Editor's Note

From TV to Twitter

Here are some facts that should concern all of us who prepare children for discipleship.

The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. That means America's schools need to be preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist. It also means that catechists need to think creatively about training children for discipleship in a world that is rapidly changing. At the very least, it means understanding how to use technology to evangelize.

One out of eight couples married in the U.S. last year met online. If it's possible to fall in love with a mate online, it's possible to fall in love with Jesus online. And our kids are online. A lot.

MySpace has 200 million registered users. If MySpace were a country, it would be the fifth largest in the world. Impressive? Consider cell phones. The first text message was sent in 1992.

Today, the total number of texts sent every day is greater than the total population of the earth. Are you old enough to remember when most families did not have a TV? It took 13 years for the television to become commercially viable. It took four years from the start of efforts to make the Internet commercially viable until it happened.

The iPod was viable almost from the start, reaching a market of 50 million in three years. It took Facebook just two years to reach the same threshold. By this time next year, the likelihood of our children consuming some new, widely-penetrating media format is a given. What are we doing today to prepare them for that?

It is hard to keep up. I personally know a priest and a parish council member who refuse to get e-mail accounts. Granted, these folks are "retired," but they are still serving in leadership roles in their communities. And I know a youth minister who opened a Facebook account only last week. He thought he wouldn't need one, until he realized almost all the teens and young adults in his parish were "meeting" there-without him.

Even though the learning styles of our children are evolving at breakneck speed, we have to stay curious and continue learning ourselves. We owe it to the future disciples.

To see more amazing statistics about the future of learning, visit tinyurl.com/c4sxmz .

To learn more about the new social media, see Caroline Cerveny's article on page 16 and the slides at this link: tinyurl.com/3ulme7.

Nick Wagner
nwagner@twentythirdpublications.com