From AI and anxiety to online friendships and activism, today’s kids are facing pressures and possibilities like never before. Dave Boden thinks that Christian families have a vital role in guiding them with wisdom and hope
Warning: This article refers to self-harm.
Meet Olivia
Olivia is caring, creative, resilient and funny. She spends hours on Minecraft, loves K-pop and dreams of becoming a UX designer one day, assuming AI hasn’t taken the job from her first.
School life can be overwhelming. She loves her friends, but the pressure to perform is already relentless. Watching her older siblings navigate pandemic exams has left her seriously anxious about what lies ahead. She’s proud of herself though because she hasn’t self-harmed for over a month.
Being online for Olivia is her default setting. She chats to friends on Discord, constantly asks ChatGPT for homework help and, when life feels complicated, sometimes turns to an AI chatbot because it feels easier than talking to an adult. She’s passionate about justice, worries about the future and isn’t convinced church has anything to offer someone like her.
“The reason adults don’t always understand what it’s like to be a young person today is because they didn’t grow up in the same world as us”
Olivia is only eleven years old. She is part of Generation Alpha.
If you’re a parent of a child born between 2010 and 2024, there’s a good chance you know an Olivia or two. Perhaps you’ve looked at your own child and thought, I don’t remember growing up like this. As my daughter Sienna recently said to me, “The reason adults don’t always understand what it’s like to be a young person today is because they didn’t grow up in the same world as us.”
Every generation is influenced by the world around them. But something has shifted for children growing up today. I see it in schools and hear it from parents in churches across the country: the world our children are growing up in has changed and so many of us are scrambling to keep up.
As parents, we can’t remove every worry, but we can equip our children to navigate them better
As I researched Generation Alpha, five themes kept coming up again and again. Together, they form what I call the ALPHA Framework, helping us understand what it’s like to grow up today and how we can help our children navigate it.
Gen Alpha are… Anxious-minded
60% of Gen Alpha say mental health is a major issue for their generation.
Anxiety has become one of the defining characteristics of Gen Alpha. Anxious moments have always been a normal part of life, but for many young people today their worries have become all-consuming. Beneath the surface can be pressure to achieve at school, friendship drama that follows them home through their phones, constant comparison online, frightening world news and uncertainty about everything from AI to their future. They’re often processing adult-sized problems with child-sized minds.
As parents, we can’t remove every worry, but we can equip our children to navigate them better. Help them renew their minds, challenging unhelpful thoughts with truth; move their bodies, building healthy rhythms around sleep, exercise and rest; and fuel their spirits, making space for prayer, Scripture, and community.
Read more:
Raising Gen Alpha offers Christian parents a clear-sighted guide to today’s teens
What Christian parents and young people really think about the social media ban
Gen Alpha are… Leading influencers
Half of Millennial parents believe Gen Alpha will help solve problems caused by previous generations.
Gen Alpha don’t simply want to consume the world around them. They want to shape it. While their Gen Z siblings helped bring issues like climate, equality and mental health into the mainstream, Gen Alpha are growing up expecting to participate. They build with LEGO, create worlds in Minecraft and make their own content. Think of the shift from MTV to YouTube: from watching culture to helping create it.
They’re also caring but conflicted. They want to change the world but can struggle to turn good intentions into action.
As parents, we can help channel that desire. Encourage them to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. Help them turn concern into action, notice the people right in front of them and realise they don’t need to go viral to have an impact. Act local, love local and serve faithfully wherever God has placed them.
Gen Alpha will grow up using AI to learn, create, solve problems and eventually work in ways we’re only beginning to imagine
Gen Alpha are… Pandemic-impacted
84% of adults believe Covid-19 will play a significant role in shaping “the children of today”.
The pandemic affected every Gen Alpha child differently. Some were babies learning to recognise faces behind masks, others missed important early years experiences, while older children lost classroom learning, friendships and normal routines. Some weren’t even born yet. When they were born defined their experience of life before, during and after the pandemic. What unites them is a world forever changed by it.
As parents, we can help them become real, ready and resilient. Be real about what they experienced and listen rather than rush to fix it. Help them get ready for a changing future and build resilience by reminding them that whatever life brings, God is with them.
Enter their world. Get curious about what they love, what they’re dealing with and what matters to them
Gen Alpha are… Hyperconnected
Young people spend an average of 7 hours and 22 minutes a day looking at screens.
Gen Alpha have never known a world without smartphones, social media, gaming and constant connection. For them, online and offline life aren’t really separate. Friendships, entertainment, learning and identity flow between both. A growing number of young people say they feel ‘addicted’ to their phones and, if we’re honest, they may have learnt some of those habits from the adults around them. But this isn’t only about screen time. Algorithms compete for their attention and influence what they see, value and believe.
The online world is already offering our children answers to three of life’s biggest questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What difference can I make? As Christian parents, we have a better story to tell. Help them discover their identity in who God says they are, foster belonging through real relationships, and find purpose in living for something bigger than themselves.
Gen Alpha are… AI-shaped
Around 65% of Gen Alpha will work in jobs that don’t even exist yet.
Gen Alpha will grow up using AI to learn, create, solve problems and eventually work in ways we’re only beginning to imagine. It brings huge opportunities, but also difficult questions around truth, creativity, critical thinking and what skills will matter in the future.
But something else is happening too. Young people are turning to AI not just for homework, but for advice, encouragement and companionship. We’re moving from artificial intelligence towards artificial intimacy, where technology begins to imitate relationships.
As parents, we don’t need to fear AI or pretend it isn’t here. We can help our children use it wisely: to ask good questions, think critically, check what is true and know when not to rely on it. AI will be part of their future, but it doesn’t have to define who they become.
Entering their world
Parenting Gen Alpha can sometimes feel like trying to keep up with a world that’s changing faster than we are. But don’t underestimate the influence you still have. Enter their world. Get curious about what they love, what they’re dealing with and what matters to them.
We won’t always get it right. But the better we understand our children’s world, the better we can love them, lead them and point them to Jesus.
