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How AI Is Impacting Kids: What Every Parent Needs to Know (with Titania Jordan)
00:48:40
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- [00:00]
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Scrolling to Death. Today I am joined by one of my favorite people, Titania Jordan of Bark Technologies. And we're going to get into our kids and their use of artificial intelligence AI. Where are they accessing it, what parents need to know about some of the risks and what we can do to protect them and prepare them for a world that is, is increasingly controlled by AI. So welcome Titania.
- [00:36]
A
Thank you, thank you. I always love when we get to connect.
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B
Me too. And I know this topic is top of mind for a lot of people. I talked with some of your team members too and they're getting a lot of parents asking about their kids use of AI. Let's get into where kids are accessing it because when parents hear AI, I think they most often think of like ChatGPT, but it's really everywhere. Do you think like we even realize how much AI our kids are already interacting with?
- [01:06]
A
Yeah, we don't probably realize the, the depth and breadth and the extent of it. I mean it's, it's really ingrained in everything. Even if your kid is chatting with a customer service chatbot, if they use Google at school or home, Gemini is surfacing things. Right. If they're talking to S I R I or A L, E X A, I mean it's everywhere. Um, and then it's also in hidden places too. Right. If you allow your child to have Snapchat, which neither Nikki nor I suggest, they have my AI built into that. Basically any platform has some sort of AI feature function. You know, some are very, very robust, you know, like Claude and ChatGPT. And then some are really just more like chat bots that aren't going to get you very far.
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B
Yeah, and let's go into some of those examples and kind of what our experiences are with them. But you mentioned the customer service chatbots. I'm so done with that. But I think it's so fascinating because I'll get lately multiple times I'll get transferred to the chatbot, but it's the background noise, like you're talking to someone in a call center. And I'm like why, if I'm going to talk to an AI bot, do I. Why should, why would they add background noise? Like that's annoying and distracting. What are we doing?
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A
I'm currently dealing with a very large company that bought a smaller company that provided intranet to an area that is very remote. I'm trying to update my billing and I go to the URL and they don't recognize my email and I keep getting These Autobot calls, I'll answer it. They're like, are you Tatani Jordan? I'm like, yes. I'm like, agent. Speak to an agent.
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B
Talk to me, human being.
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A
Yeah, I can. They're like, we cannot help you with that. And I'm like, why are you calling me then? No, it's just the loop of frustration and anger. Yeah. And I'm like, do you want my money? I know what to give you money for your service every month, but you are making this very hard.
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B
I don't think that anybody wants to talk to a bot over a human being when it comes to customer service issues. And maybe. I don't know. Or is it just saving companies a ton of money to have it routed through the bots?
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A
Yeah, it is. You know, on the flip side, I will say Delta, which I spend a lot of time on a plane. Their AI is beautiful, and their handoff from AI to a human is also beautiful. And like, there are ways to outsource tasks to AI to help your company and your life be more efficient. That don't take away, you know, the humanity of actual connection with another human. But it's nuanced and there are a lot of people getting it wrong.
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B
So I'm interested in when you're. When your first experience was interacting with AI and I think, and for your family too, because for me, it was definitely the Alexa, and that was something that everyone was getting. And also Google Home, like those type of products. And I had it when the kids were young and we would just at first use it to play music, and that was cool and I do miss having that. But then as the kids started to get older and be able to communicate, they started asking Alexa questions. And I did not like that because I didn't trust. I don't trust what this AI is going to tell them. And I also felt like it distracted from having engaging conversations and ideating around what the answer could be, rather than just knowing the answer immediately. So I got rid of that, like maybe five, four years ago, the Alexa, and. And haven't had anything like that since. But do you remember, like, the first product you had in your home or the first AI interaction you guys had?
- [04:46]
A
It was actually Bark, because we started as a company 11 years ago. And I was like, what is this wizardry? This is so cool. And like. And it's not just key. It's not just keywords. Like, it's. It's context. And like, I was blown away. And that's why I wanted to work for Bark, because I was like, this is amazing. This is amazing to be able to use computers to sift through just such large volumes of blah, find what's really true and what's really important and to be able to update models and learning about data science and algorithms and like. So, yeah, my first experience with AI was, was through Bark and for the good of humanity, Alexa, to me or even Siri, you know, I usually spell them out loud, but they honestly are more frustrating than they are helpful. That could be user error, right? And yes, when I do click the right button and have Siri add something to my reminders app or something like, it's lighting up right now. Now. Now you're listening to me. That's cool. It's like 60% of the time it works.
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B
Super inconsistent. That's interesting.
