Pew Research Center findings show many parents and teens think it’s harder being a teen today than it was 20 years ago. Many point to technology, especially social media, as having a particularly negative impact on teen life. But how can parents and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ease the pressures on today’s youth and help them to flourish during their teen years?
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker, dean of Family, Home and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University, has pondered this question in her research as she focuses on parenting and media influences during adolescence and young adulthood.
Padilla-Walker joins this episode of the Church News podcast to help parents and leaders discover how positive behaviors can both replace and protect against negative behaviors and how sacred living strategies can help families stay stronger and happier.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: And we know from the doctrine of belonging that has been shared with us that serving is one of the central ways that we can find belonging. And I think we all need belonging, but our young people especially need to find that belonging, and one way we can do that is through serving with one another. And it’s important to remember that young people are doing amazing. We know that this is a generation that has been reserved for this time. And despite the fact that there are some challenges that they face, I think it’s important, for me, to remember that these are amazing spirits and amazing young people who, with the right support and autonomy given, will do exactly what they need, because they’ll have the Lord by their side. So if we can offer them some scaffolding and help them to build relationships with their Savior, then it’s my testimony that we will see miracles.
1:03
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Recent findings by the Pew Research Center show that many parents and teens think it’s harder being a teenager today than it was 20 years ago. Many tout technology, especially social media, as having a particularly negative impact on teen life.
But how can parents and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ease the pressures on our youth and help them to flourish during the teen years? This is a question that Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker, dean of Family, Home and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University, has pondered deeply in her research as she focuses on parenting and media influences during adolescence and young adulthood.
Dr. Padilla-Walker joins this episode of the Church News podcast to help us discover how positive behaviors can both replace and protect against negative behaviors and how sacred living strategies can help families stay stronger and happier.
Dr. Padilla-Walker, thank you for joining us today on the Church News podcast.
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Thank you so much for having me.
12:11
Jon Ryan Jensen: I want to start by asking you, from your perspective as a researcher and seeing all the things that you have seen throughout your career, what are some of the challenges that you see of being a teenager today?
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: I think there’s several challenges, and some of them are opportunities and challenges at the same time. So, I think media is one of those. It can be a wonderful opportunity in a variety of ways, but I also think that it can create distractions. So one of the things I think is more challenging for this generation is distraction. There’s lots of things that can lead them in lots of different directions, and that can be really positive, but it can also be a challenge.
Another thing I thought of was there’s a great deal of misinformation. That’s another thing, another consequence of the media landscape as it is today. And so, young people are faced with needing to really have high-quality information literacy and good critical thinking in order to figure out what their values are and what they believe. So that can also be challenging.
3:20
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that you bring that up, because misinformation is something that is not just a problem or challenge that youth and young adults face, but it’s something that all individuals face right now, because there are so many channels where information can come at people. And so, knowing the way to vet information becomes more and more important for everyone.
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Absolutely.
Jon Ryan Jensen: For parents and for Church leaders specifically, what do you wish that they knew about how to help teens navigate that and kind of this informational and social media sphere?
3:57
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: I think that in my research, what I focus on is that just because teens aren’t getting into trouble or aren’t floundering in really visible ways doesn’t mean that they’re thriving and flourishing. And so that’s what I focus on in my research; rather than taking a deficit approach, I take a strengths approach. And so, sometimes I think as parents and leaders, we hold our breath and hope our youth aren’t getting into any trouble, and then if they’re not, we take a big sigh and we feel like things are OK, but we really want our youth to flourish.
And this is an amazing generation, and so there’s things that we can do and that we can look for to see. It’s not that they’re just not floundering, but we want them to thrive and flourish. So that’s what we focus on in terms of media, but also in terms of service and engagement in the community, is what I focus on in particular.
4:47
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, I am a parent of four teenagers. So, you look at that research, and you say, “Man, I wish that those parents of teenagers really could understand this.” What’s the thing that you would tell my wife and me that we should know as we look at our teenagers in our home?
5:02
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: The most important thing is to maintain the relationship. Whenever people ask me about what to do with a variety of teenage challenges, my first response is to maintain the relationship. In research, it comes down to the quality of the relationship every time. And part of what that is is because, especially as teens get into mid and late adolescents, they should have quite a bit of autonomy. And so, as a parent, the only way you really know what they’re doing is if they tell you, and the only way that they’re going to share with you what they’re doing is if you have a good relationship with them.
