Jean Twenge has been researching generational differences for a quarter century. But she noticed in 2012 abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. Up until that time there were gentle slopes of line graphs. Suddenly they became steep mountains and sheer cliffs. That year is when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.

Her latest article in The Atlantic asks the ominous question: “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The generation she is thinking about would be the trailing edge of the millennial generation (born between 1995 and 2012). She calls them iGen because the smartphone and social media have shaped their lives.

Psychologically they are more emotionally vulnerable than the leading edge millennials. “Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.”

A national survey of seniors found that: “Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy.” Jean Twenge says, “There’s not a single exception.” She says the advice she would give to a teenager based on this survey is: “Put down the phone, turn off the laptop, and do anything that does not involve a screen.”

Of course, we don’t have to look at these dismal statistics and just lament. Her article and research should be a call to action for parents and grandparents. They are the ones buying these devices so they need to reevaluate the potential dangers to their children and grandchildren.

Where are the moderate Muslims? This a question I hear whenever there is a terrorist attack and there seems to be silence from the Muslim community. Christine Douglass-Williams tries to answer that question and many others in her book, The Challenge of Modernizing Islam.

When she was on my radio program, she said the original title talked about reforming Islam. They concluded that wasn’t precise enough. She points out that currently there is a turf war within Islam “between those who seek to reform Islam back to the seventh century and those who seek to reform it to modernity.”

The first part of her book includes interviews she has done with moderate Muslims like Dr. Zudhi Jasser, Dr. Tawfik Hamid, and Raheel Raza. Although I have interviewed some of them, we don’t hear about them in the mainstream media too often because many of them aren’t provided a platform. Of course, we also have to acknowledge that many of them are threatened if they speak out. The subtitle of Christine Douglass-Williams book says it all: “Reformers Speak Out and the Obstacles They Face.”

It is also worth mentioning that not all moderates are reformers. Reformers usually insist that the texts in Islam must be subject to new interpretations. To do so will be difficult. It might mean having to set aside fourteen centuries of interpretation as well as Muslim history.

Most of those interviewed also believe that a Muslim’s attitude toward Israel was a significant factor in determining their Islamist sympathies. “Although one doesn’t have to be a Muslim to dispute Israel’s right to exist,” her chapter explains how classical anti-Semitism has become part of Arab intellectual life.

Her book is a powerful reminder of how hard it would be to bring Islam into the modern world.

Philip Yancey begins with an admission: “I am going through a personal crisis.” He explains that he used to love reading. In fact, he understands that “books help define who I am.” But that is his past not his present.

He has discovered that the Internet and social media have trained his brain “to read a paragraph or two, and than start looking around.” When he is reading an article online pretty soon he is looking at the slide bar to see how long the article might be. He starts clicking on the links and sidebars. Soon he has lost interest in the original article.

We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. Seven years ago, I was quoting from an article by Nicholas Carr. Since then, he has written a book that I reference every time I speak on the subject of the media or digital devices. His book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, explains why we don’t read as much and why it is so hard to concentrate. The Internet and social media are retraining our brains. He says, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Philip Yancey quotes from an article in Business Insider that studied pioneers like Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg. Most of them have a common practice known as the “five-hour rule.” They set aside at least an hour a day (or five hours a week) for deliberate learning. The people listed in the Business Insider article probably read as many books in a week or two than most Americans read in a year.

Philip Yancey acknowledges that we are “engaged in a war, and technology wields the heavy weapons.” He is trying to develop what he calls a “fortress of habit” so that he can “resurrect the rich nourishment that reading has long provided.” I recommend you do the same for your benefit and the benefit of your family.

What if Christians and Christian institutions that provide so many social services went on strike? That is a question Addison Del Mastro asks in The American Conservative. He reminds us of the book by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. She poses the question of what would happen if entrepreneurs in America decided to go on strike because of an increasingly overbearing regulatory state. The book documents the dystopia the country falls into.

While I doubt that Christians and Christian groups would ever go on strike, it is a great thought experiment. Addison Del Mastro explains that, “Many of the services Americans take for granted are provided by churches and Christian organizations.”

One example is health care. John Stonestreet, in his Breakpoint commentary, wrote, “No Christianity, No Hospitals: Don’t Take Christian Contributions for Granted.” Catholic, Baptist, Methodist hospitals can be found all over this country. He documented that in at least 30 communities, the Catholic hospital is the ONLY hospital within a 35-mile radius.

Education is another area where Christian involvement has been key. Christians run thousands of private schools that usually meet or exceed the quality of the public schools. The Catholic Church or various Protestant denominations or churches run more than seven in ten of the private schools in America.

Churches also minister to the needy and marginalized in society. There are soup kitchens and outreaches to the poor and homeless. Churches also provide meals for the homebound. They provide marriage counseling as well as psychological counseling. Christian organizations place children in foster care and adoption. Christian groups run pregnancy resource centers.

Christians aren’t going on strike. But if they did, America would be a very different place indeed.

Pastor Rick Stedman asks, “Is it reasonable to believe that God exists?” He says it is because of zombies, superheroes, music, sports, and science. That is his premise in his book, 31 Surprising Reasons to Believe in God.

He begins his book by telling a true story of a family on rural property in northern California. They found a rusted can by a tree. They ended up finding eight cans containing 1427 gold coins worth an estimated $11 million.