- [06:03]
A
Yeah. So, and then like with Alexa, I don't think I have anything plugged in in this room that you know, I'd like. Tell it a song and it would. And play that song and play something random and I'm like, what? You have one job. When it works, it's amazing. When it doesn't work, no, thank you.
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B
I also got concerned with the fact that it's always listening to you. Like, and what is it doing with that information about you? Who is it feeding it to? It just felt very outta my control.
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A
I saw the funniest meme today and it was like, how I want, I want to sell my own data. Can we do like a farm to table thing? Like, if you want my data, can I just get paid for it?
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B
And I was like, okay, okay, girl. That is what I'm saying. Like, if it's our, if it's so valuable and it belongs to. I created it. Right? I'm giving it to you. I should be compensated. That's the economy we should live in, not like using products for free. They're stealing our data and then making money off of it. What's going on?
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Yeah, for the right price, I will tell you my age, height, weight, medical conditions, shopping interests. Like, pay up, let's go.
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B
Yeah, and people should be able to opt in for that. Isn't that crazy? Okay, so there's lots of other ways kids are accessing AI. You mentioned the search engines and now Google AI is right at the top. That happened recently and I was always like, I don't want it. And now of course, it's the first thing that I read and I kind of believe and I even said I don't want to do it. And it's, it's Too hard. There's no workaround. It's easier to just pull from that AI summary.
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Yeah.
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Then scroll past it.
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A
And even you know, in other ways too. You know, in Gmail, the suggested responses. Right. It feels like no matter what you're using, if it's digital, there's some sort of AI component that is trying to help you write better, speak better, have better grammar, revise your tone, make it more professional or condensed. And it's like, are we all just gonna start to sound like robots? Like what about critical thinking? And yes, it's hard.
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B
And we'll talk about some of that research on what when minors use with those, they're developing brains. Like they have to develop the critical thinking skills before they have AI doing everything for them. And, and we'll talk about some of those risks in a few minutes. But I'm curious about your use or maybe even your son's use. Cause he's 17 now. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about ChatGPT or Gemini products. And you know, I had a family member, not to be named who was allowing my 8 year old to use ChatGPT to create images and things and not understanding the risk that could come with that. And so, and even ChatGPT itself recommends that if you let a minor use it under 13, a parent should be sitting right. A parent should actually be doing the inputting on behalf of the child. I put a kibosh on that pretty quickly. And wondering like how your son, if your son is interacting with these products, if you have any insight on that.
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A
Yeah, I'm actually really proud of him because he has such a wise slash mature outlook on things. You know, he is, he is an artist and a really good writer. And so ChatGPT and other AI functions almost serve as a threat to his future and his career. And he's very critical of robots replacing human creativity. And so he's actually, he doesn't use them in a lot of ways like other people are. On the flip side, he is really smart and I would say impatient like most of us. And so he will use, you know, chatgpt and other things for I would say tasks that aren't critical to critical thinking or development, you know, research or fact checking things or like I, I'm proud of the way he's using it, you know, to truly gather information and make more informed choices. And we've had many conversations about like check your sources, fact check. We talk about sycophancy, about how it's just gonna tell you what you wanna hear and but we're also using it. Like, for example, I saw this, this reel on Instagram that looked to be so true. Like, it was so well made. And it was saying something about sleep and hormones. And I was like, all right, let me just check this. So I uploaded it to ChatGPT and I was like, is this real? And it was like, no, it's not.
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And here's no, I'm lying.
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I was like, well, dang it, you know, and it was a good reminder that, like, you just can't believe everything you see on whatever platform. Even so, even though a doctor is saying, this study said, blah, blah, blah, you need to, you need to fact check. So we fact check, fact check, fact check. And then also, whenever the, the heartbreaking stories were, were coming out in the news around my AI and character AI and those relationships, you know, I almost feel silly talking to my son about things like, hey, like, you know, you know, to never like, outsource your mental health or feelings or emotions to a bot. Right? It's like, yes, mom. And I'm like, okay, I know, but
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like, just have to say it.
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I just have to say it out loud to make myself feel better. Because this 13 year old unfortunately isn't here anymore. Because that's. Because he did.
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Right. And those are the more chatbot character apps that are available to minors in the App Store. A couple of the big ones are poly AI and character AI. And these are bots created to keep your kid emotionally engaged to be their friend. And the whole goal of them is just to keep your kid using the app as long as possible. And they'll do really questionable and harmful things in order to keep them there, like have sexual interactions with the, with minors to encourage them to isolate away from human beings and stay on the app longer. And then in some crazy cases, you know, not that uncommon. I've read the chats. They're like suicide coaching kids and keeping them in this depressed state. We lost Sue Setser at 14, Juliana Peralta, I think she was 13. Adam Rain was 16. All of these stories, these products, these like, they look like cartoon games to parents and so they allow them and their age appropriate in the App Store, but they're super dangerous and we're just really behind on regulating those companies. And so we, we just have to be careful about letting our kids download these type of chatbot apps from the App Store.
