There’s no competition for the highlight of the evening. “Anyone from London?” Justin enquired. Thousands of teenage girls let out a ‘please-notice-me’ shriek. Seeking to include those living outside of the M25, Biebs continued: “Anyone from the surrounding area…” so far, so good, “Like... Birmingham?” Oh, mate. Justin Bieber: big in the pop world, terrible at geography.
Despite my highlyconsidered view that Bieber’s latest album Purpose, is the best pop album of the last few years, my presence at BieberFest2016 was not purely as a fan: I was my 16-year-old sister’s chaperone. And this is why I tell this story - life comes at you fast. I remember her being born. I remember where I was when she took her first steps (shopping with my mum, much to her chagrin), I remember her first day at school. And now she’s 16, goes to Justin Bieber gigs and has a much better handle on Snapchat than I do.
Obviously, the linear and yet surprisingly relative nature of time means that all people younger than us seem to grow up quickly; but the truth is that children and young people in 2017, are growing up quicker than ever. Primary-aged children have unprecedented access to information and media through the internet and many of them are more technology-literate than their parents, enabling them to skirt around any blocks or filters that Mum and Dad might attempt to put down; as our somewhat terrifying front page screams: your children are watching porn.
Youth groups are, for the most part, vaguely proficient at talking about sex and relationships. Many have talked about porn in the past. Even some church leaders have addressed the issue from the pulpit. But it’s not something that’s come up in children’s ministry, due to a combination of fear (“if we tell children about porn, they’ll start watching porn”) and naivety (“they’re only 9, of course they don’t know what porn is”). The reality is that by the age of 15, children and young people are more likely than not to have seen online porn. By the age of 12, almost one-third of children will have seen porn, most of them accidentally.
We can’t exist in benign silence anymore. We don’t have to be explicit when talking about porn with children, but we do have to give them the tools to talk about things which make them feel uncomfortable, we need to allow them to be comfortable to talk about their bodies, we need to let them know what is and isn’t OK. This isn’t just about porn; this is about safeguarding children from abuse (at that age, viewing porn is a form of abuse).
The proliferation of pornography is a symptom of a wider syndrome - many issues that were previously in the realm of youth ministry must now be placed front and centre in our children’s work, as Carolyn Edwards explores in this issue. This is one of the reasons we’ve merged the two titles - to fight the epidemic in young people’s mental health and the sexualisation of the next generation, we need to work together, we need joined-up thinking. Children’s workers need to start the conversations which youth workers are called to continue (similarly, church leaders need to be part of this long-term thinking as well).
We realise that the transition from two magazines to one might be uncomfortable, but there are heaps of uncomfortable questions that need answering about the world children and young people are living in. Our hope and prayer is that between the collective wisdom of our youth and children’s work communities, and our scribblings on a piece of paper, we begin to provide some answers. Welcome to YCW.
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