Kirk Cameron, Brett Kunkle Talk Social Media: ‘We Care About The Next Generation’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Brett Kunkle, founder and CEO of the social media movement MAVEN, is sharing his thoughts on social media’s impact on young people’s mental health.
“We care about the next generation and discipling young people and also equipping those who are discipling young people,” he told Kirk Cameron. “That’s why we started MAVEN because we’ve just seen the cultural pressure increase and the secularization of our culture.”
According to the MAVEN website, Kunkle “is the founder and president of MAVEN, a movement to equip the next generation to know truth, pursue goodness and create beauty. He has more than 25 years of experience working with junior high, high school, and college students.”
Kunkle added, “We’re seeing the rates of anxiety and depression increase,” pointing to the ramifications of “catered” reality, as well as the validation young people get from posting.
“Social media is…just constantly staging the world,” he explained. “So now we have a generation of young people who for the last eight to 10 years have just been socialized by this medium, this social media telling them what’s normal.”
Kunkle then gave parents some tips on how best to combat social media’s effects on kids.
“The first thing to do is have intelligent conversations with our kids about this kind of stuff,” he said, explaining that they will respond better to well-thought-out reasoning as opposed to just a blanket ban on social media.
Kunkle also encouraged parents to find “allies” who agree with their views on social media rules.
“We have to find allies in this…we need not just moms and dads, we need grandmas and grandpas, we need aunts and uncles, and in particular, we need the church,” he said.
Part of MAVEN’s mission is to present these ideas to young people in a way they understand.
“We must repackage and re-present the truth to media-saturated students who have been raised on screens and images,” the organization’s website reads. “We must wrap the truth in culturally savvy ways that grab the attention of their distracted minds, gain a hearing and woo them back to Christ.”
Movieguide® previously reported on the dangers of social media, especially in young people:
US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has said that he believes 13 is too young for children to join social media platforms.
“I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early, it’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children,” Murthy said.
Many large social media platforms such as Meta and Twitter currently allow users to join their platforms at the age of 13. With little regulation when it comes to age, these companies have no real incentive not to allow younger kids to join, especially when their competitors are.
Murthy had sympathy for parents, acknowledging that limiting social media use is not a simple task. He suggested parents may have to unite to protect their children from social media.
“If parents can band together and say you know, as a group, we’re not going to allow our kids to use social media until 16 or 17 or 18 or whatever age they choose, that’s a much more effective strategy in making sure your kids don’t get exposed to harm early,” Murthy said.
- Content: +1Share:
- Content: +1