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While I was playing with her two older sisters, my two-year-old granddaughter slipped out of the room unnoticed. After searching for her for several minutes, I found her sprawled out on the floor deeply engrossed in something on her daddy’s iPad.

Charli loves cartoons, especially My Little Pony. At first glance, that’s what I thought she was watching. When I knelt down for a closer inspection, there were evil faces on the ponies. Suddenly, the screen filled with skeletons, and the evil ponies starting cutting open the heads of other ponies and “eating their brains.”

I quickly scooped up the iPad and said, “Sweetie, I don’t think this is something you need to be watching.” Fortunately, there was no resistance. (I think she was as confused about what she was seeing as I was.) When I told her mother about the video, she said Charli must have grabbed the iPad when no one was looking. It seems they had been watching the real My Little Pony videos earlier that day, and YouTube was easily accessible to little fingers.

The psalmist said, I will set nothing wicked before my eyes. In this generation, driven by the media and high tech gadgets of all shapes and sizes, that is a tall order. Commercials are sensual or downright crude and annoying. Previews that are supposed to be “approved for all audiences” are, most times, anything but. And the Internet is a wonderful, necessary, terrifying place—especially for those too young to know how to navigate it and bypass all the junk.

From the time they were big enough to hold something in their hand, all of my grandchildren have been able to navigate a cell phone, iPad, and even the TV remote. It’s amazing how bright our children are today. It seems they come out of the womb ready to face this new world of advanced technology that is their future. Our job as parents and grandparents is to teach them to use this technology wisely in order to protect their little minds from all sorts of filth and corruption.

Even for an adult, one wrong click of the mouse can open up ads and websites that are pure garbage, burning images and information into our consciousness that are almost impossible to eliminate. The psalmist also said, I will behave wisely in a perfect way. That takes a decision and a conscious effort.

Technology, as I said, is a wonderful tool and something we cannot do without. The key is using it wisely for the right purposes and teaching our children the same. One of the best things I ever heard someone say is this: "As for me and my mouse … we will serve the Lord!"

How about you?

(Photo courtesy of office.microsoft.com.)