GET HIM OFF ALL SOCIAL MEDIA!!
Take his phone away
Send him to a place like Outward Bound (builds confidence).
NO computers!
put him in a teenage Marine Devil Dog School
Not necessarily.
When my middle son went through deep depression as a teen, the ONLY lifeline he had were his friends on social media.
He's told me since that had he not had that he would have committed suicide.
He felt unable to talk to us. Often teens do feel this way-- "My parents don't understand me..." -- and in my case, I made it worse.
I knew bad influences were preying on him, and I had been praying to God to separate him from them, and knew that he was thinking wrong, negative, depressing thoughts. I'd been thinking a lot about the verse that says, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" as well as the old sayings about choosing which voices to listen to--and knew he was listening to the wrong voices---Satan speaking to him through influences around him to foster wrong thoughts and negative emotions, and he was listening to his voice instead of the positive voice of God's spirit in his heart.
One night he asked me if he could talk to me alone, and though astounded, I gratefully agreed. After everyone else had gone to bed, we sat down to talk, and my son soon dissolved in tears. Between sobs, he told me he felt so bad because he had such angry feelings toward his older brother (my blind son) and that he knew he shouldn't, and he DID love him, but.....
I know now what he was
really struggling with was feeling that he came in perpetually second-place in our--his parents'--love and priorities, because we had to spend so much extra time and effort in working with our oldest special-needs son. That was a reality that couldn't be helped---but he was feeling that we didn't love him, or not as much as we loved his brother.
The Holy Spirit was just about shouting inside me to shut up and JUST LISTEN. But, in my pride that I knew what he needed to hear (the above), I started in on how he'd been listening to Satan trying to tempt him through wrong thoughts / voices.
He totally mis-heard me, interpreted my words to say I was thinking he was demon-possessed (under demonic
attack, yes, but not meaning
that)--and he totally closed down on me.
It took YEARS to undo the damage I did that night.
If I had it to do over again, I'd have done what the Lord TOLD me to do:
Ask him to talk.
Sit still and shut up while he did.
Then tell him I love him--and GOD loves him--and NOTHING he can do or has ever done can make God un-love him.
And that he is a person of worth, of value, and that he matters, and God has a wonderful future in store for him.
And KEEP telling him that.
I don't know if my terrible mistake will help you---but for what it's worth I am praying for you, and for him.
And never, never, never stop praying---pray a HEDGE OF PROTECTION around him in the Name and through the blood of Jesus, and quoting Scriptures to bind Satan in your prayer such as "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace" and "there has no temptation taken you (including the temptation to despair) that is not common to man, but God WILL make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it", "those that the Father has given Me are Mine, and no one can take them out of My Father's hand," "the Devil comes only to steal, kill, and destroy; I have come that they may have Life, and have it more abundantly," and "For this purpose the Son of Man came--to destroy the works of the devil."
My son today is a fine young man--still growing and searching, but he belongs to the Lord who has him in His hands.