In my time on the South Side of Chicago, I’ve asked people to look at what we’re losing. I have pointed out the root causes of gun violence, set up programs to counter it, confronted gangsters and brought them to truces, and helped many enter mainstream society as productive citizens. I’ve created after-school programs to counter our failing public schools so that kids won’t give up on themselves. But lately, I’ve been looking at another problem that may just be equally dangerous: the smartphone.
When you look at a smartphone, it doesn’t look like a threat. It looks like a tool for connection and even for opportunity. And for a lot of young people in my neighborhood, it has been exactly that — a way to make music, create an online following and learn about worlds outside of this block. I don’t want to discount what they have done because some have built real careers with nothing but a phone and its many tools. That’s a genuine way out of poverty, and I have no desire to shut that door.
But I can’t ignore the dark side of the phone.
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What I feel is that far too few of us acknowledge the full power of the phone. I once watched a documentary that said the power of all the computers needed to put the first man on the moon now existed in our tiny little phones. I don’t know if that’s true, but there is no doubt about the phone’s power. It puts the entire world at a kid’s fingertips.
Where I’ve seen the most devastating impact of the smartphone is in the world of drill rap, which began on O-Block, where my church and community center sit. Drill rap means “kill rap.” Some of it is honest storytelling about a life that most of the country has never seen. But some of it has become a weapon.
Fights that we used to see on corners have now moved onto livestreams. What happens is that a location tag is then dropped. Sometimes it’s dropped when a drill rap crew chooses to film in the wrong neighborhood as a dare. This dropping of a location is not an accident but a challenge: Come and get us.
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So we have kids watching these livestreams, half listening to the rap and half waiting for that burst of gunfire to come. When the latter happens, it is me or one of the nearby pastors who has to host the funeral. We then have to send our violence impact teams to the hospitals and homes of families to prevent retaliatory shootings. All from a livestream playing out on the phones of 10-, 12-, 14- and 17-year-olds.
So the same phone that can build a young artist up — and, man, some of these kids are so talented — that same phone can bring them down. When there is a shooting, the police and prosecutors comb through all these livestreams, and any comments may be treated as confessions. Whatever you think of this legal strategy, some of these kids get locked up.
But the phone isn’t only a problem on the streets. Parents here struggle with the problem of the phone in their homes. I see this in good families that are far removed from the life of gangs or drill rap. Their kids simply cannot put the phone down. Kids can access pornography even before they’ve had a chance to form healthy relationships. Our communities don’t teach courtship much anymore, and for the last several decades, we’ve lived in this hookup culture. So what does a child wired by pornography think when he or she encounters the other sex?
Parents often tell me the same thing, and I’m struck by how similar the wording is. It goes something like this: “I don’t know how to take the phone away from my child. It’s like I’m ending their world. I don’t know if I even have the authority to do it. They tell me that if I do, I’m cutting them off. It just becomes an endless battle.”
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The reality is that the phone often turns into a weapon that the child uses against the authority of the parent. I’ve heard kids tell their parents that they are smarter than them. That’s nothing but an illusion. When a child Googles or uses AI while arguing against a parent, that’s not the same thing as learning or processing the actual argument. That’s using a machine to speak for oneself. And what this ultimately does is stop the child from respecting the authority and knowledge of the parent.
Parents are not always right, but the phone deprives the child and parent of the process of working through that misunderstanding and, in turn, weakens the fabric of their relationship.
That’s the real crisis. Not the technology itself — the erosion of the adult’s ability to set a limit on it.
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The solution is not a ban. What I’m calling for is a shift in the culture. We need to return to the basic authority that parents used to take for granted. Yes, take that phone away at night. Yes, put limits on the phone. Yes, tell your child to sit at the table and do homework. Go to church. Look people in the eye when talking. Make them look at reality instead of a screen.
And one thing that we need to do is support these parents. We adults who make up this community must echo this pushback against the phone, so the kids understand that it is not just their parents but the entire community pushing back.
We have fought many problems in my community, from drugs to gangs. The phone may be even harder. But I’ll leave you with this thought: A phone cannot love a child. It can only hold their eyes through the trickery of the algorithm. But somebody has to be there to hold that child and to love that child, and that must be us.