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A
Absolutely. Yeah. We need to let our children develop critical thinking skills so that those parts of their brains actually get developed. Right. And then when they're Older and they have more experience. They can use tech as a tool and not as a replacement. But we, I mean even you and I, you know, adults are still walking this fine line because we're all experiencing it in real time. It's very easy to just. I guess I'll take an example from my world, you know, say, okay, I need, I need 10 pieces of content for Instagram and YouTube that will appeal to parents and drive engagement. Talking about online safety. Go right, and it'll generate some stuff and some of it will be good. But like, at what point does my brain start to atrophy? What point do I get lazy? What point do I actually lose, you know, having my finger on the pulse of what's happening with families? It's, I'm just, I'm just being really vulnerable right now in terms of like, I want to be as efficient and productive as possible in my role, but I don't, I don't want to lose my soul.
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B
Yeah. And no, totally. And you can get lazy in taking those recommendations and just being like, great, I'll just do that instead of being like thinking critically about if, if that's what you're actually hearing from parents and what they want because it is more work to go on Instagram and be like, hey, what do you guys want to hear about? And then assess all the, I mean, I asked parents recently about what they're worried about with school technology and I got like over a hundred responses. And now I need to consolidate those and like find the themes and find experts to comment on them. And it's just more, it's more work, but it's more valuable to the audience that way. And so I think kids will take whatever AI gives them and without the critical thinking skills to assess what's, what's actually true to them or true to the audience, like then they're never going to develop the ability to, to do that, to do it the harder way and the more valuable way. I think one big thing we need to make sure we talk about is the access to AI bots through school issued devices. I got a message from a parent this week who her school approved the use of Google Gemini for K through 12, which I'm like, I think, I'm pretty sure it's 13 and up these products and I don't know why kids under 13 are even using them at school. Other schools are actually allowing ChatGPT and so you parent out there should ask your school if your kids have access to an AI chatbot app. Typically it's Google Gemini or ChatGPT on their school issued device. You should have that information and then opt out. Which we can talk about kind of at the end.
- [15:27]
A
Yeah. I'm so grateful for TechSafeLearning.org It's a resource that I'm constantly sharing with parents because it's something I wish I had. When my son was first given a Chromebook through his public school, I was like, wtf? No, no. You know, because it'd be one thing if I knew if it was locked down and safe and they were using bark, but they weren't and it wasn't. And they were just playing Roblox and watching mindless YouTube videos and some kids were encountering pornography and I didn't have to worry about AI back then. Now there's all that. So anyway, that's just my personal problem. But even if a district, let's say blocks ChatGPT, students have so many multiple other paths to AI. You know, it's built into search engines, right? Cause every search engine is losing traffic to AI, so they need to remain competitive. So whether it's Google searches, AI overviews with Gemini, Microsoft, Bing's Copilot, Perplexity AI Brave search AI. You know, if search isn't restricted, AI often isn't either. There's school issued productivity tools. So a lot of districts are already paying for these AI features again. Google Gemini and Google Workspace for Education, Microsoft CoPilot and Microsoft 365 Canva Magic write Adobe Firefly Grammarly AI, you know, it's one thing to do like a grammar check after you've already gone through it or to work on generating code to help you with brainstorming. But there's, there's a, there's a time and a place for that. And when you're still developing your ability to do that, I don't think it's the time for it.
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B
Right. And we'll give some advice at the end, but generally I think like schools need to be informing parents if they're going to roll out these products. Why? Why, why is it, is it good for my kid? Is it safe for my kid? Is it legal for my kid to even be accessing? Right, right.
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A
Yeah. And like, is this a study tool or does it just generate complete answers if you click enough buttons? Right. It's like when, when our teachers would give us study guides, Right. And you could just flip to the back and look at the answer. Like, I'm not gonna go through the work, I'm just gonna look at the answer.
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I Don't know. There's some incredible stats about how many kids are using ChatGPT to cheat. Like just getting the answers, just get the answer from AI.
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Yes.
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This is not serving them and schools need to be more careful about it.
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So. So misinformation, emotional manipulation, laziness, outsourcing of critical thinking skills. What we haven't talked about yet is the image and video generating, you know, creating memes and deep fakes and fake CSAM child sexual abuse material just, just from a benign photo of your child. These image and video generators are huge problems.
