This book helps children to make thoughtful media choices, including knowing when to "unplug."

The digital age emerged suddenly on the world's timeline and has drastically changed the shape of culture. Consequently, today's entertainment has become one of the biggest stumbling blocks to spiritual growth and family health in our nation. Parenting teens was a noble challenge long before society became surrounded by captivating screens, and navigating life as a teen had plenty of difficulties and distractions long before the game changing technology of the smartphone. The bottom line is that parents and teens are both in need of help! Our generation is faced each day with an all-you-can-eat media buffet. It has a huge influence on how we think, how we spend our time, and how we relate to others. It can also affect our relationship with God. Christians have been eager to keep up with the sweeping changes but have fallen far behind in Biblical wisdom. There is a growing need for media discernment in the light of following Jesus. Very few authors have broached the topic of media literacy from a Christian worldview. Phillip Telfer handles this challenging subject deftly with story-driven analogies that serve as a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. While this does not conclude with a call to be anti-media or anti-technology, it does raise concerns about the unchecked enthusiasm regarding media and entertainment, which are often consumed without discretion. This book will help you discover the Biblical principles that can inspire reasonable convictions. Learn how God's word addresses the unique challenges we face today. This book can help parents and teens discover how and why to guard their hearts and find freedom in this media captive culture.

This book addresses the growing use of computerized systems to influence people’s decisions without their awareness, a significant but underappreciated sea-change in the way the world works. To assess these systems, this volume’s contributors explore the philosophical and ethical dimensions of algorithms that guide people’s behavior by nudging them toward choices preferred by systems architects. Particularly in an era of heightened awareness of bias and discrimination, these systems raise profound concerns about the morality of such activities. This volume brings together a diverse array of thinkers to critically examine these nudging systems. Not only are high-level perspectives presented, but so too are of those who use them on a day-to-day basis. While algorithmic nudging can produce benefits for users there are also many less-obvious costs to using such systems, costs that require examination and deliberation. This book is a major step towards delineating these concerns and suggesting ways to provide a sounder basis for future policies for algorithms. It should be of interest to system designers, public policymakers, scholars, and those who wonder more deeply about the nudges they receive from various websites and on their phones.

We live in an age of media saturation, where with a few clicks of the remote—or mouse—we can tune in to programming where the facts fit our ideological predispositions. But what are the political consequences of this vast landscape of media choice? Partisan news has been roundly castigated for reinforcing prior beliefs and contributing to the highly polarized political environment we have today, but there is little evidence to support this claim, and much of what we know about the impact of news media come from studies that were conducted at a time when viewers chose from among six channels rather than scores. Through a series of innovative experiments, Kevin Arceneaux and Martin Johnson show that such criticism is unfounded. Americans who watch cable news are already polarized, and their exposure to partisan programming of their choice has little influence on their political positions. In fact, the opposite is true: viewers become more polarized when forced to watch programming that opposes their beliefs. A much more troubling consequence of the ever-expanding media environment, the authors show, is that it has allowed people to tune out the news: the four top-rated partisan news programs draw a mere three percent of the total number of people watching television. Overturning much of the conventional wisdom, Changing Minds or Changing Channels? demonstrate that the strong effects of media exposure found in past research are simply not applicable in today’s more saturated media landscape.

Media choices change daily. How does a Christian make wise and biblically obedient media choices. Here is an excellent resource for youth leaders, parents, and Christians who desire to live a holy life.