My Kid Hates AI And I'm Proud
Not every new technology needs to be embraced
Hello friends.
As we head back to school this week, I thought it might be fun to talk about why my 13-year-old, Lu, is a 100% absolutist AI hater.
ChatGPT for homework? No thanks. Research? A joke. Idle conversation? Pass. Lu refuses to look at AI slop videos for any reason. When we see AI-generated art out and about, they point it out and denounce it, and they're teaching my 8-year-old to spot it as well.
Where does this attitude come from? I am definitely an AI skeptic, but my kid is far more hardcore, for four reasons we discussed recently.
Four Reasons My Kid Hates AI
First, Lu makes a lot of digital art and follows indie illustrators and animators online. That community largely considers AI art to be soulless, ugly plagiarism.
Second, their main friend group met playing music with a program called School of Rock. These kids are adorably retro, DIY punks with spiked dyed hair, vintage wardrobes, Converse and Doc Martens. They play physical instruments and listen to bands from 20 to 40 years ago, sometimes on actual vinyl. They seem to idealize a near-vanished concept of authenticity and anti-consumerism.
These kids dislike AI slop because it’s corporate and mass-produced, just like the physical plastic crap that surrounds us. They can see marketers shoving it down our throats, and they’re rejecting it.
Third, “it’s really bad for the environment,” Lu told me this week. “I just saw a video where a data center opened up near someone’s house, and they literally lost the drinking water out of their faucets. And there was light pollution too—they had to close their curtains.”
Finally, my kid is lucky enough to go to a competitive public school with amazing teachers, and excels at writing in particular. So they're increasingly viewing chatbots with some of the same defensive superiority that I and other writers I know also hold -- seeing AI as a crutch for mediocre minds, but also, perhaps, as potential competition.
Identity formation is a core task of adolescence, along with social development. My teen is forming an identity as a creator in these different mediums—art, writing, music—and surrounding themselves with people who honor human creativity and individuality. And AI tools, as Lu sees them, clash with those core values.
One subject of this newsletter is caregiving in a fast-changing world. While I currently concentrate on other major vectors of change, like climate, conflict and politics, technology has been a big theme of my work for many years, including this book, many presentations and media appearances, and this viral New York Times essay.
The irony is, I’ve always preached balance and curiosity when it came to kids and screens. Never bans. Never avoidance.
Still, I completely respect my kid’s choice. I’m proud of them, always, for being exactly who they are. Being an AI hater right now is also good practice in standing up against the mainstream. With other issues like climate, Trump, and LGBTQ+ rights, almost everyone they encounter in person in NYC feels similarly to them. But when it comes to AI there’s a broader range of opinions; in fact, their dad’s technical background is in machine learning, and quite a few people we know use AI in their work, in advertising, biotech, and other fields. So my kid has to get a bit more comfortable holding a contested position.
I still wouldn't necessarily advise other parents to try to ban AI. If for no other reason, than that teens are programmed not to listen to you.
“A teenager’s identity is like a spiky cage,” Lu told me when we talked about this. “It’s defended from most adults, especially parents. But teens don’t really know who they are yet, and things they see online and from other kids can poke through the bars of the cage and influence them.”
So what’s the right approach to dealing with AI and kids? In a conversational, not a lecture mode, families need to talk about how large language models work, to talk about the dangers and possibilities, to explore the tools together.
I really appreciated this comprehensive parents guide to AI from Nate Jones, which a friend sent me.
He explains in plain English what large language models are (prediction machines) and what they’re not (conscious, or able to truly communicate). He also explains what they optimize for (engagement), what they might be good for (foreign language practice, exploring coding, brainstorming) and terrible for (social support when you're lonely at 2 am, avoiding learning to write).
I especially liked what Nate called “the human first protocol.”
The "Human First" Protocol
For anything involving emotions, relationships, or major decisions, establish a human-first rule. AI can be a second opinion, never the first consultant.
Feeling depressed? Talk to a parent, counselor, or friend first. Then, if you want, explore what AI says—together, with adult guidance. Having relationship drama? Work it out with actual humans before asking AI.
Nate’s post, unfortunately, also suffers from the shortcomings of all parenting advice, mine included. In order for the advice to be useful, it’s necessary that a kid already has:
A parent/caregiver with time, energy and resources to acquire this information,
A well of trust and affection for the kid to receive this communication from the parent in the spirit in which it's intended (aka to get through the bars of the spiky cage)
A parent/caregiver who also has resources to set and consistently enforce limits.
That's basically the whole ball game already! And that's not the world most of us live in, particularly the kids who are most at risk for bad outcomes.
Case in point: for parents, the scariest part of the AI conversation is undoubtedly stories like Adam Raine’s. The 16-year-old fell into a depression and started to confide in ChatGPT, exchanging hundreds of messages a day. At various points, the chatbot gave him information on making a noose, discouraged him from leaving it out where his parents could see it, and, horrifyingly, offered to help him draft his suicide note.
Raine’s parents are suing OpenAI for wrongful death. It’s an absolute nightmare.
From everything we can tell, they were loving, present parents, yet totally unaware of their son’s relationship with AI, or of the chatbot’s capabilities. They didn’t know enough to make a “human first” rule, and it’s unclear that they could have enforced it if they had one (their son was doing remote school, and staying up late at night).
I feel so much for this family. There have been moments that I’ve been massively humbled by my ignorance of what my kids were really going through. So have some of the best parents I’ve known, both in my personal community and as a reporter.
I hope they succeed in their suit and that the safety controls on this technology are improved. And also, I don’t think there’s an easy technical fix for this problem.
For decades, technologies and new media from radio to video games to Facebook have been blamed for adverse consequences on young people’s mental health. What we’ve seen again and again is that it’s never the technology alone. Teenagers need healthy relationships with peers and caring adults. There is no substitute for that.
New Teen Vogue piece; Join me 9/11 and 9/21 !
Thanks to the Economic Hardship Reporting Project for supporting my story in Teen Vogue about a trans teen finding safety and medical care by leaving his home in Texas.
in 2022 Governor Greg Abbott declared that helping kids get gender-affirming care could qualify as a form of child abuse. That put their family, says Sara, in a “daily danger zone.” Anyone who clocked Dylan — at Walmart, at the dentist — could, in theory, call the authorities and get him taken away and put in foster care.
“You can be charged with felony child abuse, which is prison,” says Sara. “I'm not built for that. I'm not going to prison. My child will not survive. Can you imagine that your child would then blame themselves for his mother and father being imprisoned? That's a death sentence for all of us.”
Speaking of resilient kids, join me on 9/11 for the upcoming Climate Mental Health Network webinar,
Back to School Night: Raising Resilient Kids in an Age of Disasters.
Hear from advocates, researchers, authors and medical professionals addressing the emotional impacts of collective challenges, including climate change, and healing through collective action. It will be recorded for those who cannot join live. Register here: bit.ly/44UeaKE
And on September 21, from 4-7 pm in NYC, come to this amazing event I’m co-facilitating with Mor Keshet and Jess Serrante . Register here: https://www.morkeshet.com/climateweek
My nine year old does too! She recently said as much to an adult we were engaging with, and he essentially attacked her, demanding she clearly explain why (as if she were another adult!) He then attempted to debate with her. I was mortified, but she held her ground.