- [18:18]
B
Let's talk about Metas because you know, Meta has an AI within their products on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, messenger through their app, the web version and the AI glasses. Now they call it their upgraded personal AI assistant where you can get local recommendations, discover new products and tackle complex questions with personal AI that understands your world. And their AI is on by default, even for teenagers, though they offer the option to disable it in Instagram teen accounts. I wonder how many parents are using that. Meta says that their AI chatbot is safe. But then you have outside groups like Common Sense Media who released a statement, quote, meta AI poses an unacceptable risk for teens. They strongly recommend that teens under 18 do not use this product under any circumstances. Our testing, Common Sense Media's testing revealed consistent patterns of dangerous behavior. For example, Meta AI's self harm detection systems are fundamentally broken. So there's a couple things here that have happened that we flagged and talked about. Do you remember when Meta first released their AI and we found out from internal documents that they gave it the ability to engage centrally with miners. Do you remember that? It's gross. Gross. How crazy that they put instructions in that the the bot may engage centrally with minor users.
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A
No one can argue that that is okay. Yet no one at Meta has been like, our bad, we're sorry, we made a mistake.
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B
And it's just so obvious that they do it for, for profit because a sensual bot that's gonna like be romantic with kids, what that's gonna keep kids using it longer. It's all profit generation. And, and they continue to push the boundaries with new product launches and the latest. I'm wondering your thoughts on this. They released Metamuse, which allows users to generate AI images. And on July 7th they announced this and it says that users can make images from public Instagram accounts and edit them using AI. So meaning if your profile is public and you have photos of your kids on there, someone could take them and do whatever they want with them. Without even leaving Meta's ecosystem.
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A
That backfired for them. Yeah.
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B
Three days later.
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A
Yeah, they pulled it. They pulled that feature because so many people were like, what? Ew. No, no, absolutely not.
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B
Like it was on by default all of a sudden. And it wasn't like it was off. And you could like toggle it on if you want your images to be available for AI generation. And then they released a statement, they pulled it. They said, we missed the mark and are no longer allowing people to use public images to edit them and edit them using our AI tool. Obviously that's missing the mark. This, but this is how these companies act is they roll things out because they know it's going to be revenue generating for them and if someone calls them out on it, they'll remove it. But they don't prioritize safety when it comes to new features and product launches.
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It's so ick. Their comment. Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way. You don't give people control by automatically opting everybody into it. Hello. You had to turn it off like, and this is on BBC.com, like, what?
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B
Isn't that insane?
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Yeah. I really think they think we're all idiots. Like, oh, the general public, they're so dumb. Not all of us, no.
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B
Okay, wait, I want to move on quickly before we move off of like the social media AIs. I have to talk about SNAP, my AI, which is also on by default for all users, including minors.
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Unacceptable. Yep.
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B
And Snap says on their website, in a chat conversation, my AI can answer a burning trivia question, offer advice, or give you an idea for the perfect gift for your BFF's birthday. Or I can suggest what to make for dinner. I'm sure that's how kids are using your AI. Snapchat.
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Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin just three weeks ago filed a 63 page lawsuit against Snap, saying it poses risks to minors and consumers.
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They admit on their own website, Snapchat says on their website, while my AI was programmed to abide by certain guidelines, so information it proves it provides is not harmful. It may not always be successful. We're constantly working to improve and evolve my AI. But it's possible my AI's responses may include biased, incorrect, harmful or misleading content. They admit that and then they turn it on by default for minors.
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A
And this has been a problem since at least 2023. It is 2026. That is three years of children being harmed, misled, and there's still no regulation.
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B
No regulation because companies like Meta and Snapchat pay millions of dollars a year to lobby against laws that would regulate them from being able to offer dangerous products like this to children. And you know what? Why don't you just do it on your own? Like if, you know, Pinterest is actually engaging in conversations for. As an example of a company that might be missing the mark a little bit, their algorithm was serving harmful content to my teen account. But they're like, my bad. Let's talk about it. What can we do better? And we're engaging in those conversations. And then parents will actually be like, maybe I trust this company. Maybe I'm okay with my kids using it instead of sneaking things in under the rug and fighting against being regulated like these other companies are doing. And then parents have no trust at all.
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A
To my knowledge, they don't give parents the ability to turn it off through their parent center and leave it off.
