How Should Parents Disciple Children in a Digital Environment?

Most parental conversations about technology begin with the wrong question. They start with rules: how much screen time? What apps? When should we hand over a phone? These questions matter, but they cannot be answered well in isolation. They depend on a prior question: what kind of person are we seeking to raise, and what practices form that kind of person? Once that question is answered, technology decisions follow more clearly.

Practically, this often means more parental engagement, not just more parental restriction. Parents who restrict screen time without offering rich alternatives — embodied play, shared work, deep reading, communal worship, sustained conversation — create vacuums that children fill with what is available. The goal is not minimizing technology but maximizing formation, and the latter often requires the former. Christian parents also need their own formation. Children form themselves on what they observe, and parents who narrate their own discernment about technology — including its costs and the practices they protect against it — disciple by demonstration as well as by rule.

Key Takeaways: Formation Drives Device Decisions

Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:6-9; Ephesians 6:4.

Practical Move: More parental engagement, not just more parental restriction.

The “So What”: Parents who narrate their own discernment disciple by demonstration; rules without modeled wisdom rarely hold.

James Spencer, PhD, is a theologian, author, and host of the Thinking Christian podcast, where he writes and speaks on Christian formation, political theology, and technology. He holds a PhD in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and completed the Institute for Educational Management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He serves as President of the D.L. Moody Center in Northfield, Massachusetts, as adjunct faculty in Wheaton College’s MA in Leadership program, and as an Associate Research Fellow at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Christianity.com, and Sojourners. His forthcoming book is Discipleship and Discernment in the Digital Age (InterVarsity Press, Fall 2026). Learn more at jamesgspencer.com.