Collaborated by Alisia Maendel
Featuring Contributions from
Multiple Anonymous Participants
from Various Communities
To the parents: This piece of writing is for you.
About 2 years ago, Dr. Leonard Sax’s books like Girls on the Edge, Boys Adrift, and others seemed to spark the first public conversations about an issue we as Hutterites have never fully taken seriously: Technology. I was 16 at the time and read his books and related deeply to the girls he described and so could many of my friends. In my mind, I saw this as the birthplace of a new dialogue on technology. A new conversation on risks and benefits that no one has ever had or taken seriously enough. It wasn’t. Dr. Sax’s works soon washed away In the tide of all Hutterite fads, along with Gordan Neufeld, Hank Hanegraaff, and all the other incredible and informed doctors and educators who have tried to make Hutterite aware of an issue, and why our culture needs to care more.
The letters that open most of the following chapter, and even the last two chapters themselves, were submitted by young people who want parents and leadership to understand what we already do: That technology impacts every aspect of our lives. The participants, both male and female, range from mid-twenties to early teens. Others wrote testimonies that I was later asked not to feature, or refused to write at all, telling me that they couldn’t put their experiences on paper. The statistics, the research, and the personal testimonies, as well as the silence from those who couldn’t write, should speak of the urgency with which we need to reprioritize our understanding of technology and its incorporation into our culture.
Why should you the parents read this project? Why should you read and take seriously the writing of myself and other young people?
Because we are the generation -The first generation- to be exposed to and surrounded by technologies most beneficial and most dark qualities and content. Moreover, we grow up learning to navigate it largely by ourselves. The world of texting, social media, and mass media. Even worse, the explicate content, the harmful messages and worldviews, and the emotional and mental impacts- these were things we encountered alone. Because there was no precedence.
It is fair to say that my generation was unguided, or if guided, then by parents who are not as skilled in technology as us. The following essays covers the areas that my friends and peers determined were the areas of inquiry that needed the most attention by parents, Prediger, and elders, to understand what we learned through experience., in the hopes that parents will turn around and tell their children coming up what we learned the hard way.
· Essay One: fast flowing information, headlines and short new clips replacing newspapers and books. Highspeed and high-stimulation apps marketed to children and teens. What is this doing to our development? Attachments? Skills?
· Essay Two: How technology has impacted communication. What affects did the move to online communication have on Conversation? Relationships? Community?
· Essay 3: Social media. The longest of the chapters I research and explore, it explains the impact that a misused and misrepresented platform like social media has on young men and women.
· Essay 4: Where girls are more likely to be pulled into social media’s aesthetic, community, and illusion of connection, what needs are videogames meeting? Young men are choosing to turn online and grow distant and apathetic. What does this mean for the hardworking Hutterite?
· Essay 5: Hutterites should be in but not of the world. But it is there in our hands: from pop culture, to celebrities, to thousands of opposing facts. No wonder we are confused. And Hutterites teens are facing the onslaught of information, zeitgeisten, and alternative worldviews more than ever before.
· Essay 6: the anonymous contributor of this chapter will address the realm of technology that we don’t talk about. The rise of Porn, why and how desensitization is tearing apart the values of our culture, and how our approach to this topic must change.
· Essay 7: The anonymous contributor finishes with an essay on depression. Anxiety and depression rates among young people are rising. The hole of depression is the end of the line and exacerbated or triggered by technology.
The project on this site is organized in two main parts. the first is teh Testimonies, which should them be followed by reading the corresponding Essay. Please read the following essays and consider the proposal of a larger conversation involving the entire church. So that the next generation does not have to figure this all out alone. Moreover, read the anonymous accounts and essays with openness and without judging. The Testimonies personalize these essays, highlighting their relevance to the average Hutterite. I am simply restating research already done, hoping that maybe this time when it is said by a Hutterite, it might have an impact.
Read this research project with the intent to learn about and understand. Some sections are complex, and I ask that if you do not grasp what is being said, dont give up, simply keep reading, and work through it, because it is so necissary for it to be understood: Technologies' effects; Technologies benefits; Technologies downfalls and failures; The environment we, the young people are and will grow up in; And lastly, what this means for the future of our culture. As Christians called to Community, it is our duty to understand what enters our communities, so that it can be properly understood and utilized towards furthering Gods kingdom, rather than hindering it.
Alisia Maendel
Oak Bluff Colony, MB
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