Episode 18: Youth Culture, Emojis, and What Parents of Teenagers Can Embrace

Danny Kwon

Welcome to Asian American Parenting, the podcast of Sola and Rooted, where the gospel meets Asian American parenting. I’m your host, Danny Kwon, and today I’m with my friend, Justin Wong. Welcome, Justin. Good to see you again. We had a great episode a few episodes ago on K-pop Demon Hunters.

Justin Wong 

Hey Danny, how’s it going? Yeah, for sure. We did.

Danny Kwon

And you also wrote an article on K-pop Demon Hunters for Rooted Ministry which was featured not only on Rooted but on Tim Chalice’s blog so praise God for that. And Jason, Justin, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself again?

Justin Wong

Yeah, thanks again for having me on again. It’s always a pleasure. Hi everybody. I’m here in Houston, Texas Pretty much born and raised in the state of Texas, but specifically Houston had the opportunity and privilege to work with students and leaders and parents in the Asian American Ministry space for about two decades and so still love what I do and get to be a champion for Asian American youth ministry. 

Danny Kwon

And specifically teenage and youth culture. Again, your K-pop Demon Hunter article and podcast were such big hits. We wanted to have you back on to talk a little bit generally about teen culture. And I know you have daughters that are almost teens, but what are your thoughts, on teenage culture generally.

Justin Wong 

I mean, it’s, always been there. I think as long as there’s been teenagers and as long as there’s been culture, there’s the two worlds have always collided. I think we’re living in a day and age where the speed of culture has definitely increased, or at least the visibility has definitely increased. And so it’s a lot more fascinating. I would say a lot more fragile nowadays. And so we have the ability to kind of work with students and parents and youth workers and churches in that space, which makes it fun and kind of daunting at the same time.

Danny Kwon 

So, like, what do parents, Asian American parents need to be aware of when it comes to teen culture? And should we fear it? Should we embrace it? What are your thoughts on that?

Justin Wong 

Yeah, good question. mean, I don’t know if it’s Asian American in particular. I think all parents can probably are as nervous or as you know, they feel like they’re ill equipped. But ultimately, I would I would say you’re the parent first. And so it is more about parenting than it is about knowing everything there is to know about culture. I think what they ultimately need is to understand that this is this is a relationship and we’re going to be together to navigate through this teenage space for the long haul and mom and dad and all these mentors and pastors, it’s a safe place to be able to wrestle with this. And so I think we want to start there first with the relationship.

Danny Kwon

Hmm. Okay, so just going off on a little tangent here, as a parent, for example, how should we engage it? Do we have to watch every movie that they’re watching? Do we have to listen to BTS and, you know, Apata Apata and all that stuff? What do we do?

Justin Wong

Man, that’s a lot. Hahaha.

Well, mean, I watch it if it’s if it’s enjoyable for you first. That’s always easier. I would say especially when they’re younger, a younger teen or even preteen as they’re doing this, I think we as parents need to be more aware. So I think the level of engagement needs to be more sensitive and to be more aware of not only what they’re watching, but sometimes watch it with them. Because I think as you and I know, Danny,

It’s not about the content consumed, but it’s also the content being processed as well. And so we’re given the space to be able to step in to help translate certain things. I think some of the younger ones may not even understand some of the euphemisms or even the inside jokes that the characters on the screens are saying, but I think this is where we can teach students how to be discerning but also with the gospel lens. I think that’s gonna be the most important thing.

Danny Kwon

Yeah, yeah. And so I guess there is a level where if parents want to engage, it is a good idea to try to watch some things or listen to some of the music that with your teenager or just listen to it and talk about it with them.

Justin Wong

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our rule in the house right now is while they’re this age, I want to know what they’re listening to, but I also want to, as a relational parent, I want to enjoy what they enjoy. Now, again, they don’t know what they enjoy yet necessarily. And so we’re exploring the world of music. We’re exploring the world of film. We’re exploring the internet as young as they are, because I don’t want them to be afraid of it. But I also want them to know that mom and dad, we want to like what you like.

But we also want to make sure you’re growing and you’re protected in a sense from things that might, you might not even understand that’s out there. So for sure, I wanna know to safeguard, but I think as important is the fact that I wanna know because I wanna be in my kids’ world, right? I don’t want them to see as mom and dad as completely separated from the reality of the world. So I do wanna do that.

Danny Kwon

Yeah. Yep, yeah. So how then, if there’s something on social media that our kids are watching that we don’t agree with or we feel like it’s not a positive influence, how would you suggest to parents to talk to their teen or child about that? So you don’t like ruin the relationship or you know, get them so angry at you, but you still want to engage with them in conversation, but in a loving way.

