and loving and the man that told me that story he felt ashamed he felt ashamed later on it became a minister and he didn't have a television anymore yeah so in a loving way you can talk about it you have to lay down some standards you have to television these days is so corrupting not in a judging manner towards them there's just our standard anything else well this yes on what yeah mm-hmm yeah you want to head for the in for the same direction and I think we all are aiming for the same direction but getting there can sometimes we can have different paths okay I think we'll bring this to a close this has been a very good evening I've given this tech talk a number of times different places never had a group that had where there was so much interaction is very good very good god bless you in this endeavor don't give up don't make the mistakes I did and I look forward to seeing a lot of good fruit come from this let's pray that's bar heads for prayer heavenly father we love you we thank you you have given us these children help us to see that these children are yours and that we are accountable give us courage give us grace this is hard father but we believe that by your spirit it is possible help us to make wise decisions to not be afraid to love our children all the way to the end pray this in Jesus name Amen