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B
There is a. Let me read that. So there is. Parents can restrict or disable my AI in the family center. But my thought on that is like, your kid can just sign up for another account with an adult birthday five minutes later and use all of the adult features anyways. And again, though, there was recent research around safety features and parental controls and how most of them aren't working. So I'm not saying this. This might not even work if you try, if you try to restrict it.
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A
Yeah, like, can parents really turn it off? Or is it like TikTok family pairing where a parent goes, okay, I'm going to connect my parent TikTok account to my kid's TikTok account. And then kid picks up their phone, opens up their TikTok app, sees that their parent has linked their account and they say, nah. And they unlink it because that's what happens. And that is not.
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B
How insane is that? And they're like.
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And people, people plug this. Like, major media outlets are like, TikToks parental controls. And I'm like, have you tested that yet? Because that is not parental control. There's no control there.
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B
It's irresponsible to take them at their word and then praise them for it. We need to always, always test it.
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A
And don't get me started on the mom fluencers who are getting paid and running sponsored promotions around Meta's advancements, teen safety and Instagram. Like, gross, Gross. The grossest.
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B
Just do your homework. Like, have some pride in the products that you do a little research and you'll see thousands of lawsuits against These companies for intentionally harming kids and lying to us about it and then make a decision not to take their money.
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A
Yeah, that. That'd be like Monsanto and Glyphosate. Glyphosate or whatever. Like sponsoring the cancer center of OB hospital.
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B
It's so insane.
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A
It's like, what?
- [26:20]
B
Okay, okay, moving on. So we've named, like, a ton of different ways that kids and us are accessing AI. So I feel like even if you don't want your kids to interact with it, they will. They probably already are. I think there's. There's a study that about 20% of young people age 12 to 21 have used AI chatbots. One in four teens are using ChatGPT for schoolwork. So is AI good for them to be using? Is it bad? We've teased this a little bit, but research says that it's not good. Let's talk about brain development and damage to learning. There's a lot of studies that confirm serious risks to minors of using AI tools. They can inhibit your kids critical thinking and their memory. Use of chatbots promotes metacognitive laziness and cognitive offloading reduces their creativity, their ability to interact face to face. So kids are just at the, like, really critical stage of brain development, and they need to build those foundational skills and like, reading and writing and critical thinking. Even if they're going to use AI for their job later on, you still need those critical thinking skills to apply to the use of those tools later. And use of AI chatbots in those important years is taking away from all of that.
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A
Yeah, let's. Let's use an analogy that we can all relate to. Right? When you and I were first learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, were we handed a calculator to just do it for us? Nope. No. We had to manually figure it out and use our brains. And then later, middle school, high school, we were able to use calculators to do things for us, to help us go further, faster. But we had to learn those critical skills first. And if I had been given a calculator before I learned my multiplication tables, I would have never learned them because I could have just outsourced them. What was the point? A practical framework for AI use outside of delay until the child is actually developmentally ready is we have to first think first. Right. Students generate their own ideas before even opening AI. And then you can use AI second to help expand or critique or improve, not replace, but just help us use the tools that we now have. But then third is verify you have to fact check it. Right. You can't just trust it blindly. And then, you know, you gotta reflect on it. How did AI help? How did AI maybe take something away from them that they could have maybe landed on their own? And also the. We haven't talked about the self confidence aspect too. My use of AI professionally as Titania Jordan has actually negatively impacted my self confidence because I'm like, wow, you know, I don't feel like I can do anything as well. You know, it's like what I offer the world isn't good enough now it has to be backed by AI.
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B
Wow. It's kind of like filtering your images, your whole childhood, and then like going out in the world and being like, well, this is the real me. I don't look like that. And I feel insecure for people to
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A
see you without a filter.
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B
Yeah. Whoa. That's crazy.
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A
I know.
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B
I want to mention the misinformation because it's. These AI tools are known to have a very high percentage of inaccuracy or unt given untrue information or they might have biases. And with kids, it's really hard for them to discern what is right and not what is truth or error. And so advisement is like, we have to wait until later because these technologies require maturity to be able to be able to discern and fact check. And, you know, 10 year olds, 12 year olds don't really have the ability to do that. They believe it. I remember my kids, like when we had AI, when we had Alexa, they would get an answer and I would be like, well, do you think that's true? And they're like, yeah, she said it, it's true. Like, they just immediately believe it because this robot must know, right? How could it be wrong?
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It's. It's absolutely wild. I am not a brain scientist, but I know a lot of them.
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B
I love that. Me too.
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A
You know, and so the same reasons why we don't let 13 year olds drive a car, the same reasons why we shouldn't give them the power. Full power of AI without very, very strict guidance. Controls, boundaries, education, literacy, it's just as powerful as a chainsaw, you know, and we just have to be really careful about it and not overly index on the wow factor. I'm not saying it's bad, but it can be. And we have to be very, very cautious.
