Although there are several contenders for the world’s deadliest road, “el Camino de la Muerte,” or the Road of Death, in Bolivia is near the top of every list. This road winds 64 km (40 mi) from the high-altitude capital city of La Paz to the Amazonian lowlands 3,500 m (11,500 ft) below.

Some years, nearly three hundred travelers perish on the road, giving the route its name. The danger comes from around two hundred hairpin turns, loose rocks, waterfalls, and precipitous drops that yawn only a few feet or inches to the outside of a vehicle’s tires. The road has few barriers and is sometimes only about ten feet wide, not much more than the width of a large truck.

Before starting their journey, native drivers will often whisper a prayer or pour drink offerings to the earth to ask the goddess Pachamama for safe passage. It’s not hard to see why: crosses and other memorials are dotted along the route to show where previous travelers had plunged to their deaths.

A Treacherous Path

The metaphor of life as a journey is a familiar one. Christians often talk about our “walk with the Lord,” even Jesus spoke about the broad road leading to death and the narrow path leading to life. During this journey, we must make countless decisions about which road we will take or which direction we will head. Some decisions move us closer toward the narrow path, while others move us toward the broad road. The decisions we make impact our eternal destiny.

The same applies to our digital lives. There is a broad path through the Internet that leads to ungodliness and destruction and a narrow path of righteousness and safety. Using the Internet to access godly articles, information, and educational and instructional videos are not wrong. However, it takes only a few steps in the wrong direction to plunge off the edge.

Anyone who has used the Internet for any length of time has felt the pull toward entertainment, distraction, information overload, and perversion that, if given over to, will lead to spiritual lethargy and even spiritual death.

The draw toward the unhealthy and deadly is not easy to resist. Those of us who began using the Internet in our twenties or thirties still struggle to avoid being pulled into Internet rabbit holes that suck away our time and our souls. Even if we manage to avoid the areas that are clearly ungodly, we find ourselves retreating into our devices in times of stress and weariness—ironically causing more stress and weariness.

As difficult as it is for adults to resist the pull toward the yawning abyss of the Internet, research has shown that it’s even harder for young people.

Guardrails or Drivers Ed?

From childhood through late adolescence, young people’s brains are undergoing changes and developing in ways that make them much more susceptible than adults to the effects of social media, pornography, and all types of electronic media. Their prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and considering long-term consequences—is not fully developed. This is why young people often need more guidance and protection during this vulnerable stage of life.

Realizing we must do something to safeguard our young people, our first inclination is to start lining the precipice with guardrails and caution signs: Internet filters, accountability software, and warnings of the consequences they will face if they go where they shouldn’t. These can be good and helpful, but caution signs can be easily ignored, and no guardrail, however well built, can withstand constant battering from drivers who aren’t concerned with their own safety.

Regardless of their limitations, guardrails do have their place. Even well-trained drivers may hydroplane or wander onto the shoulder during a moment of inattention or weariness. In the same way, Internet guardrails provide valuable protection from the dangers and temptations of the Internet for both younger and older Christians alike .

 Before we let teens drive by themselves, we expect them to undergo extensive training, both in the classroom and behind the wheel. Then they must pass a written test. During their training, they are also mentored for a certain number of hours by a more experienced driver before gaining their driver’s license. If we expect young people to receive extensive training before they can drive, why would we think that giving teenagers a smartphone and then turning them loose with a few admonitions and a filter would turn out well?

Just as we wouldn’t expect new drivers to use the guardrails to keep themselves on the road, we shouldn’t expect Internet guardrails to be the best or only solution to keep young people safe from digital precipices. Instead, these guardrails must be paired with training and oversight from more experienced and mature adults.

In many ways, it is far easier to navigate the physical world with an automobile than it is to navigate the crooked and deceptive paths of the Internet. The Internet is much more like the Camino de la Muerte—narrow, twisty, and muddy with sheer drops and no guardrails—than an interstate highway—wide, straight, and clearly marked with signs and speed limits.

Navigating the Path

The rise of the Internet and the smartphone is relatively recent. The iPhone was released fewer than twenty years ago, and many still remember the time before it was even possible to be connected to the Internet every minute of the day. This shift has thrown us off balance; we are still navigating the changes that it has brought. A young person today is entering a world with different pressures and temptations than a young person faced only half a generation ago.

It is now apparent that many of the promises of the Information Age are being fulfilled, but in a perverse way that causes us to lose something in the real world as we seem to gain something in the virtual. We now can communicate effortlessly with people all around the world, but often at the cost of withering relationships in our communities. We can access more information than at any other time in history, but it is harder than ever to discern the truth. We have virtually abolished boredom and “wasted time,” but now our attention spans are so short that many of us can hardly force ourselves to read or to spend time in prayer.

For young people to safely navigate the treacherous paths of the Internet, they will require training along with the guardrails and warnings that parents and church leaders put in place. They must learn how to discern between what content is good and useful and what could pull their hearts away from God and their community. They must learn how to self-evaluate and ask themselves hard questions:

• How much time do I spend on my devices? Am I wasting time that should be spent elsewhere?
• Am I investing more in online relationships than I am in in-person relationships in my community?
• Am I distracted by my phone when I’m with other people?
• How is my usage affecting my mental state? How do I feel after spending time online?
• Am I able to moderate my use of my devices? If not, why?
• How are my devices affecting my attention span? Can I focus to read my Bible and to spend time in prayer?
• Are the ways that I use my devices moving me toward God or away from Him?

Young people should ask these questions, but they should not be answering them on their own. The best way to train young people to stay on the safe and narrow path is for them to ask these questions along with a parent or trusted mentor. Sometimes the answers to these questions might require drastic measures such as no longer using an app or service, or even getting rid of the smartphone for a time. If Jesus told us to be willing to cut off our hand or to pluck out our eye to avoid sin, how much more willing should we be to dumb down our phones?

It seems that the Internet and personal internet devices are here, and here to stay. The question is not if we will be using them, but how we will be using them. God empowered Christians to live faithful and vibrantly holy lives in all times before now, and that hasn’t changed. But it will take intentional effort to stay on the right path with a clear vision for our goal, and it will take courage to change what we’re doing if those devices lead us and our families onto el Camino de la Muerte.