So, this doesn’t mean that you’re permissive and that you’re their best friend and you let them do whatever they want, but it does mean that you listen to them and you seek to understand and you avoid controlling approaches and punitive behaviors, and you’re someone that they trust and want to share what’s going on in their life, and then you don’t overreact when they tell you something that they did wrong or a mistake that they made, so that then they’re willing to talk to you the next time.
6:01
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love the way you brought that up. It reminded me of something that I saw just yesterday on social media, a former professional football player who I follow on social media. And he said that there are lots of parents who ask him, “How do I talk to my kids about that game that they just played? I saw this play that didn’t go wrong, and they didn’t listen to their coach in this moment, and how do I tell them?” And he said, “Listen, if you already have a good relationship with your children, they’ll come to you and say, “Man, I really should have listened to my coach and messed that up.”
They know when they’ve made a mistake, and if you as a parent are telling them that they made a mistake on the field, it’s going to make them feel less comfortable coming to you, because they think that you already see everything they do. And I think it relates to this, because in the same way, if you already have a good relationship with them, they may be more prone to come to you where you’re not seeing every “play,” quote unquote, that they make on social media or in their content consumption.
And so, if you don’t have that good relationship, they don’t know they can come and have a conversation.
7:02
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Right. And if every time they talk to you, you’re pointing out a flaw or a criticism or even just well meaning something that they could do better, then that starts to feel like an interaction that maybe they would prefer to avoid. And so the more that we can point out the positive things that they’re doing — and this is true from toddlers all the way up to teenagers, into adulthood as well — but the more we can point out the positive things that they’re doing, the more that those things are going to be nurtured, and the more likely our children are to want to talk with us.
7:33
Jon Ryan Jensen: Yeah, I’m absolutely guilty of this. Why do you think it is that it’s so natural for parents to point out some of those negative things or those things that we saw go wrong?
7:41
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Well, partly, it’s natural for our brains to be attracted to negative things, to really either a negative or positive sort of extreme. So it’s natural for us to worry about those things. It’s natural for us to be concerned. There is a good reason that lots of research takes a deficit approach, because when children make mistakes, or when there’s challenges, there’s consequences to those. And so, as parents, when we see our children going down a path that we know isn’t going to end well, we tend to want to intervene.
When Sister Tamara W. Runia gave a talk a couple years ago in general conference, she said, “Worry looks a lot like love, but it’s not the same.” So when we’re worrying about our kids and tending to be critical of them, she also mentioned that she decided to just speak positively to her kids — and she had young adult children — when they were with her, instead of pointing out all the things that they were doing wrong.
So, I think we worry about their future. We worry about the decisions that they’re making. We can see what’s going to happen, but agency is such an important principle, and we need to allow our children to learn, and we need to be there when they make mistakes and let them know that we love them and can be a sounding board as they work through that learning process.
8:56
Jon Ryan Jensen: A couple of years ago, I was talking with a friend who came to this realization with his own teenagers, when one of his children made a decision that, as a dad, he felt really hung up on because he wished his child had made a different decision.
He said, “I realized that in the workplace, I preach to my team members that we need to celebrate each other’s successes, and we need to make sure that we see each other doing good and right things. And at home, I wasn’t doing the same thing. And so when my son made this decision that I was disappointed in, he didn’t know how to approach me, and I didn’t know how to react to him. And when we had our conversation about that decision, he said, ‘Well, I don’t feel like I ever get told that I’ve done something right,’” and that was so hard for him as a father to come to that realization.
So, when we look at our children and we’re wanting to recognize them for the things they do right, but also aren’t sure if they really are flourishing or not, how can we navigate that with balance with our kids?
10:02
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Yes, so I think one of the things as parents that we can do is give our children, from an early age, an opportunity to thrive. And that’s what leaders can do as well, is we’re not micromanaging or super structuring our children’s days, but put them in situations where they can thrive, and then as often as possible, look for the good. Are we taking a strengths approach to our own children and our own relationships, or are we taking a deficit approach?