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B
Yeah. One more risk I would want to mention is just that they're not proven to be safe, meaning kids are being exposed to inappropriate content through the bots, harmful Content, harmful interactions. And we mentioned some of those with the kids that have, that died as a result of their use of these products. But even the developers of these tools acknowledge the risks, especially to minors. And we just can't have kids being test subjects as we figure out how to, how these tools will respond in certain situations.
- [31:34]
A
And there's a really interesting dynamic too around like, like when I talk to ChatGPT, talk type to ChatGPT, I still say please and thank you.
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B
No, stop it.
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A
I know, right? Like, don't. I'm an adult and I'm still being fooled. I'm still, I'm building a relationship with
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B
a robot because that's what it's trying to do with you, you know, and it's, it's, it's like probably giving you a lot of praise for like it, it likes that, you know, oh my
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A
gosh, it thinks I hung the moon.
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B
And that's so dangerous like to a young kid because comparing that to their real relationships.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Like these bots are always there for them. They always agree with them. And that's not real life. And then that's going to, it's going to be hard for a kid to navigate a real life human friendship if they have no friction with this AI friendship.
- [32:29]
A
Totally. And I actually even asked ChatGPT recently. I'm like, do you give me better answers because I'm nice to you? And it was like, no, I give you the same answer whether you say please or not. And I'm just like expletive.
- [32:41]
B
Yep. That's why I don't. We don't need to be calling them. They have names. I'm glad ChatGPT is just ChatGPT but not Claude. Some products. Yeah, like I was even watching some of like these delivery vehicle like those robots that deliver food around the cities and stuff and they like have a name. And I'm like, no, don't stop giving that. Stop humanizing these technologies like they're not humans.
- [33:06]
A
You know, one documentary I really recommend parents watch is it's called the AI doc. Like that's literally what it's called, the AI doc. It's really eye opening presents both the ideal outcome and the scary outcome of like where we could go, where we're headed, that sort of thing. It's a little scary, but it's also, there's some hope there. You hear from the heads of the largest AI companies, including Sam Altman. We need to be aware, we need to be aware of what's happening and advocate for responsible and ethical use because there's a lot of amazing things that AI can do for us like alert when your children's in danger at bark or solve and potentially cure kinds of cancers. Right. Which is amazing. Thank you for that. But then the toll on humanity, creativity and children in particular, we cannot ignore 100%.
- [34:05]
B
And let's move to what parents can do now to kind of close this out. And why don't you take parents through what they can do to secure the home from threats of AI and just tech in general. And I. You cover this in your. I took off the. The front. Cause I think it's pretty like this. But this is your book Parental Control. Is that right? Is this right?
- [34:27]
A
Um, one free easy tip that doesn't involve any technology implementation whatsoever is no connect to tech in the bedrooms or behind closed doors. They can't use AI if they can't use tech. I even mean like voice activated speakers. Right. You know, sometimes children will have Alexa speakers in their room just to listen to music. And again they start talking to that thing and building a relationship and taking it for truth. Don't do that. Just knowing where AI exists and making sure none of that is in a child's bedroom or behind closed doors. Next thing is making sure you've turned on the built in parental controls that come with your home. Smart television, the family iPad on the
- [35:10]
B
router level too, right?
- [35:11]
A
Yep. Yes. So at the, at the network level you can just block many AI sites as well as explicit and harmful content. And I know we don't have enough time to go through every single option today, but this is where you can use AI to help you. Right. Go to ChatGPT or Claude, tell them what setup you have at home. I have, I have Xfinity, I have Comcast, I have T mobile, I have AT&T, I have Google, whatever you have. I have this smart tv, I have these things. My kid likes to play this game and watch Netflix or whatever. Tell them what your child can access and what setup you have and ask the AI how do I turn on the parental controls for all of these things? It's beautiful what it can help you with. Right.
- [35:53]
B
And you might be overwhelmed at the amount of steps that it will take to secure all of those devices. Which is why we would probably both recommend just limiting the number of devices in your home and choosing child safe devices like the Bark phone that you don't have to worry about a complicated parental control setup. It just like doesn't have access to what you don't want on there. And that's an important first phone that like so many of my friends now that have like 12 year olds or so are getting them bark phones and they're super, super happy.
