Lead by Example: How to Parent in a Digital World

The blue light flickers across her small face as she swipes through another video. You call her name twice before she looks up, eyes still glazed from the digital world she’s been swimming in. Your heart does that thing it does that gentle ache that whispers, “How do I reach her?” This is parenting now. This is love in the age of algorithms.

We did not sign up for this. We didn’t know we would be competing with machines that never sleep, never tire, never run out of new things to show our children. The phones know their favorite colors before we do. The apps predict their moods better than we can read their faces. And somewhere in the quiet moments between the notifications, we wonder if we are losing them to a world we barely understand.

Yet even as we navigate this uncharted territory, something ancient and unchanging anchors us. God saw this day coming. Long before the first computer hummed to life before the first screen lit up a child’s bedroom, He knew. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” He told Jeremiah. He knew our children too knew they would live in this time, in this place, wrestling with these particular challenges. And in His perfect wisdom, He equipped us for exactly this moment.

The heart of parenting has not changed, even as its landscape has been transformed. It still beats with the same rhythm italways has: love, protect, guide, release. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” These words from Proverbs still pulse with life, their promise undiminished by the passage of centuries. The method might look different, but the mission remains the same.

Maybe that’s why it feels so overwhelming sometimes. We are using ancient wisdom in a modern world, and it can feel like bringing a candle to a laser light show. The ancient flame seems so small, so inadequate against the dazzling display of digital lights competing for our children’s attention.

But here’s what we must remember: light is light, regardless of its source. Truth is truth, whether spoken from a burning bush or whispered in a quiet moment after the screens go dark. And love, love is still the most powerful force in any universe, digital or otherwise.

Think about Mary, pondering all these things and treasuring them in her heart. In a world that demanded immediate responses and instant understanding, she chose something revolutionary: she chose to be still. To let mysterious, holy things settle deep within her before she spoke. What would it look like if we became the kind of parents who treasure moments in our hearts? Who resist the urge to immediately capture, share, and move on choosing instead to let sacred moments with our children marinate in the quiet spaces of our souls?

The dinner table becomes sacred ground when phones stay in another room. The car ride transforms into a sanctuary when the screens go dark and conversations fill the space instead. “Be still and know that I am God,” the Psalm says and our children desperately need to learn stillness in a world that never stops moving. But they won’t learn it from us lecturing them about screen time. They’ll learn it from watching us choose stillness too, from seeing us close our own devices to be fully present with them.

Our job is not to shield them from every digital influence an impossible task in today’s world. Instead, we must teach them how to discern, how to listen for God’s voice above all the other voices clamoring for their attention. “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” We want them to recognize the Shepherd’s voice even when it’s competing with a thousand other sounds, to choose His wisdom over the world’s endless opinions.

This means we have to know His voice ourselves. We have to model what it looks like to choose His guidance over Google’s suggestions, to seek His wisdom instead of the algorithm’s recommendations, to find our identity in His love rather than in likes and shares. When our children see us turn to prayer before we turn to our phones, when they watch us choose Scripture over social media, they learn where true wisdom comes from.

Some days, faithfulness looks like saying no to the screen time they’re begging for. Other days, it looks like putting down our own phones and really listening when they want to tell us about their day. It is praying over them while they sleep, whispering Scripture into their dreams, asking God to guard their hearts in ways we never can.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” Moses told the people. “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road.” The road looks different now, it’s paved with fiber optic cables and wireless signals, lined with digital billboards vying for our attention. But the command remains unchanged: impress God’s love on their hearts. Not just with words, but with how we live, with what we choose, with where we direct our gaze.

The screens will keep glowing. The algorithms will keep learning. The digital world will keep spinning faster than we can catch up. But love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not give up, even when it feels like we are speaking a different language than our children, even when the competition for their hearts feels overwhelming.

In this wilderness of wires and Wi-Fi, God is still our guide. He is still providing manna for the journey, still parting seas that seem impossible to cross. And He is still writing His story on the hearts of our children, one moment of faithful parenting at a time.

The blue light may flicker, but His light never dims. And someday, maybe sooner than we think our children will look up from their screens with clear eyes, and we will see in their faces the reflection of all the love we poured into them, all the truth we whispered over them, all the moments we chose to be present instead of perfect. This is our hope. This is our calling. This is love in the age of algorithms.