This week's Youth Culture Window article is a little different than normal... it's a story of my 14-year-old Alyssa asking me permission to download a song on iTunes. This situation wasn't one of those 'cut and dry' easy decisions. You know... like when your kids ask you if they can download a Crowder song ("Duh, yes!")... or when they ask you if they can download Beyonce's Video Phone ("Duh, no!"). This was one of those instances that actually took "discernment." (Dang... why isn't parenting easier!)

This just happened last week, and I thought it would be a fun story to share with other parents. Here's just a snippet of the article:

“Dad, can I download Down?”

That’s what my 14-year-old asked me this week, hoping to download the song from iTunes onto her iPod. If you’re a parent, you may have experienced a situation similar to this, seeing that 76% of 8-18 year-olds now own these mobile music devices (KFF, Generation M2, page 29).

During lunch that day, Alyssa had heard Jay Sean’s song “Down” play over the school’s PA system (because that’s what our public schools often do in CA). There’s little wonder why my daughter heard this song at school. Though it’s currently ranked #23 on Billboard’s Hot 100, this song by Jay Sean and Lil Wayne has been on the charts for 30 weeks and it peaked at #1. In other words, this tune has gotten some serious air time!  I heard it in the airport last weekend.

My kids have an agreement with my wife Lori and me that they must review the lyrics before downloading any song. We’ve been trying to teach them to use discernment with what they listen to because we all know that music truly affects actions. (Just last week David’s Youth Culture Window article cited the unique study performed by the University of Sussex about the affect of music on teenagers. That study made me want to “knock some pencils off the table” in my house to see what happens!)

So when Alyssa asked me if she could download the song, I offered her the same response I always give. “Did you look at the lyrics?”

She answered honestly, “Yeah, but I couldn’t tell if they were bad.”

You gotta love this situation! Here’s my daughter being a normal teenager who likes the sound of a song. She knows the process in our house and she comes to me genuinely seeking an answer of what’s right… or just hoping I’d say yes!

Here lies the struggle. In moments like these I can’t help but second guess myself. Alyssa is a great kid. Am I monitoring her too much? Should I back off and let her just download what she wants? After all, my rules seem a little more stringent than many other parents I know…even some of those in my church.

Do you ever wonder what to do in these situations?

 You can read the rest of the article here, or it's featured in the big Youth Culture Window magnifying glass on the front page of our site, www.TheSource4YM.com

Sunday is the big game... and I'm on a plane during the entire thing! (Second year in a row that this happened. I'll be flying back from speaking at a camp again!)

Well, even though I'm not going to see the game myself, let me leave you with a handful of free resources and articles that you might want to use for Sunday:

THE SUPER BOWL QUIZ:
Every year we provide a "Ready-made Super Bowl Party" complete with our annual Super Bowl Quiz. This is a blast- it's a quiz that you hand people as they show up at your Super Bowl Party, then you tally the scores during the game- because the quiz asks them questions predicting what will happen during the game (i.e. Who will catch the first pass?, Will Pepsi or Coke have the first commercial? Who will win? etc.) Great fun. We released our Ready-made Party and Quiz in this week's EZINE here.

KURT WARNER DISCUSSION:
This is a great talk with discussion questions that you can use during half time or anytime this weekend about a true hero of our faith, Kurt Warner, the famed MVP and Super Bowl champion quarterback.

ARTICLE ABOUT THE TIM TEBOW ABORTION AD:
It's been all over the news. But in case you missed it... here's the skinny from USA TODAY:

CBS, already likely to score an epic Super Bowl rating given the NFL's season-long surge in viewership, has picked up new momentum: It will have the most controversial TV ad — perhaps the only really controversial ad — to ever air during America's biggest TV show.

The 30-second spot comes from the Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family. It features Tim Tebow, who quarterbacked Florida to two college football titles and won the Heisman Trophy and now becomes the rare athlete who goes anywhere near associating with a controversial issue outside sports.

Click here for the entire article.

Enjoy the game! (and save me some hot wings!)

Many of you already own my new book Connect or have heard the buzz about my sticky-notes training exercise, helping youth ministry leaders not only take the spiritual pulse of their students, but also keep accountable to reaching them and helping them grow spiritually. Now we have an online video available where you can see me do this training.

