Devin Schadt / April 23rd, 2025
The Way of a Man Series | #63
1657 words / Read Time: 12 minutes
Fathered by the Phone
A recent United Kingdom study titled, Lost Boys: What’s happening to Young Men in Britain, offered an unsettling insight:
“boys are now more likely to have a smartphone than live with their dad.”
The study revealed that 2.5 million British children live without a father at home—that’s 1 in 5 kids.
The situation is similar in the U.S.
18.4 million of American children, 1 in 4, live without any type of father (biological, adoptive or stepfather).
Conversely 71% of 12-year-old boys in the United States have smartphones, and 91% of 14-year-old-boys have smartphones.
The British study demonstrated that when a father is absent there is a solid probability that boys will experience poverty, academic struggles, behavioral problems, mental health issues, participate in risky behavior such as crime, drug and alcohol use.
It is no different in America.
There is another hidden reality that is even more unsettling and deceptive than the absent dad.
Many of us fathers, because we are caring for our children intentionally, purposefully being involved in our kids’ lives, even setting the example of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, believe that we are exempt from the fatherhood fallout.
Yet, the culture is strong.
The world is convincing.
The flesh is overwhelmingly alluring.
Our children access that culture, that world, that flesh on a minute-by-minute basis through smartphone technology.
We may think that we are influencing our children, but if they are spending more time with the phone than us—the evil one, the world, the flesh, disordered societal constructs and malicious cultural ideologies have a greater influence over our children.
Look around…better yet, look at your own children.
How often are they seeking the face of AI, Google, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and the like rather than your face?
Where do your kids go to get answers?
Where do they look to solve the riddle of their life?
Kids grow up with this weird attitude that parents don’t know anything.
Do you remember that?
Couple that with the idea that AI and Google “knows everything”, not only does a typical child believe that dad is out of touch, but more so the answers that a child seeks are to be found in the digisphere via their smartphone.
We see it all the time.
We are out at a restaurant or a social event, and ironically, though all these people are together, many are separated.
Children and adults alike seek the faces of their phones rather than the person in front of them.
How many times do you see families out for dinner and the children all stupefied and sedated while staring blinklessly into a smartphone?
Three questions a dad should ask himself:
- What does the smartphone offer?
- How do I compete with it?
- How do I mitigate my child’s use of the phone and become their number one influencer?
What does the smartphone offer?
The smartphone offers:
- Entertainment (usually alone)
- Education (usually disordered)
- Sex (always amoral and disordered)
- An immediate release and sedation from boredom
- Isolation (escape from having to be in relationship – or try to be)
Can a Father compete with those “benefits”?
1. Entertainment
Entertainment is the ability to be entertained because the person does not know how to entertain themselves.
We call this type of entertainment “playing.”
Playing is a bygone pastime.
When I was a kid we rode bikes, trekked the woods, played street ball and pick up games for hours. TV was a last resort.
We hated to be trapped indoors.
If a father is involved with his children there is an 81% probability that they will participate in sports and be physically active.
A child of an involved dad learns to be social, to compete, to relate, to use his or her body.
An involved father plays with his children, and by doing so, teaches them how to play and not depend on digital stimulation, which only isolates and creates muscular and cardio atrophy.
2. Education
Google may be able to offer a zillion different videos that answer your child’s questions regarding history, mathematics and human sexuality.
Artificial Intelligence may be able to write your child’s physics paper for them.
However, AI and Google don’t “know” your child.
AI and Google do not know your child’s temperament, personality, gifts and talents, physical and mental abilities; where they need to be pushed a little and where they need to relax a little.
A good father knows his child.
A good father knows how to tell the right story at the right time to teach his child a lifelong lesson.
A good father knows that Google may have the answer for a math problem but is unable to explain his son or daughter’s dignity in a compelling loving way.
AI cannot love your kid…but you can.
Google and AI might offer knowledge, but a father offers wisdom.
AI and Google can provide facts, but a father shows his child how to interpret facts in a meaningful way.
3. Sex
The internet is teaching our children its own perverted version of sex.
The consequences are obvious.
Our children are being hallowed out from the inside by going to the outside for its answers.
I’m not going to list the catastrophic consequences of internet porn and the unrestricted, unfiltered, unregulated access our children have to these diabolical resources…that is a post in itself.
The fall of mankind occurred because one man was silent in the face of an enemy.
The fall of our children to disordered sexuality occurs because one man, the father, fails to discuss the beauty, the glory and God’s design for conjugal love to their children.
However, when a father takes on this challenge, and exposes the counterfeits by teaching the truth of God’s intention and design for sexual union, children have a far greater chance of remaining chaste and saving themselves for marriage.
Dads have twice as much influence than mom in helping their teenage child stave off premarital sex.
4. Overcoming Boredom (teaching a child not to be slothful)
Society is failing at teaching our children how to live examined, self-reflective lives.
When faced with any type of mood, or temperamental challenge, the phone is their escape.
They sedate themselves with ongoing dopamine hits to avoid thinking rationally about their lives.
The consequence is that they avoid or neglect critical thinking.
They fail to consider the greater things.
Rather than pondering the meaning of existence, they turn to self-proclaimed overnight YouTube influencers in hopes of being wealthy and famous.
Behind the ‘father phone’ is the father of lies.
A good father lowers himself down to his child’s temperamental, psychological, mental, physical, emotional, level; he speaks their language…for the purpose of lifting them up to God and learning to His language.
God alone suffices.
God the Father alone provides happiness.
Good fathers teach their kids to embrace the problem of boredom by doing something with their time rather than doomscrolling.
Consider that children with involved fathers are 55% more likely to enroll in college.
Children with involved fathers are twice as likely to go on to be employed and have stable employment and enroll in ongoing education.
Dads teach their kids to apply themselves, make good use of their time and therefore have a meaningful productive life.
5. The phone conditions a child to become isolated.
Kids today struggle to communicate properly with adults let alone with other children.
High school graduates suffer from social anxiety.
Involved fathers teach their children one of the most essential skillsets: how to be in relationship with another.
Children of involved dads communicate better, are socially adaptive, and are more confident and therefore willing to expose their lack of understanding for the purpose of learning more.
Being good at relationship is the foundation of all success.
Good fathers provide this skillset.
What can we fathers do to avoid our children being fathered by the phone?
1. Be intentional about creating conversation with you children.
Family dinner, post-dinner clean-up time, daughter dates and working with our sons, are times to create conversation, get into their world and raise them up to yours.
2. Tell stories and examples from your life that teach your kids life-lessons.
3. Build trust.
This is the biggest factor.
If your child trusts you, they will come to you rather than AI for answers regarding sex and the meaning of life.
4. Find your child’s interests—especially those that are uninteresting to you— interesting.
This proves that you are interested in your child.
5. Lots of hugs, pats on the back, blessings, words of affirmation, encouragement, and prayer!
6. Install internet filtration software on your children’s phones—and discuss the reason why with your children when you think they are ready. If they are ready for a phone, they are ready for that type of conversation.
7. Be pure.
Fatherhood is like cellular diffusion. Cellular diffusion is the movement of molecules across a cell membrane from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. What you are richest in, virtue or vice, cannot help but to be transmitted to your child.
This is only the beginning.
Wisdom is vindicated by her children (Lk 7:35).
With the passing of time, we will see the disparaging dichotomy, the marked difference, between children who were fathered by the phone and children who were fathered by a man who was determined to be a greater influence than the phone.
Let us be the latter.
Devin Schadt | Executive Director of the Fathers of St. Joseph
Ite ad Joseph
Related Resources
Related Articles