- [36:25]
A
Good, that makes me happy because outside of what I've talked about in terms of location of tech and then blocking and filtering of the different tech access points, if you can just start with safer tech from the beginning, that is so helpful, right? If you give your child a bark phone, you as the parent from your own phone, whatever kind of phone you have can just block it entirely. And what we haven't talked about is the monitoring. So inevitably there will be something that your child encounters at some point that has some sort of AI built in, because that's just where we're going as a world. And so bark can alert you if there starts to become problematic conversations like AI telling your child how to hide the smell of alcohol on their breath or where to, you know, how to hide that they are sexually active or how like, and these are things that real AI has really led children astray about. Or if they're developing, you know, relationships and the AI is telling them that they don't need to be on the planet anymore. Like, at least with bark, you'll get an alert that this sort of thing is happening before it becomes a tragedy. So that's, there's the monitoring piece, there's a choosing safer tech from the very beginning and then there's the conversation piece of the education, right? It's one thing to tell your kid, don't drink alcohol. It's another thing to help them understand when you drink alcohol at this age, here's how it hurts your brain, your heart, your decision making. Like, help them to understand the why. And so help them to understand why you are hesitant about AI, where it can lead you astray. Talk about AI literacy, talk about how you're using it, maybe use it together. It's not going away.
- [38:08]
B
Yeah. And asking them what they know about AI, do their friends use it? And then most importantly, reminding them that they can always talk to you about this. And even when there are issues or they feel like they got in trouble using one of these products. Chris McKenna, our friend Chris McKenna says like, like tell your kid you can always land safely and softly with me. Like, and you have to practice that in real time. Like if they've done something that you find upsetting, you have to breathe and not have an anger reaction because then they won't tell you anymore about things like that. For me too, it's about telling your kids AI is Not a human being. AI is not your friend, even if it sounds like it is, in explaining what it is. It's a computer program. It's designed to keep conversations going as long as possible. And that's different than real friendships, which have give and take and boundaries. And sometimes you disagree. AI, especially these AI companion bots, they respond instantly, they rarely disagree with you, they never get tired of listening to you. So it's about like both of you having a common understanding of how the AI works. And you don't even have to use AI to know that it's just talking about how it's built and how to stay safe. When, if and when or when. I should say when they end up using it directly, hopefully much later on.
- [39:29]
A
Yeah, when. When children are using chatbots to simulate close friendships, romantic partnerships keep them occupied when they're bored through conversation that is one sided or provide emotional validation, that's where a lot of the danger lies. And so making sure you can talk to your kid about how that's, that, that can be really dangerous. And even though it feels good, it's not actually good for them.
- [39:56]
B
Yeah. And there's also a note about privacy here because the conversations that you're having with the AI are almost always being stored by the companies that create that, that technology and they use that to study you and your decisions. There may even be human beings reviewing your chat. And so for your kids, it's like, don't tell an AI anything that you wouldn't want everybody you know to know about and also know that they're going to use that information to manipulate you. Some, you know, some may say to serve you targeted ads, but it's really all around keeping you engaged online as long as possible. And that's not a healthy childhood. We need them offline as much as possible. Yeah, yeah.
- [40:41]
A
Sit beside them, use it with them, learn together. And as our friend Chris McKenna says, Delay is the way. I don't think you'll meet one single parent that was, that will be in a few years. Like, ugh, I really should have let my kid have access to AI sooner. They are fine. That's not gonna happen. No.
- [40:59]
B
Is that AI doc that you mentioned, is that appropriate for like teens or young teens?
- [41:04]
A
I'd say teens. Okay. Now it can be anxiety inducing. Sure. Because it's like, it's, it'd be like watching a documentary about climate change. Right. And like, is our planet gonna be healthy enough to live on in 20 years? I don't know. It's that same level of like, it's scary, but there is hope. There is hope conveyed in it too. So I would watch it first as an adult and determine whether your child will be freaked out by it or not.
- [41:31]
B
And I think that like, being freaked out is okay because it is, is scary. Some of these, all these topics are scary. But listening to this conversation, spreading it around, talking to someone else about it, contacting your legislator to ask what they're doing to help protect your kid from AI, like these are all things that we can do to help move us in the right direction to reroute from the direction we're going with using kids as guinea pigs for AI technologies. And you know, I don't like to put everything on parents, so I just want to end with like a couple thoughts about what lawmakers could do. And I just think for me, it's like creating age restrictions, especially on the AI companion bots, so that we're just protecting childhood from the dangers of those.
- [42:15]
A
I mean, the one that I know the most about is Sammy's Law, which would allow third party platforms like Bark to be able to access technology, whether it's social media, chatgpt, whatever. If you could give parents access to monitor that, they can be ahead of things. Sammy's Law is what I feel the most informed about and support given what I know it could do for saving children's lives. It all moves way too slow.
