Recently I had the privilege of standing onstage watching my son receive scouting’s highest rank of Eagle. It was assuredly a proud papa moment, and a long time coming for him.
Reaching Eagle compels deliberate effort over several years’ time outside the classroom and absolutely cannot be reached without persistence—over 90 percent of scouts don’t earn the distinction, falling short as high school distractions typically present too much interference. But from the start, active scouts are made fully aware of the incremental achievements necessary over a protracted timeline.
I returned to this indomitable value of persistence following the Eagle ceremony and considered how it translates within a ubiquitous digital world that incredulously creeps even further, day by day, into everyone’s lives—see artificial intelligence. I was struck how physical dedication to achieving a long-term goal, like pursuing an Eagle rank, stands miles apart in a culture for children where digital feedback and instantaneous gratification or stimulation constantly permeates everything.
A digital screen time study with 12-to 17-year-olds conducted in 2025 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention cites a finding riddled with consequential health problems that include irregular weight concerns, depression and anxiety symptoms, infrequent social and emotional support and insufficient peer support.
If one described the digital world as swimming at neck-breaking speed downstream, the scouting program, implemented in the United States beginning in 1910, propels teenagers counter-culturally upstream. Across Mississippi there are around 30 established troop units, and scouting opportunities—albeit not perfect—present more than a healthy outlet for adolescents. They offer a refreshing, constructive oasis.
Scouting activities, which can be falsely believed to be restricted to camping trips, that include interpersonal leadership development and both life-saving and outdoor survival skills are not just rarefied—they are more aptly endangered species in the 21st century. Scouting values also instill prudent character growth.
The highlight of my son’s scouting years, he says, was backpacking and paddling with fellow scouts over several days in the West Virginia mountains. The trek demanded physical preparation, securing and relying on minimalist, lightweight packing and forging an adventuresome drive that wouldn’t permit quitting when challenged by a rugged environment.
It was an experience he, like millions of other teens, would otherwise unlikely undertake unprompted. No cell phones, no tablets, no internet connection: their Google search engines were replaced with a handheld compass, a map and dependence on each other.
Their challenge demanded problem solving without the click of a mousepad.
I am greatly appreciative of what scouting has fostered in my son, and because of it, I am an advocate for the program for teenagers everywhere who would arguably benefit from it more than any time in modern history.
I recall watching a TV interview about a decade ago when the acclaimed presidential biographer Edmund Morris told a prescient anecdote illustrating the transformative influence of a digital world superseding reality. While attending a high school graduation dinner in San Francisco, students, awed over an impressive photo of the Golden Gate Bridge lit brightly under a moonlit sky, all pulled out their iPhones to snap pictures of the magnificent depiction on the wall.
A short time later Morris acutely observed that the same group hardly mentioned nor bothered to snap photos of the actual Golden Gate as their van transported them across it. For them securing the illusion—an image twice removed—proved sufficient, if not superior, to the real thing in front of them.
What’s artificial, no doubt, has prominently replaced what’s authentic.
It’s unfortunate that that’s where most of us have landed today: intolerably subservient to convenience and a demand for responses faster than a clock’s ticking. Here’s to a genuine hope that we, and especially our children, are encouraged to pursue evasive aspects of living where time slows to a crawl, meaningful existence is joyfully discovered and challenges are conquered alternatively offline and independently.
Our health, our happiness and our future may depend on tying (a square knot) around this important endeavor.
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