We'll be posting this video for our subscribers next week... I wanted to give you guys the first peek!

This entire exercise and detailed descriptions of the "Six Types of Kids" are laid out in my book Connect (and we actually provide you with the Powerpoint you see me using in this video when you buy the book from us).

I don't think I can say it any better than I did last year the day after the Grammys when I said, "Why are adults surprised that kids listen to raunchy music? Kids are only following their example."

Last night, the Grammys once again gave us a true glimpse of who and what adults value in this world. And I couldn't help but chuckle when I found out Beyonce received 10 nominations, winning six awards. This week it's going to be difficult for Beyonce-fan moms to tell their own little girls, "You can't go out dressed like that!" After all... Beyonce does it.

And how are moms going to impose boundaries on their teenagers cell phones, when they've got Beyonce's hit song "Video Phone" (currently the 17th most popular video download on iTunes) blaring on the radio, spewing these lyrics:

What? You want me naked?
If you likin’ this position
You can tape it
On ya video phone

David pulled back the covers a few weeks ago here with his expose' on Beyonce in our Youth Culture Window section of our web site.

Beyonce isn't alone in her smut peddling. The top songs on the charts paint a pretty bleak picture right now. David's current Youth Culture Window article about our kids' daily increase in music saturation not only reveals an eye opening glimpse of some of the songs in the Top 10 right now, but also shares an interesting study about how much lyrics really affect kids. Fascinating stuff!

But I guess America would rather forget all the facts... and just keep awarding these "artists."

Here's a few of the awards given last night:

Album of the year
Taylor Swift, Fearless

Female pop performance
Beyoncé, Halo

Rap/sung collaboration
Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye West, Run This Town

Rock album
Green Day, 21st Century Breakdown

Record of the year
Kings of Leon, Use Somebody

Country album
Taylor Swift, Fearless

Song of the year
Beyoncé, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

Pop vocal album
The Black Eyed Peas, The E.N.D.

Male pop vocal performance
Jason Mraz, Make It Mine

R&B song
Beyoncé, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

Rap album
Eminem, Relapse

Rap song
Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye West, Run This Town

Dance recording
Lady Gaga, Poker Face L

Electronic dance album
Lady Gaga, The Fame

Click here for USA TODAY's complete list of the winners.

Did you know that the average American teenager exchanges 3,146 text messages per month?

I get emails from Nielsen about their newest studies and research. This week they sent and interesting little tidbit from their 2009 research about texting. Nielsen is no joke. They analyze more than 40,000 mobile bills every month gathering data. Here's a chart comparing the growth of texting over the past few years between kids under 12 (the blue line) and those age 13-17 (the red line).

In Nielsen's 1/27/10 update, Roger Entner writes this:

The anecdotes documenting the love affair between teenagers and texting are countless. Many parents can attest that their offspring text rather than talk, even when they sit next to each other in the back of the car. Their children text in the morning before they brush their teeth and continue late into the night with the last text messages, also called SMS, sneaked in under the covers right before they close their eyes to sleep. Until now, there has been very little firm data available about how pervasive texting has actually become among the under-aged.

He goes on to break down the 3,146 messages per month that kids are using.

• that's more than 10 messages every hour of the month that they are not sleeping or in school
• even the under 12 segment are sending 1,146 messages per month which is four text messages per waking hour that they are not in school

Read the whole report here.

On January 17th VH1 News presented a piece called "The New Virginity." (You can catch some very amateur-captured glimpses of it all over YouTube) VH1's website brags that the show "explores the roots of our current obsession with chastity--the stars who've made their virginity a major part of their public persona."

You know- the Jonas Bros, Selena, Demi... VH1 seems to hint that their "purity pledges" will be short lived. They argue that stars want to keep their audience as they get older. The pattern that we see so far from artists like Britney is to be innocent, then slowly become more and more provocative.

This article about the VH1 show says it like this: "virginity may sell when you're a teen, but sex sells when you're an adult."

The article goes on to present some polarized views:

Sexuality, not virginity, VH1 said, is the key to success for these soon-to-be adult stars like Cyrus and Gomez.

