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[Day 1] Challenges and Crises Children Face in Modern Society

Let us now look at the challenges and crises faced by our children in today’s society. Here are ten points to clarify how great the challenges and crises our children are facing today, much greater than the previous generation.

• First, children lose the companionship of many brothers and sisters birth rate control. The implementation of the one-child policy in mainland China has been around for years. In other countries and regions that have not implemented the one-child policy, there is also a tendency showing declining birth rates. This results in a lack of chance developing friendship between brothers and sisters today. 

• Second, the estranged relationship between neighbors makes children lose the opportunity to develop friendship with neighbors; children lose many opportunities going to school, coming home from school with their friends and playing together on the streets or at the parks. 
• Third, urbanization makes children miss out on the opportunity to contact nature. There are fewer opportunities to be exposed to nature. 
• Fourth, born in the digital age, our children are bombarded with large amounts of digital information that is full of violence and pornography on the internet. The mobile phones and iPads give our young children access to the large amount of data information on the internet that is full of violence and pornography. What a challenge and crisis this is! In the past, parents could restrict their children to watch TV on certain channels; but now they are all on their mobile phones. With a single click, they would be exposed to much violent and pornographic content.
• Fifth, Struggling with an intense workload at school. A large number of after-school tutoring and various talent classes add psychological burdens and pressures to children. 
• Sixth, the lack of contact and communication with real people in the real world result in a sense of loneliness, which is a major problem for children today.  A large amount of statistical data indicates that the biggest problem for this generation is the lack of contact and communication with real people in the real world, which results in loneliness. 
• Seventh, more and more children suffer from mental illnesses due to loneliness, and lack of communication. The percentage of mental illness cases in the past may have been only 1%, but now it may be 10%- 20% or even as high as 30% in some places. The percentage of teenagers with mental illnesses is very high. In addition, more increasingly people are suicidal. This is another problem of children and young people in our society today. 
• Eighth, the children in this generation generally lack ambition, direction, and goals in life. The children of this generation are not like the previous generation who had been instilled with a lot of goals and great ambitions in life. Today, if you ask children about their ambitions and goals in life, they will be very lost and confused.
• Ninth, due to loneliness, mental illness, lack of life goals, lack of friendship, and the deception and inducement of bad elements in multimedia, more and more young people commit suicide; not only the proportion is rising, but the age is also falling. These are all evidence backed by clear statistics.
• Tenth, for children, this is a fortunate time, but also an unfortunate time. Children born in this era are fortunate because of all kinds of high-tech, rich materials, and a lot of information. But they are also unfortunate because of all kinds of pressure, mental fragility, loneliness, mental illness, suicidal thoughts and other issues. These are some serious problems children are facing today.

After three years old, children need friends. When they begin elementary school, friends have more and more influence on them. Therefore, it is very risky for children to make friends with children in this world. When they were in elementary school, they would still listen to their parents, but when they got into middle school, they would start listening to their friends instead of their parents. More than 30% of children stopped communicating or talking to their parents after they got into middle school. Parents today must have a clear understanding of this situation with their children.

In addition to the ten points above, modern education tends to be liberal which not only deprives parents of their role, but also puts parents at a loss. Parents do not know what to do or how to manage their children resulting in leaving their children to follow the influence of their friends. We as parents have no clue what kind of friends they have and the source of their knowledge. They are all obtained from the Internet. This is the situation today. Our children from God and Christians who believe in the Lord Jesus, need friends when they reach the age of three. But friends in the outside world all imitate the influence of this generation. Do you feel safe sending your children into the world, letting them befriend someone from the world while they are not yet equipped with a strong faith?