So, we can create these situations where our children have the opportunity to thrive. For example, we can give them opportunities to serve in the community, we can organize temple trips, we can have them involved in extracurricular activities, and then we can be really cognizant of how many positive things we’ve said to them. In the literature, you hear in marriage relationships things like, “You should have five positive comments for every one negative comment.” I don’t know if there’s an actual research around the precise number, but it’s helpful as a parent to think, “How many positive things have I said to my child today?”
And as I was even preparing for this podcast, I was thinking, “I don’t do a very good job of this with my child, or any of my children, for that matter.” I have one still at home, and I think if you were to ask him, he would say that I’m much more nitpicky in talking about how his hair isn’t brushed or he hasn’t dressed in the right outfit, or whatever my issue is for the day, rather than really stopping to just praise him about something that he’s done well.
11:23
Jon Ryan Jensen: When I was in college, I had an institute teacher, and you reminded me of something that he said along the same lines, because he said, “Heavenly Father provided us the scriptures to give us a road map for how we should make good decisions in our lives.” He said, “Sometimes we mistake those individuals who are in the scriptures for being near perfect individuals.” But he said, “The reality may be closer to the fact that Heavenly Father is putting in those positive experiences where they made good decisions to reinforce the fact that you can make good decisions in challenging situations.”
And to your point, He has more mentions in there of the Savior and His characteristics than He does of Satan and his characteristics, because He wants us to emulate those good characteristics over the bad characteristics.
12:12
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Exactly. And even if a child is struggling, getting them involved in positive things, they might still have a serious struggle, but that’s not incompatible with also doing positive things. So service, in particular, I study what I call prosocial behavior, which is voluntary behavior meant to benefit another. So it can be helping behavior, emotional support, community service, temple work and family history is service. Children benefit from being involved in service, regardless of what other things they might be struggling with.
And my research has also shown, my research and research of those who collaborate with me, that there’s a lot of protective benefits for young people to be involved in service, even if there’s other things that they still might be struggling with.
12:53
Jon Ryan Jensen: What is a protective benefit? What does that mean?
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: So, when youth get involved in service, we found that it can protect against a variety of things. So that means we see lower levels of depression, lower levels of suicidality, lower levels of externalizing behaviors — which are things like delinquency — lower levels of aggression.
And we’ve looked at this in a variety of studies and found that some of the mechanisms or reasons that serve as this protective is through two pathways. One is that it builds relationships. So if you’re serving your family members or if you’re serving people in the community, that’s building relationships with those individuals, and relationships are really strongly protective against those negative outcomes.
The other mechanism through which it seems to be protective is through character strengths, such as self-esteem or gratitude or perseverance. So as young people serve, they learn that they’re valuable and that they’re needed, and so they gain self-esteem and self-efficacy, because they realize that people are benefited because of the gifts that they have. And it can be really healing, and it can also help them to get outside themselves and think about the challenges of other people, especially when they’re serving in the community, but even when they’re serving in their own families.
14:07
Jon Ryan Jensen: You know, 20-30 years ago, there were a lot of people who talked about positive mental attitude and just “snapping out of it” and “be happy.” And what I hear you saying is it’s less about trying to encourage them to flip a switch and more about putting them in the situation where they can act, serve, and because of the act, then they feel happier as a result of that service. Is that more or less correct?
14:31
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Yes, in the moment, and then also over time they’re building relationships and building self-esteem, which helps to protect against these things.
I do want to be really clear that just like positive attitude is not a cure for serious mental health challenges, neither is service. So there are certainly other helps that young people and all of us who struggle with mental health need. But this is another piece that we found that can help, is to get people — a lot of our young people, again, we assume if they’re in the basement on their tablet, they’re home, they’re safe. We know that a lot fewer kids are out getting into trouble, and more of them are home, but that doesn’t mean that they’re thriving and doing well. A lot of young people are really isolated, and they don’t have as many relationships, especially since COVID.
