God’s Children are Under Attack: Part I

I’ve worked with families for over two decades—in mental health as a counselor, then as a teacher, and now in ministry. I’ve walked with parents through crises, I’ve listened to teens in pain, and I’ve sat with children who can’t even name what’s wrong, only that something is. Over the years, I’ve watched something shift in our youth. The change has been steady, unmistakable, and heartbreaking. It’s in their eyes, their restlessness, their loneliness. It’s like something is pressing down on them all the time, and they can’t catch a breath.

We are watching a generation crumble under a weight it was never meant to carry.

And as I’ve reflected on this, I’ve remembered something a theology professor once said to me. It went something like this:

In Scripture, whenever things get really bad, when God resets the world or sends prophets or permits judgment, it’s very often because humanity has started to destroy its own children.

That pattern is everywhere in salvation history.

When Pharaoh feared the Hebrew people, he ordered the murder of all male infants (Exodus 1). God responded by raising up Moses to lead the people out of slavery and dismantle the empire.

When the nations surrounding Israel, and eventually Israel itself, began sacrificing their children to Molech, burning them alive to win the favor of false gods, God sent prophets to weep, rebuke, and warn. “They built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire… something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind,” says the Lord through Jeremiah (7:31). When the people refused to turn back, Jerusalem fell.

When Herod heard about the birth of a new King, he responded with killing children—ordering the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem (Matthew 2). The Child escaped. The tyrant died.

And in the most chilling passages of Lamentations and Ezekiel, we see the result of Israel’s disobedience and descent into idolatry. The fall of Jerusalem is told in horror-filled language: children starving, mothers weeping, streets emptied of laughter. “My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within… because children and infants faint in the streets of the city” (Lamentations 2:11).

Jesus Himself—gentle, patient, endlessly merciful, spoke with terrifying clarity when it came to children.

If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble,” He said, “it would be better for them to have a millstone tied around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

Scripture is clear: when the most vulnerable suffer, Heaven pays attention. When children are crushed, silenced, devoured, whether by empires or ideologies or neglect, God does not stand by.

I believe we are living in such a moment again. We are destroying our children. But not with knives or fire. This time, it’s with glowing screens.

And if we do not wake up, soon, we will find that judgment is not just something God does. Sometimes, it’s something He allows.

Modern Sacrifice: Technology and the Mental Health Crisis

We didn’t mean to sacrifice them.
We just handed them phones and tablets.

We told ourselves it was fine, necessary, even. Everyone else was doing it. We convinced ourselves it was a tool, a convenience, a rite of passage. But what we really gave them was a tiny altar they now carry in their pocket, offering up their attention, their peace, their identity, sometimes even their innocence, multiple times a day.

And now the evidence is piling up.

According to the CDC, emergency room visits for teen girls who’ve attempted suicide have skyrocketed by over 50% since 2010, the same year social media became a normal part of adolescent life. Studies from Pew and Gallup consistently show that Gen Z reports the highest levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness ever recorded in American youth. Jean Twenge, one of the most respected researchers in this area, put it plainly: “There’s a clear, sharp spike in mental health issues beginning with the smartphone generation.”

This isn’t some vague correlation. The slope is steep. The numbers are devastating. And the suffering is real.

But I don’t need the data to tell me this. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

I’ve sat with the quiet, exhausted girls who scroll through TikTok until 2 a.m., hoping to numb their insecurities with likes and filters. I’ve watched 16-year-old boys freeze up in face-to-face conversations because all their socializing happens behind a screen. I’ve heard the panic in a parent’s voice when they realize they don’t even know what their child is being exposed to, because the phone is always in their hand, always under the pillow, always one step ahead.

This is not a generational complaint. It’s not nostalgia. It’s not fearmongering.

It’s grief.

We gave our children unfiltered access to the digital world and told them to figure it out. We didn’t prepare them. We didn’t train them. We didn’t fast from the technology ourselves. And now we are reaping what we sowed: young people drowning in curated lives, addicted to comparison, desperate for connection, unable to rest because they are actually disconnected from each other, themselves and God.

We placed an overwhelming, adult-level power into adolescent hands and walked away.
We gave them the tools of gods, and the formation of orphans.

It’s not just hurting them.
It’s breaking them.

And the worst part is, they think it’s normal.
Because it’s all they’ve ever known.

No Break from the Noise: The Constant Pressure of Socialization

When I was growing up, the school day ended.

That sounds obvious, but think about it. At 2:30 or 3:00, the bell rang, and with it, the social pressure of adolescence lifted. I went home. I had a few hours of quiet. Maybe I rode my bike. Maybe I played outside. Maybe I read a book, played video games by myself. Maybe I even did homework. Nope, I really didn’t do homework if I’m being honest.

If I wanted to talk to a friend, I had to ask permission to use the house phone (the one attached to the wall by a cord). My mom wasn’t about to let me talk for five hours straight. She had dinner to make and boundaries to keep.

There was a built-in rhythm to life.
There was space.
There was silence.
There was freedom in disconnection.

But that rhythm is gone.