Justin Wong

Sure, I mean, I think in order to mitigate as much kind of unnecessary conflict at the beginning, teach them how to do it. And so maybe that’s a shared account so that you’re actually watching the same things. I think it would be very unwise and unhelpful in the long run to give them access to whatever they wanted and you completely are hands off. I think that would be kind of, I think you’re setting yourself up a little bit for that.

Now, if I’m able to kind of share the account, we’ll have, you know, multiple sets of eyeballs on certain things, that’s way easier to talk about things that we are seeing together versus, hey, you have the ability to watch whatever you want. And then I get to hear about it from third hand or we get to kind of just overhear certain things. And so there’s not that level of, I guess, relationship.

But I would say if they do get to a point when they’re consuming certain things that are damaging to them, maybe it’s unwise, I would start first and foremost, I guess you have to be sensitive. I would start with what are you doing, the relational questions. How do you think this goes? What is your take on it? How might a Christian wanna do this? I would ask your teenager, how would you, disciple another person if they’re watching the same thing you’re watching. Like turn it on them. I’m like, because I don’t want to be the one always discipling them. I would just turn it to say, okay, how would you do this? If you were the parent or if you’re the discipler, what would you do to this younger person? And hopefully that kind of peaks a little bit of, oh, there’s a bit of responsibility on my end of not just consuming, but also creating.

Danny Kwon

Yeah, that’s a great way it sounds like to kind of engage with your teenager or even, you know, younger child and say, hey, how is this going to impact your friends and be positive or negative to them? That sounds like a really good way to go about that. So speaking of dangers, there was this show that some of our listeners, parents especially, might know about on Netflix called Adolescence. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s a four hour mini series, one hour each. I watched it. It’s about a young teen and commits a crime. I don’t want to ruin it for our listeners but I watched it and I’m like, I failed as a parent. I felt bad. And I guess I kind of want to talk about one of the parts of the show was about teens using emojis. And I barely know what an emoji is. I only used a smiley face emoji.

Justin Wong 

Sure.

Danny Kwon

That’s the only one. And maybe the heart shaped one, the red heart. But, you know, in this movie, mini series, talks about teenagers using emojis to communicate and what it means and how dangerous it is. Do parents need to be afraid of teenagers communicating through emojis and what are emojis as a teen cultural expert?

Justin Wong 

Yeah. Sure. I mean, the easiest way to do it is it’s just a symbol, it’s a picture, and it’s meant to communicate something. again, this is where we need to kind of step in, maybe as somebody who works with parents and teenagers. I mean, there’s an original understanding of what it was created for.

In the best sense, you can take an image or a picture or a word and it gets translated as a one-to-one, right? The, hearer receives what the original author intends. Now it can get wacky really fast because of, and I think this is where the doctrine of sin comes in. It can distort, it can manipulate. It can, you know, completely derail the message. And I think that’s where a lot of people can get in trouble, right? When we start using the intent, certain intended language or pictures or meanings and we skew it to either be a euphemism or something we can kind of you know completely make it sinful and I think that’s where the message and the medium completely can go off rails and so in a sense yeah you should you should be aware

Danny Kwon

Would you say there’s a secret world of teen emojis that they’re communicating with that is beyond the parents realm?

Justin Wong 

I mean, it’s always been like that. mean, it’s, you know, whether it’s the emoji or the memes or there’s catchphrases, I think there’s always something like that. Right. I, no matter what I think, no matter, I think part of the movie or the series deals with is secrecy. Right. And I think there’s an allure with secrecy. I think there’s, it’s this Adam and Eve sense of, know my parents are out there.

And yet I want to hide and pretend that they will never catch me. Right. And I think that’s all. That’s not just students. I think that’s all of us. And until we understand that our parents are our father in heaven who loves us and is our good shepherd, we’ll always try to hide certain things and we’ll code it. And I think this is where the deception is. We’ll code it in language. We’ll code it in emojis because we follow our first parents. And when Jesus shows on the scene, He completely outs us all on the cross. And I think that’s where the safety is. We don’t have to hide meaning or use euphemisms and these types of things. And I think that’s where the freedom of Christ in the gospel comes in to uncover everything. And there’s more freedom in

Danny Kwon

So as a parent of teens and your kids are almost there, how should we like view this secret world of teenagers? Do we just accept it? Do we try to talk to our kids about it? I mean, like, I don’t want to ruin adolescence for the Netflix mini series for anybody who hasn’t seen it, but like, by the time they discovered it, it was too late. And so, you know, do we just…

Justin Wong

Yeah, too late. Yeah.

Danny Kwon

Let it happen. I mean, the parents in the mini-series had no idea. I mean, how are we supposed to take Emoji World of teenagers?

