Youth leaders seek to connect Gen Alpha with the gospel

This year, Gen Alpha hits the road.

That’s right — the oldest members of the generation born between 2010 and 2024 turn 16 in 2026. That also means they are likely to make up a significant number of students in your youth ministry.

Born the same year as the iPad and Instagram, Gen Alpha has grown up in a digital world.

In 2024, the youth evangelism organization OneHope released a report on Gen Alpha, sharing research gleaned from surveys with 466 internet-using 11-13-year-olds in the United States.

The study found that Gen Alpha was “spending an average of four hours six minutes online daily outside of schoolwork” and would spend more time online if possible, gaming, chatting and using social media.

Another study by Springtide Research Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit that researches young people, found “nearly all 13-year-olds say they have a smartphone, and nearly half agree they are ‘addicted to it.’” That finding came from a survey of 1,112 13-year-olds in 2024.

With youth ministries increasingly serving Gen Alpha, we talked with two leaders who navigate this with their own students each week.

John Walton serves as the youth minister at First Southern Baptist Church at Sahuaro Ranch in Glendale, and Josh Seth is the director of student ministries at Happy Valley Baptist Church in Glendale.

Since the beginning of last year, Walton and Seth, along with First Southern’s executive pastor, Andrew Marchbanks, have also hosted the podcast “What Are You Doing?” supported by the Arizona Mission Network. In each episode, they discuss challenges and questions in student ministry, sometimes asking leaders around the state to weigh in on a topic.

And while there is great variety within any generation, here are some of their observations about serving Gen Alpha.

Happy Valley students worship at a D-Now weekend.

They’re curious

“We’ve got a bunch of Bereans,” Walton said. “They’re willing to search it out. But they might search on Google and not in Scripture.”

Springtide found in its 2024 survey of 13-year-olds that nearly all of them had at least heard about artificial intelligence, with many utilizing it for schoolwork, “information-seeking, artistic expression, gaming and companionship.”

And while students are willing to look things up, there’s also a tendency to view everything as a meme, Walton said. “You have to teach them how to use the internet well.”

They’re looking for connection

Limiting phone usage started as a disciplinary measure in Seth’s group, but it has since led to real connection.

“They desire connection, and they really want someone to like them,” Seth said. “I think there’s a deep sense of identity insecurity that we find with a lot of these students. They can get the immediate satisfaction of someone paying attention to them or liking what they post online, but that doesn’t develop relationships … the satisfaction is temporary.”

Seth and Walton both point to the impact of the pandemic on some students. In 2020, the older members of Gen Alpha were 10-year-olds in 4th or 5th grade.

“To give an example, I have one student who got pulled out of school during COVID and never went back,” Walton said. “They were already more technology-oriented, but because they didn’t grow up with social relationships, sometimes they don’t value them.”

Students from Happy Valley Church connect over Bible study at a Winterfresh camp.

It starts with trust

In some ways, Gen Alpha is like every generation, with teens struggling to figure out where they belong and whether to make their parents’ faith their own, Seth said.

Springtide’s research found 82 percent of 13-year-olds surveyed said they are at least “slightly spiritual,” while 74 percent said they are at least “slightly religious.”

“A lot of it comes down to the relationship aspect,” Walton said. “There are people who have questions, but if they don’t know someone, they might be too scared to check it out.”
Seth agreed.

“What these students … are starting to demonstrate is ‘I don’t want to hear from you until you’ve earned my respect,’” Seth said. “It puts more weight on the relationship. … Once that trust is established, because it’s not just a presumed trust, I’ve got a huge foot in the door when it comes to speaking into their lives.”

Johanna Moore is the Arizona Mission Network’s director of communications and editor of Connect. She is a member of Mountain View Baptist Church in Tucson.