Today’s kids don’t get to leave school. Not really. The bell rings and they enter a different kind of classroom, one ruled by group chats, Snapchat stories, Instagram likes, and TikTok trends. Instead of resting, they perform. Instead of recharging, they compete. The social theater never closes. There is no intermission. Just an endless scroll of “Am I enough?”

You see, the biggest difference between my generation and theirs is that we got a break from being social.

They don’t.

There is no boundary between public and private anymore. No “off” switch for friendships or social comparison. A child might be bullied in school at 10 a.m. and re-bullied again at 10 p.m., this time by a dozen more kids online. There is no safe haven, no parental buffer, no sacred space untouched by the buzz of peer pressure. The phone is in their hand. The message is already there.

Even sleep isn’t safe.
Kids wake up at 3 a.m. to check if they were tagged in something. To make sure they weren’t left out. To see if they’re still part of the tribe.

Do we realize what this is doing to their nervous systems? To their self-worth? To their ability to just be?

I don’t blame the kids. How could I? They didn’t ask for this. They were born into a world where the air itself is charged with noise. But I do wonder why we, the adults, keep pretending this is fine.

Because it’s not.
It’s not fine to be sixteen and terrified of missing a message at midnight.
It’s not fine to feel invisible if you didn’t post today.
It’s not fine to measure your value in likes, emojis, and followers.

It’s not fine.
And deep down, we all know it.

Chaos in the Classroom: Phones in Schools

I’ve been in enough classrooms to know when something has gone wrong.

There was a time, not that long ago, when a student’s biggest distraction during a lesson might’ve been a doodle in the margins or a whispered note passed across the room. Now? Now we’re up against something far more aggressive. Teachers are competing not with sleepiness or disinterest, but with an entire digital universe.

One teacher told me, “It feels like I’m trying to perform Shakespeare while every student in the audience has a slot machine in their hand.”

And that’s exactly what it is.
These aren’t just phones, they’re dopamine dispensers. They buzz, ping, glow, and seduce. And no amount of classroom rules or “put it face down on your desk” policies can compete with the addictive pull of an algorithm designed to hijack the teenage brain.

I’ve seen it firsthand: students hiding phones under desks, checking messages during Mass, slipping into the bathroom to keep a Snapchat streak alive. I’ve heard from Catholic school principals who’ve had to shut down entire group chats because the bullying got so intense it spilled over into real-life fights. I’ve watched a teacher stop mid-lecture because no one was listening—not out of malice, but out of mental fragmentation.

We have lost control of our classrooms.
And our children have lost the ability to be fully present.

Thankfully, some states are starting to act.

Florida now requires public schools to prohibit student phone use during class time and block access to social media on district Wi-Fi. Utah and Oklahoma have introduced similar legislation, with growing bipartisan support across the country. Indiana and Ohio are exploring policies that would establish phone-free zones in schools to improve learning and mental health.

This isn’t a culture war issue. It’s a sanity issue.

Because it turns out, when you take phones away, even for just a few hours a day, kids start to talk to each other again. They look up. They breathe. They fidget. They remember what it’s like to be human. And yes, they push back at first. But underneath the protest, there’s often a strange sense of relief: “Finally. Someone took the pressure away.”

Limiting phones in schools isn’t about being draconian.
It’s about giving children a break, a sabbath from the noise.

It’s about protecting their minds and giving teachers a fighting chance to do what they were called to do: form hearts, shape character, and speak truth into open ears.

If we can’t even create sacred space in a classroom, where can we?

Lord of the Phones: Children Building Their Own Society

If you want to understand what’s happening to our children, read Lord of the Flies again. Or maybe read it for the first time. It’s not just a story about boys on an island. It’s a warning. A prophecy. A mirror.

The novel imagines what happens when children are left to govern themselves, when the structures of adult life fall away and a new society rises in their place. At first, there’s a sense of freedom, even exhilaration. But that freedom quickly becomes fear. The rules erode. The weak are hunted. Violence festers. And the island, once full of laughter and possibility, becomes a place of smoke, blood, and death.

It starts with play.
It ends with savagery.

When I look at the way children use technology today, particularly social media, I see the same pattern.

We’ve handed them the tools of communication but not the wisdom to use them.
We’ve given them platforms but no principles.
We’ve abandoned them, not physically, but morally and spiritually, and in our absence, they have built their own kingdom.

It’s a digital kingdom, but it’s real.
It has its own language, its own values, its own justice system.
It rewards the loud, the cruel, the beautiful, the sexualized, the extreme.

And like the island in Lord of the Flies, it is not governed by mercy.

When children are left to their own devices, literally and figuratively, they do not grow into virtue on their own. They imitate what is powerful. They follow what is popular. They adapt to survive. But survival is not the same as maturity.

They don’t have the emotional or intellectual formation to navigate a world that prizes performance over presence, reaction over reflection, and influence over integrity.

So what happens?

They turn on each other.
They devour one another with sarcasm, shame, and exclusion.
They become both the predator and the prey.

And the adults?
We scroll past it.
We shrug and say, “Well, kids will be kids.”

But that’s not true.
Kids were never meant to raise themselves.
They were never meant to create their own moral ecosystem.
That’s our job. And we’ve abdicated it.

We let them build a society of screens, and now we’re shocked that it looks more like The Hunger Games than the Gospel.

But what did we expect?

Read part II tomorrow