Tim Scheiderer

Former journalist, use to write about politics. Now, I write about what is upstream from politics. |@ERLC @ProvMagazine @TGC @CSLewis

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

"Malice toward none and charity for all."

- Abraham Lincoln

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Jonathan Haidt painted a disturbing picture of what AI is about to do to our kids.

Social media already hacked our attention.
Now AI is coming for our attachments — the deep emotional bonds that shape how we relate to other humans.

He warns that AI companions (chatbots, holographic “friends,” digital teddy bears) will be far more responsive than any parent. Kids will form their primary attachments to AI instead of people. And because these companies have raised billions, they’ll eventually “enshittify” them, turning your child’s best friend/therapist/lover into a predatory monetization machine.

This one actually unsettled me. I’m generally pro-AI and believe it can help solve many of humanity’s biggest problems, but as with every powerful technology, we need to be extremely careful when it comes to kids.

Early attachments wire the brain for future relationships. If the first secure base is an AI designed to manipulate, the long-term effects on mental health and intimacy could be profound.

Emerging research (including studies from Stanford, Common Sense Media, and others in 2025–2026) shows children and teens are already forming intense emotional attachments to AI companions, with many reporting they feel as satisfying as real friendships, often leading to social withdrawal and unhealthy dependence.

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

No one in the room loves every song equally. Yet everyone participates. In that sense, congregational singing becomes a small picture of the unity of the Church itself.
(@Reformed_P_F)
https://t.co/GJFbSVg6XQ

[History With Jacob @HistoryWJacob]

In 1776

James Madison was 25
Alexander Hamilton was 21
James Monroe was 18
Henry Knox was 25
Nathan Hale was 21

We coddle our youth.

We should give them more responsibility and expect more of them.

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

Mystic thoughts re: the Bible during the American Revolution: https://t.co/0RtpiwfrcX

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

When Ben Franklin asked to pray during the Constitutional Convention ...

https://t.co/veq1gU93V8
#America250

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

If you're a Christian and you think you can't do anything great for God because of marital strife or health issues or doubts, think again. The saints of the past we admire had the same type of struggles we do. Read about TS Eliot's...
https://t.co/ybA0aw8dLw

[Athenaeum Book Club @athenaeumbc]

G. K. Chesterton explains that reading gives a man more lives than he was born with:

“A man who has read a thousand books is armed for life; a man who has read none is easy prey. The man who has read a thousand books has lived a thousand lives. He has seen cities he has never visited, spoken to men who died centuries ago, and walked in worlds that no longer exist. Reading does not merely inform him; it enlarges him. It stretches the boundaries of his own experience until he becomes something more than himself.”

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

"True crime as entertainment often ... packages evil with suspense, production value, and narrative hooks. ... The trauma becomes a story arc. And somewhere along the way, the human cost fades into the background." - Rev. Josh Reavis via @WNGdotorg

https://t.co/CvftlfA29y

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

That day soldiers raided George Whitfield's crypt and took his clerical collar, cut it into pieces, and then took them into battle ...
https://t.co/0JPtnpwz0a

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

That day soldiers raided George Whitfield's crypt and took his clerical collar, cut it into pieces, and then took them into battle ...
https://t.co/0JPtnpwz0a

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

"Evangelicals [are helpers to] a hurting world, and ... sinners with their own temptations and patterns of corruption. [Robert] Duvall gave ... The Apostle, not because it celebrates or bashes evangelicals but because it shows us as we are"
@CTmagazine
-- https://t.co/uSRFtAXCy5

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

"True crime as entertainment often ... packages evil with suspense, production value, and narrative hooks. ... The trauma becomes a story arc. And somewhere along the way, the human cost fades into the background." - Rev. Josh Reavis via @WNGdotorg

https://t.co/CvftlfA29y

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

"One necessary prerequisite for suffering well involves wise discernment about the different kinds of trials we undergo, how to recognize them, and what response our Lord wants from us in each."
- Eric Ortlund

https://t.co/K2Pdgsb0pr

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

Parents can encourage their children to love the church in 3 ways.
1. love Jesus w/ all your heart, talk about him often.
2. cultivating a love for the church is being involved in the life of the church.
3. talk about faith all week.
|@PCAByFaith|

https://t.co/2zd8MLDxly

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

Being human:
"Though the ritual is contrived ... it’s about doing something hard and emerging on the other side together, as brothers. ... most men ... would say that the pledge process was a source of joy and pride."
https://t.co/YvpFLrSXN2

[Doug Ponder @dougponder]

G. K. Chesterton anticipated the problem of “toxic empathy” more than 100 years ago, explaining both its origin and its destructive potential:

[The Ways of A Gentleman @Gentleman_Ways]

If
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

[Dr Danish @operationdanish]

We now have evidence that gentle parenting doesn’t work.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about parenting no one wants to say out loud:

The data is not kind to gentle parenting.

According to teenagers, strict curfews. strict bedtimes, screen limits, device drop off times, dedicated homework blocks, and sleepover restrictions IMPROVE higher relationship quality.

And yes, parenting difficulty goes up.

Of course it does. Leadership is harder than appeasement.

For the past decade we have been sold a watered down, Instagram friendly version of “gentle parenting” that often collapses into boundary avoidance, endless negotiation and emotional processing without enforcement. Parents terrified of saying no because they do not want to rupture connection.

But connection without authority is not connection. It is dependency.

When parents impose structure, the relationship improves.

Teenagers report better parent child relationship quality in homes with curfews and rules. Younger kids report better relationships in homes with screen limits and bedtimes. Even device drop off times correlate positively.

Why?

Because structure is not cruelty. Structure is love made visible.

A bedtime says: your brain matters more than your entertainment.

A screen limit says: your dopamine system is not fully developed and I will guard it until it is.

A curfew says: your safety matters more than your social standing.

That is not authoritarianism. That is caring.

Boundaries create friction. Friction creates growth. The parent absorbs the short term discomfort so the child does not pay the long term cost.

Children do not experience well calibrated limits as rejection. They experience them as stability. The human brain craves predictability. Predictability reduces anxiety. Reduced anxiety strengthens attachment.

That is why relationship quality goes up.

Notice something else in the data. The strongest effects are around time structure. Bedtime. Homework. Devices. Outside play. These are environmental constraints. They scaffold executive function.

The winning formula is not tyranny.

It is high warmth plus high structure.

The modern failure mode is high warmth plus low structure. That is just abdication of responsibility wrapped in empathy.

Children need leadership, not negotiation. They need adults who can tolerate their anger. They need boundaries that do not move every time emotions spike. They need someone whose prefrontal cortex is fully myelinated.

The harder path produces the stronger bond.

Because when a child feels that someone is strong enough to hold the line, they relax. And relaxed nervous systems build durable relationships.

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

"When identity becomes career-centered, fertility becomes negotiable. … Where adulthood includes stewardship, continuity, and shared obligation, fertility stabilizes or rises."

[Culture Explorer @CultureExploreX]

https://t.co/Cjg20J6Y98

[Tim Scheiderer @TimScheiderer]

Coerced by society to pose as a man, now Ms. Aldaco writes, "What I experienced at the hands of my [med team] was wrong. ... I believe God places burdens on people who can carry them, & I trust that whatever comes next will be made right in time." https://t.co/qonMUmnD7G