If purity rings and pledges aren't practical for long-term Hollywood success, VH1 wasn't any more positive about their value to even normal teens. If abstinence isn't going to sell records or land you a TV show, don't bother taking purity pledges, since they create "unrealistic expectations." 

"There's now an iPhone application," said Jessica Valenti, author of "The Purity Myth," "that's a purity ring that you can have on your phone to show that you're a virgin. I guess it's actually kind of useful because once you lose your virginity - like most kids who take virginity pledges do - you can just trash it."

Since teenagers can't control themselves, Valenti said that "sexual education," not abstinence, should be the focal point.

"Thirty-three percent of kids that take the pledge are more likely to initiate sex," she said, "yet very few of them know anything about protection, so they're less likely to actually use a condom and more likely to get an STD or get pregnant."

That's one way to read the statistics. Another way would be to note that the 33 percent is 8.8 percent less than the 42.4 percent of non-pledgers who initiate. And that pledgers are no less likely to use a condom when they do have sex.

VH1's description of the show contends:

"In a world where tweens grow up too fast, a public declaration of chastity until marriage is a statement against the fast and furious life that many young stars succumb to, particularly those in the entertainment industry. But, as the show will point out, virginity doesn't stop celebs from looking and acting provocatively--playing both sides with impressive marketing results. The stars aren't the only ones caught up in virgin-mania. At Purity Balls across America, dads and daughters are living an abstinence fairy tale."

Ouch!!!

Last weekend the Christian film To Save a Life was released in 441 theatres (compare that to Avatar in 3,141 theatres or The Tooth Fairy in 3,344 theatres) and got great responses from audiences. This film is proving to be a great tool for outreach! Over 200,000 people saw the film, bringing in 1.5 million at the box office.

Even though this film is only ranked #14 or #15 for all the movies this past weekend, the film managed to be the top "fan rated" film on Fandango.com and it was the #5 ranked film for per-screen average. Most importantly, students' lives are being impacted by the film. One student shared on the film's Facebook page that he unsuccessfully attempted suicide on Friday, went to the film that night, accepted Christ and wants to reach out to others.

If you haven't seen this film... I really encourage you to see it this week. This is THE perfect film to bring your kids to. One of the best discussion provoking films I've seen in a while. We even wrote up a discussion starter on our web page using a clip from the film that you can watch right on our site- click here.

I've been hearing some great reactions from youth workers through this blog. Here's a couple:

Took my students last night, Every single one of them came out and said, THAT MOVIE WAS AWESOME. I look forward to our next time together to take some time and to talk about some key points brought out in the movie. Hope people take this to heart and LOVE people as Christ Loved us. – Glen Johnson

I took my student leadership team to a screening of the movie. They completely loved it. When I asked them to describe it, one of them said: "That's my life...that's what it's like for me at school." They shared about the film on their campuses, and I have 65 students going tomorrow night... which includes 30 unchurched friends of our students. – Bill Connors

Here's some other exciting things happening that you can see from the film's Facebook page:
-Tons of messages about students saying they are going to reach out to people at school starting today.
-Stories of kids walking out of the theatre and turning to their friend to ask how to become a Christian.
-Several students have quoted, “I don’t know about you but I need to check out a church this weekend.”
-Students sharing how they connected with “Danny” the hypocritical pastor’s son and that they are going to make life changes to be a part of the movement of reaching the hurting and lonely.
-Business men seeing the film and then buying hundreds of tickets for teens to go for free.
-Churches giving people opportunities to sponsor students to go see the film.

I asked the writer, Jim Britts, if he had anything he would like to say to you all. He sent me this:

As a fellow youth pastor I really want to plead with you guys to back this film. If this film does not do really well in the next week we will start losing theatres and films like this will be much harder to be produced and taken seriously in the future. I’m not playing the “we’re all Christian’s card” but just see what teens are saying about this film and then act. It’s not a cheesy film and it was made for you to do better ministry. If the movie is already in your area please ask your senior pastor to see it and then endorse it publically for everyone in your church, take your whole youth ministry to see the film (before Friday) and then challenging them to invite their friends. If the film is not in your area then go to tosavealifeleaders.com to learn how you can bring it to your area and link up with other youth ministries to make it happen.

 I encourage you to go see the film this week. You won't be disappointed.