Those of you who read this blog regularly will recognize a few running themes that crop up consistently, and one of them is that parents need to exercise extreme caution with what sort of entertainment they allow their children to consume. These days, our culture’s storytellers have a distinct agenda, and that agenda often permeates the stories that they tell. The same parents who send their children to a Christian school to avoid state indoctrination are frequently happy to park their kids in front of screens where content produced by people who hate Christianity is streamed.
Yet another example is the 17-year-old YouTube megastar Jojo Siwa, who, the Christian outlet Disrn noted, is “known for her bubbly, uplifting, and clean songs and dances” and has just “announced that she now identifies as LGBT.” Although most adults have never heard of Siwa, she has a massive following among adolescents and children. She has 12.1 million YouTube subscribers and 10.4 million Instagram followers. Her fashion accessory company is aimed at 6- to 12-year-old girls, and children are obsessed with her products due to clever marketing and her peppy online personality.
Interestingly, Siwa doesn’t actually identify as gay. She has no idea what she is, she’s just certain she’s not straight. “I just always believed that my person was going to be my person,” Siwa informed her tween fans. “And if that person happened to be a boy, great, and if that happened to be a girl, great! Of course people are going to say it’s not normal, but nothing is normal. Literally not one thing about anybody is normal and it’s OK not to be normal, it’s OK to be a little different, it’s OK to be a little weird, strange, different. That’s something we should never, ever be afraid of. That’s something we should be proud of.” In short: “(N)o matter who you love … it’s OK.”
