Photo by Jess Zoerb on Unsplash
AI is developing fast, and it’s going to help us in many ways. But when it comes to kids and young people, there are two potential problems on which we need to stay laser focused.
First, this technology threatens humans’ cognitive abilities—some of which are weakened because of the extent to which we’re reliant on it. Young people, who are learning to learn, are at risk of using AI as a crutch, impairing their ability to develop the attention and persistence to think, reason and write well.
Second, and perhaps more worryingly, AI could impact our uniquely human abilities to connect and form relationships, which are already fraying (also to a large extent because of technology.) Relationships are vital to development. This post is about what we as parents can do to promote and protect them.
The skills gap problem
I saw this chart last week (thank you Sarah Dillard), and it immediately set off alarm bells in my brain:
The vertical axis shows how the world is demanding more of young people. The horizontal axis suggests those young people are not being prepared well to meet the challenge. (There are a series of complex reasons for this, including the ways schools and curricula work, as well as kids becoming over-reliant on tech.) Students have been losing academic ground since around 2010, with the problem accelerated by the pandemic. Of course, standardized tests are not the total measure of a young person—not even close. But we can still be alarmed that kids are doing worse on those tests, especially since the system is so focused on them.
Meanwhile mental health challenges, which make learning much harder, are on the rise. A lot of teachers, college professors and employers report that young people are less able to do things, including read a whole book. Attention and resilience feel in short supply at a moment when entry-level jobs are disappearing. We need young people who can do hard things: who are motivated to dig in and to persist, who know that struggle is part of learning and of life. But a lot of the time that’s not what we’re training our young people to be able to do. Instead, kids are performing worse academically, and are more disconnected from one another, from adults, and from the world around them.
The disconnection problem
Connectedness is central to human thriving. But, right now, in real life, young people are more disconnected than ever before. Tech is a factor: giving a generation of our kids smartphones and social media, in what amounts to a social experiment that we’re still trying to understand, has fractured attention (which is critical to learning), and cut a swathe through the building of family and community bonds. But it’s not just tech. Schools—where kids shape so much of their identity as learners, as social creatures, as capable humans, and as citizens—have not adapted fast enough to provide young people with learning opportunities that feel relevant and meaningful, or that offer them chances to grow and thrive (in the parlance of our book, to be Explorers).
Meanwhile a hypercompetitive world means we parents, from a place of love but also desperation, often double down on the measurable (grades, college admissions) and ignore the harder things: that kids need independence, meaningful experiences, and especially rich relationships, to grow and thrive. Development doesn’t happen only through acquiring content in classrooms: it happens in friendships and through the people we know and interact with; in jobs and having responsibility; and through making authentic contributions to the world we live in.
At the same time as competition ramps up, increased economic insecurity are making families less able to support young people.
Good news: we can do a lot on the human connection front.
The trouble with AI companions, assistants, personal tutors and more
The promise of AI is that it will help us solve problems. And yes: an AI assistant might help you cull your emails or manage your trips; or revolutionize work in exciting ways. But what AI can do for adults, and what AI might do for children, are entirely different conversations. If a machine writes your kids’ essays and promises them eternal friendship, for example, these are probably not efficiency gains you should be rooting for.
According to Nature, maybe half a billion people are already using AI companions, a number that will surely rise exponentially. An AI companion is an artificial intelligence that simulates human conversation to respond to people’s interests, needs, and queries. Examples include companies like character.ai and Replika, as well as Meta or Snap, which build AI into their core products. So what does it mean if kids and young people are using this technology — as they surely already are?
In a Brookings webinar, organized by my co-author Rebecca Winthrop, Isabelle Hau, executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, and Gaia Bernstein, co-director of the Institute for Privacy Protection at Seton Hall, dove into some of the risks and opportunities of AI companions and kids:
Relationships are key to learning
Hau explained how relationships build infants' brains, what happens when they are deprived of love and care, and how powerful relationships are in learning. “The presence of relationships and the number of strong relationships for high school students is one of the strongest predictions of motivation, engagement and persistence,” Hau said. And yet, “We continue to treat relationships as invisible in our systems of learning.” If we think kids can learn better from machines, we risk eroding human relationships and accelerating the cognitive decline we are already seeing.
Takeaway: Find ways for your kid to build relationships with anyone who supports their interests and learning: coaches, teachers, mentors, friends, pastors, rabbis, imams, relatives. These are the superglue of learning. These relationships act as a buffer for your child when things get hard, and supercharge opportunities for them to thrive.
