“Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them,

for it is such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”

–Matthew 19:14 

One of the joys for me in retirement is having more time to read. It isn’t a new love. As a child, my mother often found me reading a book long after bedtime. As a teenager and young adult, I subscribed to various Book-of-the-Month clubs that exposed me to new authors. On moving to a new community, I always acquired a library card. And as a pastor, I appreciated that my compensation package included a Book Allowance that “required” me to keep learning. With daily work responsibilities gone, I now have three online sources and read at least an hour each day.  

If you were to review my Goodreads account, you’d see that about half of my books are fiction with the rest usually focusing on some aspect of history. I have a particular love of biographies. Only three books last year received a five star rating from me: The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson and The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The third one is the most important book I’ve read in a long time.  

Entitled The Anxious Generation it is written by Jonathan Haidt a professor at NYU. It recounts his effort to discover why the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply in that decade, doubling on many indices. In the years prior, those same measures of mental health had held stable or even improved. After extensive research, Dr. Haidt concluded the reason for those troubling trends was clear–the prevalence of smartphones providing 24/7 connection to the internet and the rise of social media. Thus, began a shift from what he calls a “play-based” childhood to a “phone-based” one.

The results of a phone-based life for teens are profound: sleep deprivation and attention fragmentation, addiction and loneliness, relentless social comparison and perfectionism. Dr. Haidt goes on to suggest why social media is more harmful to adolescent girls than boys and why young males have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual one because of their smartphone. It is a distressing report.     

Adults are not exempt from the shift he describes. Many of us, myself included, have their phone present at all times and have been known to stop an in-person conversation to check a text message. Yet the psychological impact is greatest upon our children as their brains and social interaction skills are still developing. Lori saw that change in her career as a school nurse, working mostly in a middle or high school setting. A recent Kelly Corrigan podcast (1/5/25) shares a letter from a long-time school counselor describing the same disturbing trend.  

Thankfully, Dr. Haidt does not diagnose the condition and leave us to despair that nothing can be done. Instead, he offers some collective steps that can be taken by parents of pre-teens, schools, tech companies and governments (four countries, including Brazil just this week have passed laws banning cellphones from school). As people of faith such vital work includes us, too.

Long ago, Jesus spoke about our responsibility toward the next generation. He was not concerned about social media and smartphones, of course, but a mindset that paid little attention to children. In the first century, little ones were viewed as slightly better than property. Abuse and neglect were rampant with few consequences for parents. Given that culture, it’s no surprise the first disciples thought Jesus’ ministry was only for adults.  

Matthew tells of a day some parents were trying to bring their children to Jesus. The gospel writer says they wanted Jesus to lay his hands on and pray for the little ones. Perhaps they were drawn by reports of his healing other children. We don’t know. Whatever their reasoning, the narrative reports that the disciples spoke harshly to the parents because they were interrupting their teacher’s work.

When he saw their misguided act, Jesus said “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” His primary meaning was to declare that children were important to God every bit as much as adults. On an earlier day, he revealed children have something to teach us about salvation (Matthew 18:2-5) Both messages would have been startling to his first audiences.  

We don’t react to his message in that way. Such instruction is a given in 2025 for it affirms our responsibility to nurture and ensure the safety of those who come after us. Communities of faith do that by welcoming children to worship, providing opportunities for them to grow in faith, mandating background checks for any adult who wants to work with children, and more. To that familiar list, I would add an urgent call to protect the pre-teens and adolescents of this world from a threat to their well-being that is literally in their hands.

I encourage you to read this book and then do something. The younger ones in our midst are counting on us.

Faithful Lord, thank you for the blessing of the next generation and the privilege of caring for them as they grow. Lead me to be part of finding and enacting solutions that will protect them from this new and profound threat. Amen.