Using Technology to Get Teens to Pray

How can we use cell phones, mp3 players and social networks as tools to get kids into prayer?  That was the question I addressed yesterday in my presentation at our annual diocesan inservice for Catholic teachers. I began with a quote from Jean-Pierre de Caussade:

Today God still speaks to us as he used to speak to our ancestors at a time when there were neither spiritual directors nor any systems of spirituality…Religious devotion had not become a science crammed with precepts and detailed instructions.  Nowadays, no doubt, our special needs make this necessary, but in the old days people were less complex and more straightforward.

God speaks to us at every moment of the day, even in technology.  But we adults are “digital immigrants,” relatively new to the world of technology; our students are “digital citizens,” born not with silver spoons in their mouths, but with headphones in their ears, and cell phones in their hands:

• 92% of teens own an mp3 player (86% own iPods).
• 97% buy their music primarily from the iTunes store.
• 80% of teens carry a cell phone.
• The average child gets his or her first cell phone between the age of 10 and 11.
• 42% of teens can text blindfolded.

We can lament this all we want, but this is the world in which our kids live.  Jesus told his disciples to “Go out into the whole world and proclaim the gospel.”  Since our students live in the world of mp3s, text messaging and social networks, it is there we must go if we are to effectively proclaim the gospel.  As Pope Benedict asserted in The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World,

Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.

But our students are not necessarily looking for spiritual guidance online.  One way we can help students is to point them to online spiritual resources.  I spent a very fast hour trying to present as many of these resources as I could to the teachers that attended my workshop.

The resources we looked at can be found on the following page: Prayer Tools for Netizens. It’s divided into several categories:

• General Websites
• YouTube videos
• Podcasts
• iPod/iPhone Apps
• Social Networks (Facebook and Twitter)
• Resources for Professional Catechetical Development

Please share these resources with anyone who works in catechesis or youth ministry. I’d love to add to the list, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know by leaving a comment. You can also join the One Catholic Life Facebook Group and leave suggestions there.