With a woman to look at culture from a Christian worldview, I'm John Stone Street with the point.

A parent of a six-year-old recently asked Wired magazine's advice columnist,

My kid wants to be an influencer.

Is that bad?

Wired's answer was, more or less less that concerned parents should just relax.

Quote, all that collective angst about television movies, newspapers, and theater, wrote the author,

is a lineage, a rite of passage through which all generations must proceed.

Of course that's true, but just because the twist was harmless doesn't mean that

Tik-Toc is.

Smartphones have opened the door for predatory pornography, sexual exploitation, peer pressure, mental illness, and abusive relationships.

Not to mention the desire for fame is a dangerous thing.

In a 2011 interview, Billy Ray Cyrus said that the decision to let his daughter,

Miley become a pop star, quote,

destroyed his family, and he'd take it back in a second if he could.

In other words, before we let our kids become influencers,

we should have an honest reckoning

with just how much our platforms and our technologies are influencing them.

For the Colston Center, I'm John Stone Street.