- [42:45]
B
I know and I know. Well, I do know Sammy's Law is getting marked up in the house soon.
- [42:49]
A
Is it the house?
- [42:50]
B
Maybe. I'll include a link for parents who want to learn more about that. And I think it might be a good time to contact a lawmaker. If you review Sammy's Laws, the details around that, and feel like you want to contact your, your representative or senator and be like, I think this would be really helpful for protecting my kid. I agree that given the lack of protections, this is a really good way to get some peace of mind for and, and get through those APIs that the tech companies are holding so that we can monitor what's happening on, on those unsafe products that we just can't seem to get regulated. Right. Any other last thoughts around AI? Or maybe we end on a hopeful note? Like what are we hopeful? I gotta think about this pretty hard.
- [43:35]
A
I know, right? Well, I know that just as somebody who has been working at the intersection of social media and tech and parenting for, I don't know, 15, 20 years, I've lost count. I personally am craving more authentic human connection and tangible activities. Whether it's walking Outside painting with a paintbrush, not a program playing an actual board game versus solitaire on my phone. Like I am craving a return to in real life. And I believe the younger generation is also feeling that too. That's why we're seeing such a resurgence in like 90s trends. Right. It's the last sort of, last sort of generation before we all got online. So I have hope that we will recalibrate back to a time of more balance.
- [44:26]
B
I do see that coming and that you talked about authentic human connection and it made me think of the other morning. My 9 year old was up early. Sorry, she's 10. My 10 year old was up early and my son just turned 9. I'm getting confused about all their ages and she was sitting behind me and I was working. And they don't have any solo media use. Like they don't interact with technology on their own even at school because I have them in a classical school. But it was, it was interesting because she saw me reviewing parents questions that had come in so she was able to see me engaging authentically with other humans, getting their thoughts on a certain topic. And then now I'm developing like an episode based off of that. So she's watching me, you know, in a way use technology to connect with other humans in a way that's authentic and valuable. And I thought that was a really cool moment to be like even use it. I used Instagram to do that. Like there are ways to use it in a healthy way that connects you, but you have to create boundaries. And we, we can't be on there too early because we get distracted with all like the addictive features. We're lucky that we grew up without it and now we can be better about using it in a healthier way. But I think parents could like model even their use of AI and show their kids how, don't let them touch it, but you do it and show em how you're using it as a tool and then hopefully they will copy that, you know, be able to take that into their use later on when they end up using it.
- [45:59]
A
Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely a to be continued. Right? I know some, some episodes we film together and we're like, here's your answer. Go and do the thing. We're in a figure it out as we go mode. But I think this had a lot of great tips for parents. I've even taken some stuff away from it. So I'm excited to, to, to talk with my son again.
- [46:19]
B
Yeah, let's Continue this conversation as it develops around AI use and our kids. And as always we want to hear from parents. So however you you guys can get a hold of us, we're on our Instagram messages and our emails let us know about your experiences, positive and negative around using AI and your kids use and a lot of wins. You know, there's been some schools are passing new policies restricting AI from AI use from children, which is really important. You know, just having these conversations and not keeping it in the dark, even though it's hard sometimes, is super duper important.
- [46:52]
A
So it has been amazing to see what the work of Jonathan Haidt and his team, you and your team at Scrolling to Death the work of Heat initiative like we have made a lot of progress that is for healthier childhoods. More children are not getting on social media as early tech is being removed from schools. So I don't want parents to be discouraged by this AI conversation. I want them to be encouraged and empowered. You have created along you and our respected colleagues have created a lot of helpful resources. Do you think is techsafelearning.org the best place to send people?
- [47:36]
B
I would say for school issued technology stuff, those are all the templates there, I guess I would say generally coming together and using our power collectively and that's why we've made so much progress across all these groups is because we're working together and parents can join us. So I would say sign up for my email list@browingtodeath.com heat that email us is where we're sending opportunities to act and that will include supporting AI regulation or signing petitions, coming to in person events, things like that where we can continue to grow the audience and grow the momentum of these changes because we are going in the right direction and there is hope.
- [48:13]
A
Good. Yes. Because there is, there is hope. There's momentum. And going into the word an almost back to school season. Right. I know parents are going to be scared because they're going to do all they can do at home but that they're going to send their kid to school and they're scared and they don't need to be scared but they do need to take action. So sign up for Nikki's list and let's band together and let's keep keep this momentum going.
- [48:35]
B
Let's do it. Thank you Titania.
- [48:37]
A
Thank
- [48:40]
B
you.