And so, helping them to get out, even — they won’t maybe want to at first. I don’t know that the youth service project is always everyone’s most favorite thing or most-looked-toward activity. But we can also create activities that are especially meaningful. So there’s going to be some service activities where you don’t ever engage with another person versus another service activity where you are building relationships. Relationships are so important. So, as a leader or a parent, thinking about activities that are meaningful for young people. And again, as parents, you don’t have to go off to a different country and serve someone else. You can serve just in your neighborhood and find opportunities for your children to connect. And over time, we’ve seen that that can really help.
The last study that we did was looking at kids when they were teenagers all the way into their 20s, and we found that that service — it was towards family members, in this study — we found that that service was protective against depression and suicidal ideation multiple years later. So there really seems to be something protective against getting outside yourself and repeatedly engaging in helping behavior.
16:21
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, how do you explain that to teenagers themselves, if you were to be talking to them and not just their parents? Because I don’t imagine that I can talk to my son and say, “I’m going to help you engage in a protective behavior.” It’s not going to go over very well.
So, how do you talk to them in a way that helps them see that what you’re trying to get them to do is beneficial to them long term?
16:43
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: I’m not even sure that that’s the goal. I think in some ways, it might be better to help them to understand how important they are, that people need them. So even when you look at “Why is it important to go to church?” we know that President Dallin H. Oaks had a talk where he suggested that we don’t necessarily only go to church for us. We’re also attending church for other people. We want to be looking for those who need us.
And so, when my 12-year-old son says he doesn’t feel like going to church, I might say, “Well, I don’t always feel like going either, buddy, but I wonder if there’s someone there who might want to see you or might need to see you today,” and “How about we are prayerful while we go to church and see if maybe there’s someone whose life we can bless by being there?”
So, helping them to realize that there’s others who need them, that they have gifts that the Lord has given them that they can share with others, and that’s going to happen through service or through attending church or through building those relationships.
17:36
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that thought. Our ward is, I think, one of many that has started to have the youth, young men and young women of the ward welcome members as they come to sacrament meeting.
And I think the feeling in the beginning might have been similar of, “Why do I need to do this?” But they’ve started to feel — we happen to have an assisted living center, or kind of a retirement community, in our ward, and for those individuals who don’t get a lot of interaction during the day, this can be a really positive thing, where you’re building and creating relationships that otherwise wouldn’t exist, and you now have enlarged your personal circle. And they’re super positive with those youth who are stepping out of their circles.
And so, I can see a lot of those things happening right now in wards around the world who are doing that same thing.
18:27
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Yeah, the teenage years are a time where young people are really working on forming their identities, and there can be a lot of insecurity and a lot of comparison. And this is an opportunity for — especially if you’re looking at service within the community — this is an opportunity for young people to engage with adults who can tell them about the wonderful characteristics they see in them that they’re not going to get necessarily from their peers at school in the way that we might hope, and that they’re not going to believe from us as their parents, because we’re their parents, so when we tell them these wonderful things, they might blow it off. But they’re building these relationships and then seeing that they’re needed. I think that’s what we all need to thrive, I think.
19:08
Jon Ryan Jensen: Yeah. I think we all do, for sure. The Church itself also has 80,000 missionaries in its global missionary force currently serving missions.
Is there any advice that you would have for missionaries that could help them flourish during their service, perhaps?
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: I think there’s a couple of things I would say. The first is to trust that the Lord will magnify what you’re doing. This is a little more personal, less based on my research, but a lot of times, I think missionaries feel pressure to talk to a certain number of people or baptize a certain number of people, and they can really feel the same thing we were discussing with teenagers; they can feel low self-efficacy or low self-worth.
But when I was investigating the Church in my 20s — actually, before I was investigating the Church — there was a missionary who I just bumped into in Mexico, and he shared a very brief testimony with me, and I never saw him again in my life. But three months later when the missionaries knocked on my door, I only talked to them because this young man had spoken to me. So, sometimes we have no idea what influence we’re having.
So, the first thing I would say to missionaries is just have faith in the Lord. This is the most important work that we’re doing. We know that our Prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, has told us that gathering scattered Israel is the most important work that we’re doing, all of us, in the world. And so, they can trust that the Lord has got this. And even if all they did was bear a testimony that day, you just never know the influence that it has on someone.