One of the biggest reasons kids now use AI is for emotional support
For people overall, emotional support is now the number one use of AI, and young people won’t be far behind. This is dicey territory. If a middle schooler can have a relationship with an AI that is supportive, never awkward, always available, and frictionless, why would they deal with humans, who are messy, unpredictable, and might hurt their feelings? Maybe there is a place for AI in relationship-forming—to offer ideas when preparing for a tricky conversation with a friend, for example. But when that leads to not having the tricky conversation, we have a problem. Of course, our middle schooler might think: The AI is such a great friend! Why bother with an uncomfortable human one? But while an AI may offer short term comfort, it doesn’t unlock the human development that comes from mucking through a fight with a person: connection, forgiveness, love, adaptability, knowing, feeling seen and understood, or not understood and having to become understood.
Takeaway: Ask your teen — no judgement — whether they use AI companions. If they do, ask them for what? How do they feel those conversations help them connect with humans? How might it hurt relationships with the people around them? (See my blog on discussion points, also published today.)
Whether or not kids use AI companions, remind them that the stuff that can be tricky as humans—including hard conversations—are worthwhile. Doing hard things, in learning and life, is essential and, like any muscle, needs to be exercised.
In sum: Human development needs to be protected. Parents can play a starring role by looking for more ways to connect in real life.
Are we entering “another uncontrolled experiment”?
The risks around emotional companions are ample.
The tech has no guardrails. It’s new, and no one yet knows how to use it safely
Kids are prone to becoming addicted and dependent. We see this with television, junk food, computer games—and of course phones
The opportunity cost is potentially huge. It’s a biological fact that we grow through human relationships, and depriving kids of that might be disastrous. (We don’t yet know what the machine alternative is, but since kids are developing, it makes sense err on the side of caution here)
The business model of AI is not yet clear. If we assume past performance is instructive, Big Tech will aim to monetize children through their time and data.
“With kids you don't have a second chance,” said Gaia Bernstein on the webinar. “We can't afford to have another uncontrolled experiment” such as that which has happened with the many members of the young generations given unrestricted access to smartphones, social media, and the internet. “What we need right now is more human connection,” Bernstein added. “We are born with innate social traits but we need to learn how to be social.”
Schools clearly play a role here, finding ways to amplify human relationships, as well as teaching AI literacy alongside other academic subjects. Parents have a big role too: helping manage the huge emotions of adolescence and having conversations about the tech that is coming at us like a freight train. Helping kids manage their emotional lives doesn’t mean fixing things for them, but rather making sure they know they are not alone, and that together, humans can solve things. It means finding ways for them to be in community with people: intergenerationally, with friends and family, seeking romance, and deep, true connections.
AI helps me plan trips and meals, distill research and create presentations. But I rely on humans for emotional support and the guidance on things that matter most. I can do that because I have invested a lifetime building those ties. There are a million promising use cases for AI in education—to help encourage a student who gets lost, identify holes in learning, or build scaffolding for creative, alternative journeys. It will hopefully tie curriculum to more relevant and engaging content and experiences. But let’s also be the champions for all that is human about learning, and living. Lets build for connection, not just better use of tech.
Jenny, I wholeheartedly agree with your post. That’s why I started my passion project aiPTO. Part of the solution that is often overlooked & under-resourced is parents. Resources around AI & Tech revolves around workplace & classrooms. The first & core human connections are at home. Yet, parents are not equipped to have meaningful conversations & guide their kids around Tech. I developed a TALK & THINK about AI frameworks for parents so they can have something simple & actionable at home.
https://www.aiparenttech.com/p/from-moms-heart-to-ai-smart-aipto?r=3xg0dj
The point you make here about doubling down on the measurable things instead of making time and space for the intangibles really rings true for me. I'm getting better as my kids get older and I worry less about all the things that could go wrong, but it makes me think that we're often doing the opposite of what our kids need to have well-being. I also agree that schools and parents need to play a bigger role in preparing kids to understand both the promise and the limits of AI, but I think it's a real challenge given how quickly this technology is changing and how unfamiliar it is to those of us above the age of say, 20. There's so much we have to do to get up to speed on this new technology, and there are few people who really understand it who are not also evangelists for these products. I hope that will change in the coming months/years.