Asked if they had any clue of the treasure, they realized in hindsight seeing a tin can tied to the tree where the wood had grown around the can. There was a clue to the treasure, but they just didn’t see it. Rick Stedman says we have many more clues to God’s existence than we often fail to see.

For example, our culture has this fascination with superheroes and fantasy movies. You would think that in a society that has become so secular, popular interest in supernatural heroes would have diminished. In fact, our current interest illustrates the spiritual longing within all of us.

In his section on “yearning for a better world” he talks about how even non-believers believe human trafficking is a vile evil that must be stopped. This provides common ground for discussion. It challenges the secular idea that all morals are temporary and inventions of culture. Our universal rejection of such evil, argues for a transcendent standard.

In another section he talks about the glory of the universe, mathematics, and the scientific method. Each of these, in different ways, argues for something more than the natural world and point to the existence of God. He also argues that our desire for something more (love, peace, and immortality) also argue for the transcendent.

This is a book that will encourage your faith, but also is a book you can give to your non-Christian friends who have never thought about the clues around them that point to God.

Americans currently promoting socialism tell us that we shouldn’t look at the failed socialist experiments in Cuba or Venezuela. Instead, we should look at Sweden as proof that socialism works and can bring great prosperity.

That’s not what Swedish historian Johan Norberg says. He is featured in a new documentary, “Sweden: Lessons for America.” John Stossel also interviewed Norberg for Stossel TV.

Norberg makes it clear that “Sweden is not socialist—because the government doesn’t own the means of production. To see that, you have to go to Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea.” He does admit that the country did have something that resembled socialism a few decades ago. The government heavily taxed the citizens and spent heavily. That was not a good period in Swedish history, especially for the economy.

One example he uses is Astrid Lindgren, author of the popular children’s books, Pippi Longstocking. Because her books were popular and sold well, she experienced something Americans cannot even imagine. She had to pay a tax of 102 percent on any new book she sold.

Yet even with the high Swedish taxes, there was simply not enough money to fund Sweden’s huge welfare state. Norberg explains that, “People couldn’t get the pension that they thought they depended on for the future.” At this point, the Swedish people had enough and began to reduce the size and scope of the government.

John Stossel says, “They cut public spending, privatized the national rail network, abolished certain government monopolies, eliminated inheritance taxes and sold state-owned businesses like the maker of Absolute vodka.” While it is true that Sweden does have a larger welfare state than the US and higher taxes than the US, there are many other areas where Sweden is actually more free market.

Sweden isn’t socialist and is actually a good example of why a country doesn’t want to implement socialism.

Immigration will still be a big issue this year. That is why we need to be asking good questions, especially of our elected representatives. Michael Brown, in a recent column, asks four good questions that we might want to ask of those who are supposed to be trying to fix our immigration system. He admits that he is not an expert and has no agenda. He is genuinely asking these questions.

He asks that, “if illegal immigrants are flooding our country, what’s so controversial about building a border wall?” I think this is a reasonable question. You can’t seriously say it costs too much when the federal budget his year will exceed $4.1 trillion. You can’t say a wall (or a steel fence) won’t work when we have many examples of them working in other countries and even in this country.

Second, “since when has anyone been able to force us to take in immigrants?” He wonders why the way we treat those in a migrant caravan has now become “a test of our national identity?” We have a long track record of compassionate treatment of refugees. In fact, he reminds us that the United States has a larger immigrant population than any other country.

He also wonders, “what’s so controversial about wanting to preserve our national identity?” People come to America for a reason. “If we cease to be America, there is no reason for people to come here.” All we have to do it look at the growing Muslim influence in European countries to see how a country’s culture can radically change.

Finally, he wants to know why we can’t “make a path for citizenship, with penalties, for those who came in illegally years ago but have been working jobs, obeying laws, and contributing to the good of society?”

These are the kinds of questions we need to be asking our elected representatives. They deserve thoughtful responses.

If you have ever taken a social science class, you have probably heard about the law of unintended consequences. Sometimes a policy generates unexpected benefits, but usually it creates unexpected problems and even perverse incentives. Although this reality usually develops because of government programs, it also surfaces within companies and corporations.

Last year Starbucks announced that anyone has the right to use a Starbucks restroom. The company did this because two African-American men were denied access to a Starbucks restroom in Philadelphia and subsequently arrested. Reeling from this infamous incident, the company announced that everyone is a customer of Starbucks and thus free to use their restrooms.

This changed policy may not have affected the Starbucks near you, but it has had a decidedly negative impact on Starbucks located in cities with lots of homeless people. The New York Post found in their survey of a few Starbucks that “a half-dozen toilets were locked or barricaded” because they needed extensive cleaning. One of their columnists observed that, “Finding a usable Starbuck’s toilet in the Big Apple might actually have gotten harder since last spring’s announcement—and not just for non-customers.”

I don’t want to gross you out about what happens in these Starbuck’s restrooms, so let me just say that they need cleaning because of “extreme soiling” and other problems resulting from “incontinent vagrants.” One Starbucks employee (who wisely decided to remain anonymous) lamented that the company policy was hurting everyone. He observed, “Letting everybody in has resulted in nobody getting in.”

Like I said, this may not be a problem for your local Starbucks, assuming you live in the suburbs. But it has become a major problem for Starbucks in certain urban areas. Sadly, the Starbucks policy is hurting its brand image of an upscale coffee bistro when it has restrooms that look and smell like the restrooms at a homeless shelter.