That time Mary and Joseph Lost Jesus & Tracking Our Kids on "Find Friends"
Parenting in a digital age presents new methods, but it doesn't present a new humanity.
One of the most common reasons parents give me as to why they have given their son or daughter a smartphone/smartwatch is so that they can track their child’s physical location. I have quite literally stood by and watched as parents track their kids in real time while telling me, “You’re going to want to do this once your son is driving!” Y’all, I don’t think these parents are wrong! I have had moments where tracking my kids would have been convenient or would pacify my short-lived fears1. But, just because I want to, does that mean I should? Is this ubiquitous practice the new standard for good parenting?
I am guessing that time Mary & Joseph lost Jesus, they also wished they had the ability to track their son in real time. They couldn’t find Jesus for three days! Can you imagine? I know it’s a different culture and a different time, but still. Three days without your 12 year old??? Most of us hesitate to leave our 12 year olds home alone for three hours.
Like any mother would be after finding her missing child, Mary was a mix of emotion. In Luke 2:48 she says, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” My modern translation: “What in the world were you thinking? You are grounded for a month! We have been so stressed out looking for you!”
Putting myself in Mary’s shoes, I don’t think I would have slept those three days. I would have been a complete basket case, wanting to know my son was safe, unharmed, alive. My mind would have jumped to all of the worst things that could possibly happen. Don’t our minds do this after even a few minutes of worry?
You Lost the Savior of the World!
But, as you are probably thinking, Jesus wasn’t only fully-human, he is fully-God. How much trouble could he really have gotten himself into? Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the temple, after all. If one of my sons goes missing for three days, checking the church pews isn’t my first thought, and probably not my third-day thought either. Parents, we know that sin, temptation, evil, and danger is lurking all around our children. Part of our job as parents is to keep our kids safe, right?
The Biblical narrative in Luke 2 is one of only a few times we are given Jesus’ age. I love this detail. Jesus was a 12 year old boy. Twelve is beginning of adolescence; the age when we begin to give our sons and daughters more independence and autonomy. Twelve is the age when our sons start to grow taller than their moms and get a little peach fuzz on their faces. It is when our daughters begin to look less like little girls and more like beautiful young women. Twelve years old is also the average age that a child gets a smartphone. (Though that is trending even younger.)
Increasing in Wisdom
After being reunited, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus leave Jerusalem and return to Nazareth. Luke writes, Jesus “was obedient to them… And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and with people.” (Verse 52.)
Something about this process of growing up, of maturing, made Jesus “increase in wisdom.” The Word made flesh still had to grow up. The theological complexity of Jesus increasing in wisdom makes my brain hurt. In our modern parlance we talk about kids being “mature for their age.” If it took Jesus time to mature and increase in wisdom, the same is true for the 12 year old boys and girls running around our neighborhoods.
But what is wisdom? In a sermon, the late pastor Tim Keller defines wisdom as “knowing how things really happen, knowing how things really are, and knowing what to do about it.” Wisdom is more than knowing right and wrong. For example, we may know it’s wrong steal and that we should respect authority, but when your boss asks you to “round up” some numbers on an earnings report, wisdom directs how we navigate the situation.
Keller goes on to quote Gerhard von Rad, author of Wisdom in Israel who writes, wisdom '“is becoming competent with regard to the realities of life” and people who are wise “do the right thing even when the rules don’t apply.”
Learning how to be wise takes time, effort and practice. We should not expect 12 year olds, or even 17 year olds, to know “how things really are” in life when they have lived so little of it.
What Does This Mean for Today?
Parents, when it comes to using apps to track our kids’ physical location is it to train our kids to be competent adults or to pacify our periods of anxiety? Is it to train our kids on how to manage time well or is it to make our lives more convenient? Is tracking our kids allowing them grow in wisdom or is it, as some have referred to it, “the longest umbilical cord in the world”? Even though I REALLY want to track my kids sometimes, I think the risks outweigh the benefits. Even though I want to know what’s happening with my kids when they aren’t with me, I think I need to give them a chance to struggle, to build resilience in hard situations, and even to fail. I do not love this part of parenting but healthy struggle builds competence. If my kids know I’m always watching them, does it build obedience and wisdom or dependence and immaturity?2
Things to Consider Before Tracking Kids:
Tracking our kids via the internet gives us a false sense of security. Let’s be honest: we aren’t tracking our teenagers, we are tracking their smartphones/smartwatches. If a motivated teenager doesn’t want you to know where they are, they will find a work around. When I mention this to parents, I’m met with one of two responses: a shoulder shrug of semi-defeat or “Well, kids are so addicted to their phones. I doubt they’d ever go anywhere without it.” Smartphone addiction? That’s a whole new ballgame.
