For little Sam, it’s the perfect moment to play. Big, magical snowflakes are whirling outside, and she’s determined to build a snowman with her family.
But her mom is glued to a laptop. Her dad is distracted, too, talking on his phone. Sam’s older brother is absorbed in a video game.
Many parents can recognize this scene. But it isn’t just a slice of family life in the digital age—it’s the origin story behind the Legends of Evergreen Hills, Chick-fil-A’s kids’ show.
At the end of the short film, Sam’s family rediscovers quality time, and they build a snowman together. The message is simple: Spend meaningful time with the people you love, delighting in creation and each other, unmediated by screens or the digital shadow-world.
But it’s easy to imagine an alternate ending. What if, instead of trudging into the snow with their daughter, Sam’s parents had handed her a screen of her own—where she could, perhaps, explore cow-themed video games and wholesome TV shows on the couch next to her brother?
Chick-fil-A is telling more of Sam’s story, with a full series that aims to teach young viewers to be attentive and kind. But some Christian families and entertainment experts say how Chick-fil-A is sharing that story—with Chick-fil-A Play, a new streaming and gaming app for kids—undercuts its message.
“The ways in which the app just adopts the existing business model of delivering content is not something that is particularly innovative or helpful to families,” said Felicia Wu Song, a cultural sociologist who studies how today’s families use technology.
Chick-fil-A states no fewer than five times in its press release that the app is intended to help families connect, suggesting that parents use it at home, in the car, during meals, and anywhere in between.
A sampling: The app offers “new ways for families to have fun, connect and spend time together,” it is “designed for parents and kids to share and experience together,” it will feature “fun and unique content made to be shared both within the app and in-person,” and it will encourage families to “make the most of the moments they have with each other.”
The family-friendly messaging is familiar to Chick-fil-A loyalists (as is Evergreen Hills, whose animated clips have come up in Chick-fil-A’s commercials and restaurant app in recent years, especially around Christmas).
Founded by Christian businessman Truett Cathy, Chick-fil-A has a long history of serving chicken alongside moral lessons. In the 1990s, kids’ meals came with Focus on the Family’s Adventures in Odyssey tapes. The chain has also offered VeggieTales CDs, a book series about Joseph, and books adapted from PBS’s Adventures from the Book of Virtues.
Evergreen Hills isn’t evangelizing viewers, though its episodes focus on virtues that overlap with Christianity. The app is also filled with wholesome content and plenty of reminders to be present with family members. It includes recipes, craft ideas, conversation starters, and prompts to play charades.
But parents may default to using this app not for connection but as a quick fix for restless children, who could be distracted by an animated show or a cow tractor-racing game long enough for parents to eat their waffle fries or send emails in peace.
Song told Christianity Today that the company’s goal of encouraging family time reminds her of other apps that are supposed to help with the most basic functions of life—such as apps to help people who feel overwhelmed by their digital devices to sleep or meditate. “There’s a strange way in which one looks to technology for deliverance from technology,” she said.
Song, author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age, said she hopes the app’s components like conversation starters can become natural enough for people to not need to rely on their devices at all. “It’s just going to get us past the friction point,” Song said. “And then hopefully we can have other resources, whether it’s from our community or a faith community.”
So far, the Chick-fil-A Play app has over 50,000 downloads (and mixed reviews) in Google Play and ranks 55th in the entertainment category the Apple App Store.
“Chick-fil-A is being really thoughtful about wanting to create a product that is about serving families rather than most everything else on the market, which is more escapist,” said Katelyn Walls Shelton—the most enthusiastic Chick-fil-A fan I know.
A mom of four young kids, Shelton hosted her twin sons’ birthday party at Chick-fil-A. During road trips, her family sometimes opts to do all three meals there. But she said she’s more likely to stick with the restaurant playgrounds rather than hand her kids the phone.
“That is what I think of as making the most of the moments with your family: sharing a meal together and playing together in the real world,” she said.
“The reality of the matter is that you’re using this app on a phone that is a personal device. As I found already with my children, it’s very difficult for them to play together because only one person gets to hold the phone.”
As screen time becomes more pervasive at meals, some Christians see it as distinctive for families to focus on each other rather than devices when they eat together.
“The church should be a space where that’s our norm,” said O. Alan Noble, professor at Oklahoma Baptist University and author of Disruptive Witness, which examines how to live faithfully in a distracted age. “We respect and love and recognize the dignity of each other so much, that when we eat meals, we are together, we are present, that we give each other attention, that we’re looking each other in the eyes, that we’re talking to one another.”
As a parent, he said, he understands that’s not always possible—but it should be the goal.
“There’s always going to be some excuse technology is going to offer to be away from the present moment, and it’s going to seem virtuous,” he said. “But the true virtuous thing to do is to be in the present moment with the people that you’re with.”
Still, some Christian parents have been looking for worry-free, wholesome entertainment for their kids to watch or their families to enjoy together, with Christian streamers coming up against free content on YouTube and media juggernauts like Disney.
Evergreen Hills on Chick-fil-A Play could be a start. Its first full episode states the show’s values outright: kindness, humility, compassion, perseverance, patience, sacrifice, and courage.
The show’s “bespectacled, white-haired ‘Timekeeper’ character is a throwback to Whit in the brand’s first big success, Adventures in Odyssey,” Fast Company wrote in its preview of the app, “but whereas the action in the earlier series sometimes occurred in Sunday school class, and Whit’s ice cream store was located symbolically atop an old church, the new show contains all kinds of fantasy tropes … set to a dramatic score.”
One of Evergreen Hills’s executive producers is Aaron Johnston, a Mormon who serves as Chick-fil-A’s creative director for brand entertainment. Johnston was previously a showrunner for a sci-fi series on BYUtv, a family-friendly channel from Brigham Young University.
“Nothing brings me greater happiness in this life than spending time with my wife and kids as we play and laugh and connect together,” he wrote on LinkedIn when the app launched last month. “I feel truly blessed to work for a company that recognizes that precious gift of time with loved ones and creates tools to help make it more meaningful.”
For VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer, there is value in presenting a show aligned with Christian values. If a fast-food company can create fun and meaningful moments for kids, he said he’s all for it.
Vischer remembered a conversation he had with philosopher Dallas Willard after VeggieTales:
“I wanted to take kids deeper into their faith than I ever did with VeggieTales. And I said, ‘I’m wondering how to teach kids Christianity, because I think all I did with VeggieTales was teach kids Christian values,’” he told CT. “And Dallas looked at me and said, ‘Well, isn’t that a part of Christianity?’”
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