The Adversary is Targeting Our Children’s Minds

There was a time when schools were not fortresses. When families did not live in fear of the next headline. When young men brought rifles to school for a shooting club and then bowed their heads in prayer before dinner with their families. Even just a few decades ago, the sight of a shotgun in the window of a student’s pickup truck did not cause panic. It was common. It was expected. Guns were not feared, they were respected. And in those same years, we did not see headlines filled with school shootings. We did not see so many young people lost in despair.

So what happened?

The guns did not change. What changed was how we treat the rising generation. Somewhere along the way, we stopped raising children with structure, purpose, and spiritual grounding, and instead began to medicate their emotions. We told parents that sadness, boredom, distraction, or restlessness were not part of growing up, but disorders to be diagnosed. And we began filling tiny bodies with synthetic chemicals that alter the brain, the body, and most dangerously of all, the soul.

This did not come from revelation. It did not come from God. It came from the world. And it has consequences.

Pharmaceuticals Are Replacing Faith, Parenting, and Personal Growth

We have created a generation of children and teenagers who are no longer taught to wrestle with their agency or endure the normal trials of adolescence, but instead are handed prescriptions that promise to numb the pain and flatten the emotions. This is not healing. This is spiritual avoidance.

Consider the average teen today. How many of these have been offered to them, or even pushed upon them by schools, doctors, or peers?

• Stimulants for focus that rewire the brain’s reward system

• Anti-anxiety medications that dull the emotional range

• Antidepressants that carry real warnings about suicidal thoughts

• Hormonal birth control that alters the natural rhythms of the body and mind

• Steroids for inflammation or athletic injury that throw off the body’s balance

• Acne medications linked to mental health side effects

• Sleep aids, allergy pills, migraine drugs—each with neurological effects, especially on young minds

We are not helping our children through these means. We are reshaping them in the image of the world, rather than teaching them to grow toward the image of Christ. And in that process, we are watching tragic patterns unfold. We see teenagers who no longer know who they are. We see emotional breakdowns, rising suicide rates, violence in schools, and families torn apart by confusion and despair.

And yet very few are asking whether this flood of pharmaceutical intervention is part of the problem.

We must ask. Because our silence is costing lives.

The Solution is Faith, Not Fear. God, Not Chemistry.

We believe in a Heavenly Father who sent us here with a plan. That plan includes agency, growth, trials, and learning. Not every emotion needs to be silenced. Not every child needs a diagnosis. Sometimes, what they need is a parent who listens. A church that teaches. A Savior who heals.

As Latter-day Saints, we are called to stand apart from the world—not to follow every trend that promises quick fixes or artificial peace. We are a people of faith, of repentance, of striving, and of trust in divine timing. That does not mean there is no place for medicine. It means we must discern with spiritual eyes whether something is leading us closer to Christ or pulling us further away.

If we continue allowing the world to drug the agency out of our children, we will continue to see tragedies. And not just school shootings, but something far deeper: the quiet loss of spiritual identity. The erosion of testimony. The rise of fear, confusion, and emotional numbness in a generation that desperately needs to know they are sons and daughters of God.

The answer is not more medication. The answer is more Christ.