We throw around the phrase "digital native" like a compliment, but Big Tech uses it as a free pass to force-feed youth their latest experiments. They market convenience while masking the true human toll: young minds navigating rampant algorithmic fallout, all built on the backs of underpaid, invisible ghost labor. The individuals who will actually have to live inside this AI-driven future are the same people being blocked from the boardrooms designing it.

In the fifth and final episode of the Life With Machines x Young Futures series, Baratunde Thurston sits down with two leaders who are completely rejecting the tech industry's "inevitability narrative" and taking the reins of AI governance into their own hands.

Neha Shukla (Innovation For Everyone) is mobilizing a movement across 35 countries to teach students "sociotechnical literacy." She’s fighting to ensure the youth—especially those from the Global South—aren't just used as token photo ops, but are actively writing the ethical frameworks that will govern artificial intelligence.

Tazin Khan (Cyber Collective) is demanding systemic digital rights and shifting the burden of cybersecurity away from the end-user. By bringing tech education to adults, she is putting an end to the era of teenagers having to act as the "unpaid IT department" to protect their communities from corporate platform failures.

These are the digital architects stepping up to fix the systems they didn’t even make in the first place.

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LINKS MENTIONED

Innovation For Everyone

Cyber Collective

Young Futures

EPISODES REFERENCED:

Dr. Avriel Epps on how to raise kids in an AI world

Episode 1 — How Will AI Impact Gen Z?

Episode 2 — How ChatGPT EXPOSED Our Education System

Episode 3 — AI Is Monetizing Our Mental Health

Episode 4 — The Rural AI Revolution No One Is Talking About