The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place

by Andy Crouch

The most powerful choices we will make in our lives are not about specific decisions but about patterns of life: the nudges and disciplines that will shape all our other choices. This is especially true with technology. Technology comes with a powerful set of nudges—the default settings of our “easy-everywhere” culture. Because technology is devoted primarily to making our lives easier, it discourages us from disciplines, especially ones that involve disentangling ourselves from technology itself.

It’s a complex, rapidly changing world, and parents today are feeling it. Nearly eight in ten parents (78%) believe that they have a more complicated job in raising their kids today than their parents did raising them. Monitoring technology usage tops the list of what they perceive contributes to this difficulty. Beyond that, parents seem to most often identify issues that feel out of their control and that are global in scope: a more dangerous world or a lack of a common morality. The consequences of these difficulties feel dire and so, perhaps, scare parents more than local or personal factors such as finances, bullying at school, or high academic pressures.