Justin Wong

Yeah. Well, I mean, I can almost hear parents listening to this, watching this and feel either completely overwhelmed or they feel like they’re a failure. I think as we navigate this space, we’re coming in and again, we don’t know where the parent relationship with the student is. I think if you feel like you’re too far gone, I know my kid is in a lot of secret worlds. How do I handle this?

I think this is where the gospel message comes in. think we’re never too far gone. I think there’s always hope. But it is to repair that relationship. It’s not the secret world that’s really the issue. I think there is a relational aspect of, okay, how can I enter into this world of my students? And how come there has to be this wall of secrecy between us? And maybe the student doesn’t even know that that’s available, right? And so I think there’s a lot of repentance or even reconciliation on the parents’ parts. But that’s hard because I have to admit to my kid, hey, I’ve not done the best job in entering your world. I feel like I’ve made it hard for us to open up and communicate can I do better as a parent to do this? Right? And that takes a lot of work. mean, my, own parents, mean, it’s Asian American, right? Like we don’t, we didn’t grow up with a lot of heart to heart stuff. And it wasn’t until later where we start to realize, Hey, our relationship is way more important than our individual journeys. And so we wanted to figure out how to bring it back together. I think some parents who feel like it’s too far gone, I’m just going, not with the gospel. the gospel does change and it takes time. But in order to kind of mitigate some of that heartache towards the middle or at the end, this is why it’s so crucial. And we say this all time, to be a disciple of your student, but to treat them also like your neighbor and someone of the faith as well. If your students had the benefit of understanding the gospel, 

having saving faith, your brother, sisters in Christ, how can we continue to cultivate that relationship? That’s so important. Then too, which is easy, give you a phone, give you a computer, you go do whatever you want, and then all of a sudden, there’s so much gap between us, not just because we haven’t talked, but because we haven’t engaged soul to soul.

Danny Kwon

Yeah. And that kind of reminds me with my teenagers, you know, they were teens. It’s what I encourage the parents who are listening. I always say raising teenagers was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I had good kids and it was still hard because their development, their stage of life, their friends, their distractions. But one of the things we did create is rhythm and a sacred rhythm of once a week on…

Justin Wong

Yeah, everything.

Danny Kwon

Sunday afternoons or evenings, we would get together and we would just call it the family gathering. We didn’t sing hymns, we didn’t read the Bible, but we had a good time of 45 minute to an hour discussion about their lives and our lives and what’s going on. And we made it a sacred because it was weekly, regular rhythm. And it was sacred because we made that time intentional and protected it in our family to talk and discuss about, you know, all things deep, profound, questioning, you know, questions for each other. And so, you know, we talked about movies and we could bring up adolescence to mini series or squid games or music. so, yeah, I appreciate that Justin, you’re saying there. And so in that way, like we got to ask them questions like, what kind of music do you like? What are you listening to? What are you watching on?

And I’m sure they didn’t tell us everything, but we had a sacred time. But how then would you suggest to parents to be more aware or educated about teen culture? And how important is this for parents of teenagers?

Justin Wong

Yeah, I mean, while they’re teenagers, again, I’ll keep bringing it back to be interested in their world. think that’s that’s very, important. Right. I mean, because let’s be honest, there’s some stuff where I’m like, I don’t even I don’t get it. I don’t get certain phrases. I don’t get why you like certain movies. But it’s not about my preferences of what I like. It’s I know you might be interested in this. So I want to be interested in what you’re interested in, because I care about you. Right. And so the answer to should we, think that’s obviously yes. mean, and again, it’s a short window, honestly. It’s seven years. It’s sixth grade or 12th grade. It’s seven years. It’s not 30, 50 years in that sense, but we can sacrifice. And I know you parents sacrifice a ton, but there’s that.

Danny Kwon

Yeah. Ha ha. Yep.

Justin Wong

But I also would, let me throw it to kind of the immigrant parents, a lot of first-gens who are just overwhelmed with the native language and culture. How do we handle this? I think this is where a good church comes in. think nowadays there’s tons of good resources. I know that can be overwhelming because you just don’t know what is a good resource or not. so ministries like Rooted, ministries like Sola, the local body where a gospel-centered preaching looks like. Your youth ministers, I mean, they’re on the front lines. They should be able to disciple parents and just to be able to talk with them of going, what is I know? I kind of know what my kid likes. Maybe I don’t. What do you see happening in the youth group that I need to be made aware of? What books do I need to learn? What podcast do I need to listen to? For I would always try to help individual parents say hey this is kind of the themes that we’re seeing this month in your kid’s life. This is what we’re seeing in high schoolers in this region and so utilize the local church as kind of the hub for resources. I mean that’s the best bet because they love the gospel, they love your students, and so I know they want also to come partner alongside parents as well.

