How Faith Can Guide Children in an AI-Driven World
(Plus Interview with Dave Boden)
There are moments when I look at the world our children are growing up in and wonder what it must feel like to be young right now.
A child can carry an entire universe in the palm of a hand—a classroom, a social life, newsfeed, an entertainment center, and now an artificial intelligence assistant that can answer almost any life question in seconds.
I am not that old. My children are in their early 20’s and they were small kids just the other day. And yet, the rapid change in what our children are exposed to from a young age is mind-boggling.
Technology is influencing and guiding their lives and yet, it does not address the deepest questions young children and teenagers struggle with today:
Who am I?
Where do I belong?
Am I enough?
What is true?
Who can I trust?
Those questions are not new. But the world in which our children are asking them certainly is.
That was one of the reasons I agreed to sit down with Dave Boden, author of Raising Gen Alpha: Helping Kids Navigate Everything from Anxiety to AI. Dave has spent decades working with young people and currently leads Grace Foundation, a schools-based charity in England. He brings the perspective of a pastor, youth worker, educator and father of four to a generation that is growing up at a speed many adults are struggling to understand.
GEN ALPHA’S WORLD
Gen Alpha, generally defined in Dave’s book as children born between 2010 and 2024, has never known the world many of us remember. They were born into the internet age. They have lived through a pandemic. They are growing up surrounded by social media, smartphones and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence.
Dave describes the generation through five characteristics: anxious-minded, leading influencers, pandemic-impacted, hyperconnected and AI-shaped.
But one sentence from our conversation stayed with me.
Dave told me about a conversation with his daughter, Sienna, when she was 12. He asked her why adults sometimes struggle to connect with the next generation.
Her answer was simple: We didn’t grow up in the same world they did.
There is wisdom in that.
Sometimes we are so quick to tell our children how they should respond to the world that we forget to ask what the world feels like from where they are standing.
We say, “When I was your age…”
But when we were their age, our friendships may have ended when we rode our bicycle home. Their friendships can follow them into their bedrooms through a screen.
You could close the book when homework was finished. Today, a child can ask AI to write the assignment.
You could walk away from the social pressures of school when the school day ended. For many children now, the conversation continues online long after the final bell.
Understanding that does not mean removing boundaries. In fact, Dave emphasized the importance of parents becoming “tech-wise”—not necessarily technology experts, but adults willing to understand the world their children inhabit.
And perhaps that is where parenting begins again: not with fear, but with presence.
STILL THEIR primary influence
Dave made another observation that I found deeply encouraging. Even with all the changes in society from when I grew up—or even when I was raising small kids 15 years ago—parents remain the primary influence in the lives of Gen Alpha children.
We may sometimes feel as though we have lost our children to screens, algorithms and social media. But perhaps we have not lost our influence at all. Maybe we just need to rethink our strategies and intentionality for connection.
Because the truth is, they still need us. And they always will.
They need parents who will sit at the dinner table. They need conversations that cannot be reduced to notifications. They need adults who will listen before lecturing, understand before correcting, and model the very wisdom they need to learn.
And they need something technology cannot manufacture: genuine relationships.
MORE HUMAN THAN EVER BEFORE
As the world becomes more artificial, Dave said something I haven’t been able to shake: we have to become more human.
For Christians, that points us somewhere deeper.
Scripture tells us, “One generation shall commend your works to another” (Psalm 145:4). Faith was never meant to stop with us. We are entrusted with the beautiful, sometimes difficult work of telling the next generation who God is.
And that means we cannot assume they already know the story.
Dave shared that many Gen Alpha children have little understanding of Christianity or church. Yet he is also seeing something remarkably hopeful: spiritual curiosity. Young people are picking up Bibles. They are learning to pray. They are asking questions.
Perhaps it’s true that this generation is not closed to God. But could that be because we, their influencers, are not as intentional in how we teach them about Yahweh?
Perhaps they are waiting for someone to tell them the story. And live consistent lives that reflect His character and glory.
Perhaps we too must be willing to take our eyes off the screen more often, and deliberately make time to show them the God we know.
MORE THAN WORDS
The anxious child does not simply need a lecture about fear. They need to know the Prince of Peace.
The child searching for identity does not simply need another affirmation from an algorithm. They need to know they are made in the image of God and loved by Him.
The hyperconnected child does not simply need another screen-time rule. They need the deep belonging that can only grow through a real relationship with his Maker.
And the child growing up with AI does not simply need information. They need wisdom—the kind that begins with the fear of the Lord. The kind only the human influencers in their lives can portray.
The challenges are real. Dave does not minimize them, and neither should we. But neither should we surrender our hope.
We are not raising children in a world God has abandoned. We are raising them in a world where God is still present, still speaking, still calling, and still making room for the next generation.
So perhaps our prayer should not simply be, “Lord, protect our children from this world.”
Perhaps it can also be,
“Lord, teach me how to reach them in it. Teach me how to be a reflection of Your Face. Mold me before their eyes and help me respond in a way that will make them want to follow you.”
Because Gen Alpha does not need perfect parents, perfect teachers or perfect churches.
They need people willing to understand them, walk beside them, tell them the truth, and point them to the source of our identity, purpose… and the All-Intelligent God.
To hear more from my conversation with Dave Boden about raising Gen Alpha, anxiety, technology, AI, parenting and the church’s opportunity to reach the next generation, listen to or watch the full episode of God-Sized Stories with Patricia Holbrook. And be sure to enter the giveaway for a copy of Dave’s book through the link below.
FIND OUT MORE:
- Purchase the book: Raising Gen Alpha
- Learn more about Grace Foundation
- Watch the interview below and ENTER THE GIVEAWAY from the form at the end of this post.