The other thing I would tell them, based on my research, is serve. So, when we look at the Savior’s life, it was all about service. And many of the great missionaries in the Book of Mormon and other scriptures served as one of the primary things that they did. So, my son, my oldest son, served a service mission, and towards the end of the service mission, his mission was one where the Church was bringing together more harmony between the teaching and the service missions. And I just think it’s a beautiful change that we’re seeing, where the Savior taught and the Savior served. And I think all missionaries should be doing both of those things.
And if you think about your mission service as service, and whether or not you’re teaching anyone at that moment, you can always serve someone. And I’ve just heard anecdotal stories, but I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal stories that when missionaries are really struggling, if they just take some time to do some service and see the benefit that their service is on others, it really helps them to see the Lord’s hand in the lives of the people that they’re serving.
21:40
Jon Ryan Jensen: I know that your research focuses on the youth, but all of those things that you just said — I’m not a youth anymore; my wife says maybe I act like one, but that’s a different story — but all of those things you just said, I felt. I felt like there’s some of those things that I can do better.
Do you see a lot of crossover, perhaps among colleagues who are finding the same benefits for adults that you’ve studied in youth and adolescents?
22:08
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Yes. So, we do see prosocial behavior and service being a positive thing at all age groups. I’ve also studied young adults quite a bit, so we find these same patterns into young adulthood. I think these are pretty human things for us to benefit from.
I also think that another issue, though, is that there are personality differences in people, so some of us — so my son, for example, is one of the most extroverted people you’ll ever meet, and so being a front door greeter is a great job for him. I’m very introverted, so that is less comfortable for me. But there’s different service as adults or young people that we can engage in that matches our personality, or maybe pushes us just a little bit out of our comfort zone, that can help us to build those relationships.
As leaders and parents, it’s helpful to understand that if you have a really anxious child, for example, or a really shy child, maybe there’s a different service. Or as an adult, if there’s things that — maybe family history is your thing, or you need to find the service that matches your talents and your passions. And I think there’s something for all of us that we can do to experience these benefits.
23:07
Jon Ryan Jensen: Yeah, I love that you explain that, because especially when you mention that there were changes socially that we experienced during COVID, I think it’s equally important for us to recognize that if we changed it one direction during COVID, we can change it back the other direction, or in whatever direction it needs to go post-COVID.
And a lot of people have said, “Well, I became more introverted during that time,” but I’ve talked with a lot of Church leaders who say, “COVID actually gave me a chance to really focus on some of those people who I didn’t get to see as frequently, and they actually became more extroverted.” And so, not becoming a victim of the circumstance, but learning to embrace where you are and where you want to be can be helpful too, right?
23:46
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Yeah, I agree. And we’ve done two studies now since COVID, and I’ve seen an interesting shift in the protective role of service towards family compared to strangers or people in the community.
And I’m not sure if it’s COVID or — we did one study with 14 different countries, and we looked at service towards strangers, service towards friends and service towards family. And across the 14 countries, the only thing that was protective, it was during COVID, was service towards family members. And then we just finished another one with the one I was mentioning, where the kids were teenagers at the beginning, and then they were in their 20s at the end. And it was service towards family that was particularly protective against depression and against suicidality.
And so, I think there’s also, service doesn’t have to be to someone in the community, although I think that’s wonderful, and there’s plenty of studies showing that that is really protective as well. But there’s ways within your own family that you can help your children feel that they are needed in your family. So, when my son complains about doing chores, I might say to him, “We need your help in the family. Every member of the family needs to contribute, and you have such important things. You vacuum so well. I really need your help on this.”
Jon Ryan Jensen: That’s me; I’m the vacuumer.
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Yes. So there’s lots of ways we can do this even in our own families that also builds relationships. So, this might not be surprising, but young people who are really service oriented within their families a year later have better relationships with their mothers. I think mothers really appreciate that service orientation, and then that’s related to a lot of protection having a positive relationship with your parents.
25:14
Jon Ryan Jensen: Wow. That is really fascinating to hear, and perhaps encouraging for some parents who feel like they spend a lot of time begging and pleading, but long term, there can be some really good benefits to it.