Danny Kwon

Yeah, and that’s great. And so, you know, some great resources, like you said, like cpyu.org, cpyu.org, Center for Parent Youth Understanding. They have a website that has like a lot of research on teen culture. You can click it and probably too much, too many articles, but really good articles. It’s a great website and Rooted at Rooted we have a top 10 monthly parent email that gives top 10 articles for parents to read every month about teen culture and parenting. So we just wanna make you aware of these resources so you can be more aware of teen culture. Because I think it’s important, like you are alluding to Justin, that at least we’re aware and it’s only seven years of this kind of relational discipleship of our kids. And so we can find things to be talking about with our kids and engaging with them and you know, like, you can be my soda pop. Diet soda. I’m just kidding. I’m sorry. I, but yeah, talking to them about it and, and, and you kind of alluded to this, Justin, this will be the last question. I don’t want to, I want to kind of honor our time, but, you talked about partnering with youth ministries and, what is the role? Again, this is kind of like we, we, this age old question in the Asian American kind of emerging church and as Asian Americans but what is the role of the parent and what is the role of the youth ministry in the discipleship of teenagers especially as parents like you and I Justin we speak English now we speak the common language of our kids so we can maybe do more discipling or relational aspects with our kids. But then, you know, they have churches and youth groups too. Yeah.

Justin Wong 

I mean, I think the benefits is a specific time and place where your students can get together with those who are kind of almost on the same journey where they’re at. think to have a space just for them, think it’s crucially important. And hopefully as we’re helping the youth minister navigate that space, because I mean,  you and I know this, Danny, youth ministry, being the youth pastor, extremely fun, extremely rewarding, but probably one of the most difficult ministries out there. mean, not just ministries, I would say jobs, if you want to put it that way. It’s, and again, not just there’s many, that’s a whole nother podcast. There’s so many layers that can go into it. If the minister is doing their job well.

Danny Kwon

Yup. Asian American parents, please hear that. Yeah.

Justin Wong

Right. Let’s say like that too. And so what’s the relationship between the parent and the youth minister, the youth minister. And again, there’s multiple age and layers of the youth minister to they they’re their own person, they’re on their own families. But it’s to partner alongside the parents to help them help your student on this journey of faith, whether that’s coming to a saving faith or it’s to mature in their saving faith. The youth minister is kind of the cultural translator and resource, right? Resource provider for the parents. And so the best thing to do isn’t to see competition, but to see as a collaboration. And I think the best, yeah, the best youth pastors out there are able to really shepherd your student well and to almost give you a customizable plan for your kid. And because there’s things that they’re maybe more comfortable with sharing at church than at home. And then what happens is then, how can the youth minister and the parent come together and go, okay, this is what we’re gonna work on at home. What are some things I need to be aware of? What are things that you’re seeing with their peers or this culture? How can we then do this with the bulk of our time as parents in the car ride, on vacation, these types of things. And so there has to be this sweet partnership of both sides knowing their role knowing their strengths but also knowing their weaknesses and how can both sides come together for the good of the gospel, right?

Danny Kwon

You know what, that would really, for me, kind of, what you’re saying is to suggest to parents, go talk to your youth pastor about your child and teenager, yeah, and ask for help, yeah.

Justin Wong

Absolutely. Yeah, and some of the questions, parents, if you’re listening to this, that you can ask your youth pastor is not so much the events and, you know, whatever else that’s going on. I think it’s going, hey, how has my child been feeling recently, especially with large groups? Where is the trend for my students and their age group in this season? Do you notice anything that we need in our house in terms of helping my particular students grow and develop, right? Like give me the insider scoop that we need as parents to be aware of. And I think a good youth pastor would be able to identify, hey, these are some of the things. Why? Because I think the youth pastor understands their role according to Hebrews 13, that they are to give an account for the souls in which they’re shepherding.

Danny Kwon

Yeah. Now if parents, you don’t think you have a youth pastor like Justin or I, I’m just kidding, that is doing this, please be graceful and talk to them in grace and love. ⁓ You know, don’t go to your senior pastor and say, my youth pastor sucks, they don’t help me. But it’s something that can be developed in your church too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, good.

Justin Wong

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. 

Danny Kwon

Well, Justin, we’re going to have you back again because you’re such a great thinker and your writing and your podcasts are great on this Asian American Parenting podcast and we will see you again. And to our listeners, we thank you for listening and may we embrace the hope and joy of the gospel and believe that it’s true, powerful and transformative. Thanks for listening to Asian American Parenting. We’ll see you next time.