A recent piece in The Washington Post observes the growing phenomenon of "cool" parenting—complete with selfies. There's just one problem though. Being a cool parent isn't "doing kids any favors." Writer Andrew Reiner observes: "[C]ool has been morphing from a political statement to a self-serving, at times desperate, need to simply fit in with a culture of conformity.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the place where our children spend most of their time, the Internet. A big part of cool today means curating a Photoshop-perfect (read: Extraordinary) image in social media, staying constantly looped into whatever pop culture news has gone viral and blithely dropping pithy, snarky tweets and text messages, as if this was the way we talk all of the time. In other words, you're cool if you're relevant." He sees cool parenting as an extension of Facebook "like" culture, a dumbing down of individual morality and backbone, and a pooling of "right" and relevance based on perceived popular opinion.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What kids (and all of us) need isn't another thumbs up. It's an example of backbone and conscientious integrity.