It was not too long ago that I read a tweet by a friend of mine who commented that he was, once again, spending the evening watching something with his wife, while she was browsing her iPhone and he was on his iPad. They have children but they were already in bed. On reflection it struck me that my own use of the Internet via my computer and smartphone could get in the way of bringing up my children. As it is, at the moment we don’t yet have little ones running around, but in a couple of years, will I be able to give my son or daughter the type of sustained attention that she or he will need to feel loved?

This raises a broader question about parenting which is well above my pay grade, but it does point to something very important for Christians to recognise while grappling with the rights and wrongs of the Internet: we shouldn’t just be worried about “bad” content when navigating the joys and pitfalls of the online environment.

The heritage of Christian campaigning in relation to media, whether in televised form, magazines, or even books, tended to (and I think broadly still does) focus on the content, such as pornography or violence. That is important work, but we also need to seek wisdom in how the medium affects our relationships.

Thankfully there are plenty of people out there thinking about these things. One short article which I would recommend to parents is an article on Mashable written by Soren Gordhamer entitled 4 Lessons for Parents in a Constantly Connected World.

Just to give you a taster the four lessons are as follows:

1. Share in the Game: “Dad, check this out!”

2. Schedule Uninterrupted Time: “Mom, can you ever just focus on me?”

3. Unplug Before Bed: “Dad, why are we both so tired?”

4. Start a Shared Technology Project: “Mom, let’s do something together!”