Community Leader Warns Smartphones Threaten South Side Youth

For years walking through Chicago's South Side, I have asked neighbors to consider what they are losing. I have exposed the roots of gun violence, organized programs to fight it back, and forced gang leaders into truces so many could become productive citizens again. I built after-school centers because our public schools were failing kids who needed hope more than anything else. But recently my focus has shifted to a new threat that might be just as deadly: the smartphone.

At first glance, a phone does not look dangerous. It appears to be a simple tool for staying connected and finding opportunity. For many young people in my neighborhood, it truly has been that, a way to make music, build an online following, and learn about worlds far beyond this block. I do not want to dismiss their achievements because some have built real careers using nothing but a device and its tools. That is a genuine path out of poverty, and I have no desire to close that door shut.

Yet I cannot ignore the dark side of the phone. What feels wrong is that far too few people acknowledge the full power packed into these devices. I once watched a documentary stating that the computing power needed to put the first man on the moon now exists in our tiny little phones. I am not sure if that claim holds true, but there is no doubt about the phone's raw capability. It places the entire world right at a child's fingertips.

The most devastating impact of smartphones appears in the world of drill rap, which began on O-Block where my church and community center sit. Drill rap means "kill rap." Some tracks offer honest storytelling about a life that most of the country has never seen. But some of it has become a weapon against our own children. A phone cannot love a child. It can only hold their eyes through the trickery of an algorithm designed to keep them scrolling forever.

Fights we used to see on corners have now moved onto livestreams. What happens is that a location tag gets dropped. Sometimes this occurs when a drill rap crew chooses to film in the wrong neighborhood as a dare. This dropping of a location is not an accident but a challenge: Come and get us. So kids watch these streams, half listening to the lyrics while half waiting for that burst of gunfire to come. When shooting happens, it falls on me or one of nearby pastors to host a funeral. We then send our violence impact teams to hospitals and family homes to prevent retaliatory shootings. All this stems from a livestream playing out on the phones of ten-, twelve-, fourteen- and seventeen-year-olds.

The same phone that can build a young artist up, and man, some of these kids are so talented, can also bring them down. When a shooting occurs, police and prosecutors comb through all these livestreams. Any comments may be treated as confessions in court. Whatever you think of this legal strategy, some of these kids end up locked up for years.

But the phone is not only a problem on the streets. Parents here struggle with the issue inside their own homes. I see this in good families that are far removed from gang life or drill rap culture. Their kids simply cannot put the device down. Children can access pornography even before they have had a chance to form healthy relationships. Our communities do not teach courtship much anymore, and for the last several decades we have lived in a hookup culture. So what does a child wired by such explicit content think when he or she encounters the other sex?

Parents are not always right, but the phone deprives both child and parent of the process needed to work through misunderstanding. This dynamic weakens the fabric of their relationship over time. Parents often tell me the same thing, and I am struck by how similar the wording is. It goes something like this: "I don't know how to take the phone away from my child.

It's like I'm ending their world." The speaker wonders if they even possess the authority to make such a move. They warn that stepping in feels like cutting someone off for good. It spirals into an endless battle where no one wins.

The reality is that the phone often turns into a weapon that the child uses against the authority of the parent. I've heard kids tell their parents that they are smarter than them. That's nothing but an illusion. When a child Googles or uses AI while arguing against a parent, that's not the same thing as learning or processing the actual argument. That's using a machine to speak for oneself. And what this ultimately does is stop the child from respecting the authority and knowledge of the parent.

Parents are not always right, but the phone deprives the child and parent of the process of working through that misunderstanding and, in turn, weakens the fabric of their relationship. That's the real crisis. Not the technology itself, the erosion of the adult's ability to set a limit on it.

The solution is not a ban. What I'm calling for is a shift in the culture. We need to return to the basic authority that parents used to take for granted. Yes, take that phone away at night. Yes, put limits on the phone. Yes, tell your child to sit at the table and do homework. Go to church. Look people in the eye when talking. Make them look at reality instead of a screen.

And one thing that we need to do is support these parents. We adults who make up this community must echo this pushback against the phone, so the kids understand that it is not just their parents but the entire community pushing back.

We have fought many problems in my community, from drugs to gangs. The phone may be even harder. But I'll leave you with this thought: A phone cannot love a child. It can only hold their eyes through the trickery of the algorithm. But somebody has to be there to hold that child and to love that child, and that must be us.