This post is adapted from Episode 49 of Kids Ministry Calling with Jana Magruder: “Protecting Kids in a Digital World: Technology, AI, and the Church’s Role” with Chris McKenna, founder of Protect Young Eyes.
If you’re a kids ministry leader trying to figure out how to protect kids from technology and how to equip parents to do the same, you are not alone. This guide pulls from a conversation with Chris McKenna, founder of Protect Young Eyes, on Episode 49 of Kids Ministry Calling. It’s one of the most pressing issues in kids ministry today, and the answers are more urgent than many churches realize.
Chris McKenna didn’t set out to become one of the country’s leading voices on digital safety for kids. He spent 12 years at Ernst & Young as a business consultant before the Lord called him into full-time ministry in 2009, where he ran a large junior high ministry. What he witnessed in those years, kids clutching their first smartphones like prized possessions, parents unknowingly handing their children access to the entire internet lit a fire in him that eventually became Protect Young Eyes, the organization he now leads full-time with a team of seven who travel the country equipping schools, churches, and families.
“There is nothing darkening childhood like their connected devices,” McKenna says plainly. “Nothing.”
He’s not wrong. And as kids ministers, we can no longer afford to treat this as someone else’s problem.
The Hidden Harm Nobody’s Counting
We know the obvious statistics. We’ve seen the graphs in The Anxious Generation. But McKenna pushes us to look past the headline numbers toward what he calls the “slow corrosive drip”—the content that doesn’t register in studies but is quietly doing damage every single day.
“We all agree that children shouldn’t see pornography. No matter the age,” he says. “But what we need more consensus on is all of the other adult things that children shouldn’t see—the violence, the mature themes, the content all over TikTok and YouTube and Netflix that young brains should not be exposed to.”
He reaches for Philippians 4:8—think on things that are good, honorable, excellent, praiseworthy—and points out that Paul knew 2,000 years ago what we keep forgetting: what goes in front of our eyes shapes what forms in our hearts.
And we are putting a lot in front of our kids. Forty percent of two-year-olds in America regularly use an iPad. Kids who use social media before age 13 score measurably lower in reading and memory two years later than those who don’t. And when McKenna asks a room full of eighth graders anonymously if they’ve watched someone killed or harmed in a video online, about a fifth of the room raises their hand, Christian schools included.
Why the Church Can’t Stay Silent on Kids and Technology
This is where McKenna gets direct, and he doesn’t pull punches, even with a room full of ministry leaders.
“There is a deafening silence from the pulpit on this issue. And we need to do so much more than we are. We should lead the conversation.”
He’s right that we’ve largely ceded this ground. And the painful irony he names is hard to argue with: we don’t need a bestselling book from an atheist scientist to tell Christian parents not to drop their kids into digital spaces that weren’t designed for them. That should have been our message first.
But here’s the encouraging flip side for those of us in children’s ministry specifically: we are not in triage yet. The parents of preschoolers and elementary kids haven’t said yes to the things that become very hard to walk back at age 16. We can get ahead of this and that’s a gift.
“Leaders in children’s ministry have this awesome opportunity to flip the script before the problem even happens,” McKenna says.
The question is whether we’ll use it.
Practical Ways to Protect Kids from Technology at Home
McKenna teaches families five habits of a tech-ready home: model the right behaviors, pursue authentic connection, encourage work and play, delay addictive technologies, and diligently prevent harm. Each one is packed with specific and practical guidance (all freely available at ProtectYoungEyes.com), but he wants children’s ministers to zero in on one thing above all else when helping families with younger kids:
The router.
For young children who don’t yet have smartphones with data plans, the Wi-Fi network is how they access everything from Chromebooks, tablets, Kindles, game consoles, smart TVs. All of it runs through the router. A router with parental controls is, McKenna says, like a lock on a window or a bolt on a door. And without it, a first grader innocently Googling dinosaurs can accidentally transpose a couple of letters and be exposed to content that changes them.
“That should never happen,” McKenna says, “because the router should always prevent that accident.”
He suggests treating a properly configured router as a prerequisite for families with young children—something as basic as the conversation about car seats or helmet rules. If your ministry parents walk away with one practical action, this is the one to give them.
AI and Children: The Next Frontier Kids Ministry Must Address
If social media was the last generation’s battle, McKenna believes AI is the current one and we may have less time than we think to get it right.
“Social media made the promise that it would do a better job of connecting us to each other. We believed it, but now we know it lied. AI is making the promise that it will better connect us to it. And it might just succeed.”
AI companions, AI therapy, AI relationship advice, AI girlfriends are where we see the technology rapidly building a case that it can meet every need a human has for connection. McKenna frames this as a direct theological problem. God didn’t save humanity from a distance. He became flesh. He showed up. The incarnation matters. And a technology that promises to replace embodied relationship with a screen that targets our children is, in McKenna’s words, “an affront to the gospel and to the very design of humanity.”
He warns that the church needs to decide now whether it will speak—before AI becomes as difficult to walk back as social media already is.
What Children’s Ministry Leaders Can Do Right Now
McKenna’s challenge to ministry leaders is simple: own what you can control.
You can’t control every decision parents will make, but you can decide that this is a gospel issue and treat it like one. Identify the existing touch points where parents are already showing up such as new member classes, baptism ceremonies, the transition from preschool to elementary, and insert this conversation there. You can partner with organizations like Protect Young Eyes, which gives away an enormous amount of free, ungated content specifically so that you can share with families.
And you don’t have to carry this alone. McKenna’s encouragement to kids ministers is to bring this to the leadership table and make the case that it belongs in adult discipleship, from the pulpit, and in every ministry lane, not just yours.
“You can own telling parents what decisions would be helpful,” he says. “You can own identifying places where parents are already listening. What is honestly missing is the will and the determination to decide that this is a significant issue.”
Knowing how to protect kids from technology in a meaningful, lasting way isn’t just a parenting strategy, it’s a ministry priority. And it starts with us deciding it’s one.
Listen to the full conversation with Chris McKenna on Episode 49 of Kids Ministry Calling. Learn more and access free resources at ProtectYoungEyes.com.
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