Humans aren’t omniscient. Yes, I want to track my kids sometimes, but that’s my sin nature, my desire to be god-like. God knows the number of hairs on our kids’ heads, he knows when they rise and when they lie down, he knows their thoughts and the desires of their hearts. I have to trust God to care for my children when they aren’t physically with me. This isn’t shirking my responsibility as a mom, it is growing my dependence on my Savior. It is living within the confines of what it means to be human.
When we give an internet connected device to our sons and daughters to track their whereabouts, we are trading one problem for many. The dangers of the internet bring life-damaging pornography and addictive TikTok accounts, just to name a few. The entire world now has complete access to your child. Even the best parental controls cannot make smartphones safe for kids & teens.
When we track our kids/teens, I think we are subtly telling them that we don’t trust them in the physical world. We aren’t building their competence to deal with unforeseen trouble. For teenage boys, I think this can be emasculating.
We aren’t teaching kids time management and independence when we track our kids. If your child is supposed to be home by 5:00 pm, then teach them how to plan and act accordingly. Don’t track and text at 4:50 pm with a reminder. This might mean they come home late, mess up evening plans, and are grounded for a period of time. Learning to manage time is part of growing a teen brain’s executive function. It takes repeated training sessions to do it well.
I’m not saying throw everything to the wind. Have rules and boundaries, have consequences and punishments. Our job as parents is to train our children to be functioning, competent adults one day and that requires structure and guardrails. But it also requires a dependence upon our Savior. Rest in knowing that the Lord loves and cares for your child more than we can even imagine.
I have a friend who confessed to being very anxious one night when her son was driving home in a rainstorm. She had given her son a smartphone and for twenty minutes she watched on her own phone as slowly, but surely, her son made the drive home in the downpour. Nothing bad happened to him. He was never in real danger. The only wreck that night was her. Anxiety, worry, dread, utter fear.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7
If she had spent those twenty minutes praying and petitioning God, with thanksgiving, would it have changed her? Tracking a little blue dot moving along a digital map changed nothing. We are missing out on a fullness of relationship with the Prince of Peace when we rely on smart devices to calm our nerves. If we are tracking our kids because we are anxious, can we pray for peace instead?
A mentor of mine once told me he remembers clearly the first time his then 16 year old son drove out of the driveway alone for the first time. He remembers thinking, “I’ve just lost all control!” and then there was a small voice in his head saying, “you never had it to begin with.” I don’t like this part of parenting, the lack of control. But, I am a better mom when I rest in being a daughter of the King, rather than trying to be the lord of my house.
Dear Christian Parent, just like you, sometimes I want to track my kids. I just don’t think it’s good for them, or for me. If literal billions of parents who had teenagers before the year 2011 when “Find Friends” was released were able to parent without tracking their kids, we can too. We are just going to need to spend some time praying about it.
But what about kidnapping???
“There are about 72 million kids 0-17 in America. And the number kidnapped by strangers is about 100. So the odds of being kidnapped are about 1 in 720,000…. You are five times more likely to have a co-joined twin.” reports LetGrow. Visit this site! It’s full of crime statistics and real life data that should help calm your nerves.
Looking for a talk/text phone for your teenager that doesn’t have tracking? Check out the Wisephone by Techless. Use my affiliate code DCP25 for $25 off. At this time, Techless has chosen to not include tracking or an internet browser. I recommend waiting until at least age 153 before introducing any type of personal cell phone. For your own sanity, establish clear expectations for your child around answering texts & calls from you, but expect kids to fail sometimes.
Also, I will confess I am a hypocrite. I have been the beneficiary of knowing where my child is because he was with a friend who could be tracked.
Using “Find Friends” or another tracking app is convenient, I get it. I’ve used it to find my sister in Disney World and to see if my husband has already left work so I know if he can stop by the grocery store on his way home. From what I’ve seen, most parents aren’t using it in this way.
Current research shows that the majority of teens who grew up with non-smartphones (like me in the late 1990’s!) don’t suffer the mental health problems that began for teens in 2012 with the rise of the smartphone. There is NOT an age that smartphone use has been proven safe for teenagers. By age 15 many teens are employed, involved in extracurriculars, and are more independent. In these situations, having a boring non-internet phone may be a good idea. It’s okay to make smartphones wait until after high school graduation!