It used to be that children were given a key to the door when they reached 21 years of age. The giving of this key signified adulthood and independence. Today, though, we do not wait so long and we give a key to be used from the inside, without needing to even open a door.
Nowadays, after living on the earth for only 10 short years, having mastered little more than walking, eating and toileting, children in the UK are presented with something they call a “phone”, but which, in reality, is a key to pleasure island: that “happy land of carefree boys where every day’s a holiday”, as depicted in the Pinocchio story.
And just as in Pinocchio, where Honest John’s promises of endless fun without rules is a trap, so too are the subtle promises which accompany this latter-day key.
“It is this technology that is forming our children, from babies in buggies, to teens in their bedrooms,” says Ciro Candia, the Catholic founder of ProParent, an initiative which aims to guide parents in creating a strong and loving family culture.
“Most parents don’t want to give their kids a phone; they worry about addiction, bullying, distorted self-image and even (as the evidence mounts) suicide. Yet they relent because everybody else has one and they don’t want their child to be excluded.”
Jonathan Haidt, who has been working on the relationship between social media use and mental health, describes this as the collective action problem. No parent wants to be the first one to climb out of the Overton window, so they wait for school policies and government directives to force everyone’s hand.
In Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer, Wendell Berry writes about collective action, saying: “Why should anybody wait to do what is right until everybody does it?…normal humans will not wait to love or to eat until it is mandated by an act of Congress.”
The problem with technology is that it erects barriers, preventing us from seeing what is true and trusting what is natural. It is no coincidence that immediately after the Fall, Adam and Eve “sewed fig leaves together”. Since that time, we have been adding layers to the garments that separate man from God, male from female and body from soul, until finally the artificial barriers are so great that we cannot even recognise ourselves. When we no longer know what we are; we no longer know how to be.
“Increasingly complex technology designed to make life easier prevents us from understanding ourselves and others,” says Candia. “It prevents our children from developing the virtues that make them truly human.
“Everyone and everything becomes instant, useable, discardable and interchangeable. Stepping out of networks and back into communities is the only way to protect children from the worst excesses of what is yet to come. And it all begins with the family.”
“Right now,” he says, “we live in a society which says we know how to mould your child: maximise pleasure, avoid pain, if it feels good do it. For 99 per cent of human history, it was parents who were the primary shapers of their children. It’s only the last one per cent [of history] where the state and Silicon Valley have taken over and are now the ones calling the shots – we need to reclaim that ground.”
“How do we do that?” I ask.
“Family hubs,” he replies. “We create small hubs with 10 couples in each. The families meet every three months at the house of the lead couple and are offered fellowship, advice and formation. Parents are supported to create a home where their children can become responsible, confident adults with a strong moral foundation.”
His initiative is reminiscent of Fr Karol Wojtyla’s response to the dark times he faced, which he answered by building an extraordinary network of friendship that helped to transform not just Poland, but the worldwide Church.
Biographer George Weigel describes how the young Fr Wojtyla, who became Pope St John Paul II, labouring under an oppressive regime, created “zones of freedom”. These were cells of community, faith and friendship.
He got groups together to put on plays, walk in the hills, give retreats, prepare for marriage and spend days of recollection with each other. They met, sang, talked, learned and prayed together. Most of all, he made friends with them.
As Weigel describes it, “this wasn’t a political counter conspiracy designed to subvert the government’s total control of schools, media and institutions. It wasn’t a resistance movement about to take up arms. This was something far more dangerous, a group of friends rediscovering love of neighbour, love of God and love of truth.”
In the same way the ProParent initiative offers the opportunity of friendship, answering the human need we all have, if we can distance ourselves enough from the technology that blinds us, for human companionship.
“The long-term goal of any parent”, Candia says, “is to raise their child to be a great mother, a great father – people of great character. We know we’ve done our job well when our children have freely chosen to do what is good without being told to, and when they freely choose to take responsibility for looking after others, putting others first whatever the cost.”
The friendship offered through the ProParent hubs strengthens families at a time when they are being undermined, redefined and ripped apart.
“It is in families that we understand love,” says Candia, “not because we give amusement, or sexual pleasure or economic benefit but just for who you are, not for what you do.”
Recognition of how families are formed also matters. Those who accuse the Church of being unduly focused on sex fail to see the wider significance. As Peter Kreeft says: “God glued the most ecstatic joy to the most godlike power we have, the power to (pro)create new people, new immortals.”
When asked recently why the Church cares what happens in the bedroom while the world around us burns, Ed Feser replied: “The world is burning because of what people are doing in the bedroom; millions of aborted babies, millions of fatherless children and the delinquency and poverty that is the inevitable sequel, millions left scarred and numb by divorce and family instability, millions addicted to pornography, millions of women left lonely in old age after men are done using them, countless minds so disordered that they do not even know what sex they are.
“Sexual sins strike directly at our social nature because they destabilise the family, the basic cell of society…you cannot be for social justice without being against sexual immorality.”
This is something Candia recognises, which is why he tackles broader issues like sex education and the impact of social media use in the home. Most of all, the hubs give parents the confidence to exercise their parental authority and leadership without waiting for an app, a school policy or the state to do so.
Candia, who has a weekly programme on Radio Maria, reminds parents that the social-media world offers comfort, but that – channelling Pope Benedict XVI – their children were not made for comfort:
They were made for greatness.
(Photo: iStock by Getty Images.)
This article first appeared in the March 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our multiple-award-winning magazine and have it delivered to your door anywhere in the world, go here.
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