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: It is supposed to be voluntary behavior, prosocial behavior, but I think over time, if they’re serving — even if it’s not always with the truest of intentions — you’re going to build those relationships, if you can. Again, if my son is vacuuming and I’m nagging him the whole time and telling him how he’s not doing it well enough, I suspect that is not going to be a positive experience. But if I find opportunities for him to thrive within the home, for him to feel esteem and valued in the way that he’s helping, then I think those can be really positive experiences for us all.
25:54
Jon Ryan Jensen: So I won’t tell my daughters that they need to have the perfectly straight lines that I have when I vacuum. That’s good. I’ll note that. No, they do a great job.
Dr. Padilla-Walker, this is all really helpful information for everybody. Is there any kind of help that you would offer perhaps to Church leaders as they’re in some of these roles? I know there can be a delicate balance between what leaders are attempting to do and what parents are attempting to do in their home.
Is there some advice that you would give, maybe, to leaders and parents of how they can work together as they’re helping the youth?
26:27
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Well, I think communication is really important between leaders and parents and youth, because we know from research that when youth are getting similar messages from multiple places, they’re more likely to understand a message and internalize it. It’s not always the case that leaders and parents would be giving the same message, but as much as we can coordinate those positive messages.
I also think — I’m sounding like a broken record, but coming back to what I said before, is — for leaders, the most important thing is also the relationship. So, sometimes I think we get so caught up in someone’s behavior and correcting their behavior that we forget that they’re a person to be loved and that they oftentimes, if there’s a young person acting out, they probably need that love and relationship more than any of the other youth that you’re working with.
So, building a relationship, really being prayerful about trying to see this young person the way that the Lord sees them and to see their potential as parents, I think this is really important too, and charity that we all need to pray for as we’re interacting with young people and just build those strong relationships.
Because even if they’re struggling and even if they’re wandering or having challenges, they will remember how they felt about you and how you felt about them. They might not remember the lectures that you gave them, and they might not remember the specific scriptures that you read them, but they’ll remember that they felt loved and welcomed, and those relationships can be really healing for them, either current or in the long run.
27:54
Jon Ryan Jensen: All very helpful. For parents and leaders who are looking for a tool or a resource to perhaps engage in some of these kinds of activities that you’re suggesting, is there one that stands out to you that could be helpful to them?
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: One thing that comes to mind is the website JustServe.org. If your child and your family decide that serving in the community is the best thing, you can get on JustServe.org, and there’s a variety of local opportunities that you can get involved in with your family. And I would recommend letting the young people choose what sounds most interesting to them, and maybe that’s what you do for your family night.
But it’s a great resource where you can either have service opportunities that you put on JustServe, or you can go there and look for opportunities to serve. And there’s so many right there in your local community that you can choose from, from making blankets to babysitting kids with special needs. There’s just a variety of things that are right there at your fingertips.
28:49
Jon Ryan Jensen: Yeah, I love that one. We’ve done a number of articles on TheChurchNews.com where people can see that JustServe clubs have been popping up at high schools all over the country. And one of the reasons that the youth will say they love starting a club like that is because it’s not cause-driven, where there’s a specific service activity they’re always doing. It’s just, “Hey, we’re teenagers who want to serve. We’re going to find the activity, the service activity, that we can engage in,” and it can be different week to week, month to month or school year to school year.
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Yeah. And we know from “The Doctrine of Belonging” that has been shared with us that serving is one of the central ways that we can find belonging. And I think we all need belonging, but our young people especially need to find that belonging, and one way we can do that is through serving with one another.
29:31
Jon Ryan Jensen: Love that. Well, Dr. Padilla-Walker, thank you for coming in to talk with us on the Church News podcast today. We have a tradition on the podcast where we like to give our guests the last word and hear perhaps your testimony as it relates to that which you have studied.
So, I’ll give you a chance to answer that question: What do you know now that you have studied about these youth and young adults and flourishing?
29:57
Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker: Thank you. I think that as I’ve worked in this area, it’s important to remember that young people are doing amazing. We know that this is a generation that has been reserved for this time. And despite the fact that there are some challenges that they face, I think it’s important, for me, to remember that these are amazing spirits and amazing young people who, with the right support and autonomy given, will do exactly what they need, because they’ll have the Lord by their side. So if we can offer them some scaffolding and help them to build relationships with their Savior, then it’s my testimony that we will see miracles.
30:47
Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
