As a school chaplain, youth leader, and writer for young people, I spend hours each week engaging with the facts of the Christian faith—unpacking Scripture, negotiating thorny apologetics questions, and making the most compelling case I can that the good news of Jesus is believable and true.
But recently, I’ve been reminded of another critical facet of how, humanly speaking, young people come to believe what they believe about Jesus—and about everything else: We become what we give our attention to.
Meditation and delight
Psalm 1 opens with these words:
Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers (v.1-3)
These verses paint a compelling picture of the life God offers—a life where we become “like a tree planted by streams of water,” perpetually nourished by God’s love and wisdom, thriving and flourishing, whatever our external circumstances might be.
And how does God grow us up into this kind of person?
Verse 2 describes an ongoing cycle of meditation and delight. We meditate on God’s love and wisdom, which leads us to delight in God’s love and wisdom, which leads us deeper into meditation, and deeper into delight, and on and on it goes—until we become like a tree by a stream.
Insights from neuroscience
The ancient wisdom of Psalm 1 is backed by a concept in neuroscience called neuroplasticity, which describes the way our minds are shaped by our behaviour.
Your teenager’s brain is not a static object; it’s constantly rewiring itself. Neurons in their brain that repeatedly activate in particular patterns are more likely to fire in those same patterns the next time they’re activated. What this means is that the more your teenager repeats an action, a behaviour, or a thought pattern, the more natural that repetition becomes.
The upshot is that your teenager’s capacity to grow in wisdom—to believe in and to pursue the deep riches of life and joy that God has for them—is deeply tied to their habits.
If we want our teenagers to grow in wisdom, we need to help them choose habits that will keep them engaged and thoughtful—that will keep aligning their hearts and minds and choices with the reality of God’s goodness.
This, to my mind, is the great danger of social media—that it shapes our minds in the opposite direction: not towards active, thoughtful choices, but towards endless passive engagement. The algorithms driving these platforms aren’t calibrated to bring truth,or even enjoyment; they’re designed to keep us scrolling by any means necessary.
Which, obviously, is a problem for us as we seek to guide the next generation into the life Jesus offers. Because, for better or worse, what we give our attention to shapes who we become—and the more time our teenagers spend on social media, the more they’re surrendering their freedom to choose what they give their attention to. They’re letting the algorithms choose for them.
The illusory truth effect
This is all exacerbated by what psychologists call the illusory truth effect.
Remember, the more often something repeats in your brain, the more natural and automatic each repetition becomes—and it turns out this isn’t just true about habits; it’s also true about ideas.
Our brains find it easier to process an old idea—one they’ve already encountered before—than a new one. As a result, the more often an idea is repeated to your teenager, the more likely their brain is to accept that idea, regardless of whether it’s actually true or not.
(The point here is not that our brains can’t find the truth; it’s to say that what intuitively feels true and what is true are not always the same thing.)
Combine the illusory truth effect with an addictive social media algorithm and you have a recipe for disaster, because every video your teenager watches is making some kind of claim about what’s true—and the more they scroll, the more compelling those claims become, regardless of whether or not they reflect actual reality.
Which means that your teenager can end up being influenced far more by the values of our wider culture than the values of Jesus, not because they’ve consciously decided the culture’s voice is more true or trustworthy, but just because we become what we give our attention to.
The renewing of your mind
Obviously, this is not just a social media issue. It’s not even a new issue.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus described a kind of person who hears the good news he came to bring and who might even intellectually assent to it—“but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature” (Luke 8:14).
Why do these people miss out on the fullness of life that God has for them?
It’s not because they’re busy doing terrible things.
They’re just distracted.
Instead of fixing their attention on Jesus and letting him transform them into people who are more like him, they’re letting their attention drift towards other things, and being transformed in that direction instead. As a result, they miss out on the best God has for them.
Two thousand years later, the same two paths stand before us. We can let our hearts be captured by the love of Jesus. We can look to the cross and see him breaking the power of sin over us, securing our new identity as beloved children of the Father.
Or we can let that transforming power get crowded out by life’s worries, riches, and pleasures.
So how do we guide our teenagers away from missing out on God’s best?
Paul told the church in Rome: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2).
The renewing of our minds is God’s work in us—a work made possible only by the power of his Holy Spirit, dwelling within us—but it’s a work he wants to participate in. The most effective way to partner with God in the renewing of our mind is by renewing our focus.
I’m not saying throw away your teenager’s phone, but if they’re spending five minutes each day focusing on God and five hours each day scrolling on social media, it probably shouldn’t surprise us if God feels distant to them. They’re literally rewiring their brain to feel that way.
On the other hand, if we can help our teenagers create regular, intentional space to return their attention to the deepest truth in the universe—to keep fixing their eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith (Heb. 12:2)—if we can keep directing and redirecting their focus back to the abundant love he’s demonstrated for us on the cross—then by God’s grace, it won’t be long before they feel their hearts and minds transforming in that direction.
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