I recently overheard my teenage sons talking about study tactics. One said that ChatGPT is great for making flash cards. “You upload all your notes, and it makes the flash cards for you,” Luka explained. “It’s faster than going through the notes yourself.” I couldn’t help interrupting. “But that’s what studying is – going through notes to figure out what’s important! The flash cards matter less than taking time to review.” It took further convincing, but eventually they acknowledged I had a point.
I took little pleasure in my victory, however, because I was seething that ChatGPT is even a factor in my children’s education, and that the tip for using AI had come from a teacher. As a writer and speaker who has spent years delving into the devastation that premature smartphone ownership, rampant social media use and an underregulated tech industry have created among our children and adolescents, I have a visceral response to the motto that’s being shoved down our throats right now: AI is here to stay, so adapt or fall behind.
I refuse to acquiesce to either scenario. I may not be an AI expert, but I am sufficiently informed to know that I do not trust this new technology with my children’s hearts and minds, and that it does not teach them the lessons I consider to be most important during these formative years.
Large language models may be useful in certain applications when employed by conscientious adults, but I take serious issue with them being tested on children. LLMs, as they are known, are notoriously unpredictable; they often give different answers to identical questions. Their sometimes-shocking responses reveal disturbing patterns, for example, the fact that Meta explicitly allowed its chatbots to engage in “romantic or sensual” conversations with minors.
A new Leger poll indicates more than two-thirds of Canadians support banning access to social media like Instagram and TikTok and AI chatbots like ChatGPT for children under 16.
The Canadian Press
Young people are wired for social engagement but are also prone to falling for the shortcuts offered by AI and other “social” technologies. These offer seductive digital simulations of human relationships that mirror emotions, while bypassing the more complex aspects of getting to know someone well – such as trust, commitment, vulnerability and mutual effort.
The more these technologies are used, the more real-life relationships and experiences get pushed to the side. According to the U.S.-based Institute for Family Studies, teens in 2003 spent 12 hours a week hanging out with friends; in 2024, that dropped to five. It also found that 80 per cent of high-school seniors in 2000 went on dates, compared with 46 per cent in 2024. Early evidence suggests that heavier use of AI chatbots (or “characters,” as young people call them) leads to greater loneliness, more emotional dependence and fewer face-to-face interactions. This is unfortunate, since the ability to relate truly and deeply to other humans is not only satisfying on a personal level, but poised to become a valuable skill in an AI-dominated work force.
Furthermore, AI undermines the key lessons I want my children to learn. My goal is for them to become intellectual detectives, philosophers, storytellers. I want them to acquire knowledge enthusiastically and be able to write and speak about it intelligently. I want them to feel empathy and curiosity, make eye contact and have meaningful relationships with real people who return their affections. AI gets in the way of this, offering a cognitive crutch that inhibits their ability to become the best, smartest version of themselves.
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I don’t expect such lessons to be easy. The most rewarding things in life are born of drudgery and struggle. Why would I ever deprive my children of the amazing feeling that comes from persisting at a difficult task and becoming a different, deeper person in the process? Such inner transformation cannot be hacked; the most brilliant AI in the world could never give them a true sense of accomplishment. To throw that away in the name of “progress” is to settle for an anemic version of childhood that misses the point.
Our society is relentlessly technophilic. We blindly adopt innovations, focusing exclusively on what they might add to our lives, rarely asking what we will lose. I’d rather be a “techno-selectionist,” which Digital Minimalism author Cal Newport describes as someone who carefully chooses which technologies to integrate into their life and, perhaps most importantly, is unafraid to reject those that fail to add value.
As a parent, I’m putting AI in that last category. I am unconvinced that using AI in any capacity, whether drafting essays or making flash cards or forging companionship, will improve the quality of my children’s lives.
I am also done with the nihilistic passivity and meek deference to the domineering whims of tech CEOs. We don’t have to accept this. We can say no, collectively, and take a stand against the insidious incursion of AI into our children’s most vulnerable, sacred years.
We’ve already seen what happens when technology is allowed to replace real human connection; we should avoid making that mistake again at all costs. We parents are best positioned to protect our children. Let’s do our job and give them a chance at having the childhood they deserve.
