The rule you want someone else to make

One · What happened

Brussels drew three lines

The Commission calls it the EU KIDS Act. Under it, children under thirteen would not be able to use social media services, though they could use child-friendly video platforms managed by a parent. From thirteen to fifteen a child could have what the Commission calls a mini account, run by a parent or guardian, with limited features and a limit of one hour a day. At fifteen a young person could open an account of his own. Ursula von der Leyen said it is for platforms to show they are safe by design.

None of it is law yet. The European Parliament and the member governments both have to agree, which takes a while. Whether it is good policy, and whether America should copy it, I am leaving alone. There are serious Christians on both sides of that one.

What caught my eye is an American number from this summer. In a Pew Research Center survey of nine thousand seven hundred fifty adults, fielded in late May and published 1 July, fifty-six percent of Americans said they would support banning everyone under sixteen from social media. Among parents with children under eighteen it was sixty-five percent.

Two · What it is doing

Wanting a law so you don't have to be the one

Think about what it would feel like if Congress passed a law like Europe's tomorrow. For many parents the first feeling would be relief. The fight at the dinner table would be over, and when your daughter said everybody has it you could finally tell her that nobody does anymore, by law, and it is out of your hands.

I think that relief gives some of us away. Most parents who want the ban could make the same rule in their own house tonight. The law would not give you any power you don't already have over a twelve-year-old. What it would give you is cover. You would not have to say no by yourself, with your own face, to a child who is going to be mad at you and tell you that every other kid in the youth group has it.

Most parents have lost that argument at least once. It is exhausting. The kid is persistent, the other parents did give in, and the school sends half the homework through an app anyway. You got tired and you gave in. Now you read about Brussels and wish somebody with more authority than you would come and take the thing back. This may be an unpopular take, but I think a lot of good, tired parents have quietly started hoping the state will do some of their fathering for them.

Three · Where the ground is

Eli knew, and did not restrain them

There is a sentence in 1 Samuel 3:13 that every father ought to read once a year. God tells the boy Samuel what He is about to do to the priest Eli's house, and He gives the reason. His sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Eli was not ignorant. Back in chapter 2 he had heard all about what his sons were doing. He even talked to them about it, a sad, mild little speech. What he never did was stop them, though he was their father and the high priest and had every bit of the authority the job needed.

Your twelve-year-old's group chat is a long way from Hophni and Phinehas, and I am not comparing them. I am comparing fathers. Eli could see the problem clearly and agreed it was a problem. He would probably have signed a petition against it. He still did nothing inside his own house, and that looks uncomfortably like a lot of us.

The house is where God put the authority

Deuteronomy 6 gives the commands to parents and says to teach them diligently to your children, when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way. Ephesians 6:4 tells fathers to bring their children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Neither passage hands that job to a legislature. A government can make a good law about children. A Christian can be glad of it. The raising of your son was still given to you.

A father who has failed here, who handed the phone over and knows it has been bad for his daughter, is not stuck. He can go to God and say so. The confessing man in 1 John 1:9 is forgiven and cleansed, and that includes fathers who got the phone wrong. And then he can go to his daughter and say so too. That conversation, where a father admits he got it wrong and is changing the rule, will be one of the harder ones he has with her. She may never have seen a grown man repent before, and now she will have.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

The European Parliament will take its time. Your house does not have to wait for it.

1. 01

   Decide your house rule with your wife this week, and write it down.

   What age, which apps, where the phone sleeps at night. Pray about it together first. Then decide and put it on paper. Kids can outlast any rule that only lives in your head.

2. 02

   Tell your child it is your rule.

   Leave the school and the government out of it. It is yours and his mother's. He will be mad at you for a while. Let him be mad at the man who loves him.

3. 03

   If you got it wrong, say so to your kid.

   “I gave you that phone too early and I was wrong, and I am changing it.” Say it plainly, without a lecture attached. Then go ask the Lord's forgiveness for the part that was between you and Him.

4. 04

   Find two other families at church and make the rule together.

   The “everybody has one” argument falls apart when three households in the same youth group have agreed. Parents in one congregation can hold each other up like that without waiting on anybody's law.

5. 05

   Put your own phone in the drawer at dinner.

   Every night this week. Your kids have watched you check it at the table for years, and they will not take your rule seriously while you are still doing it.