Are We Protecting Our Kids, or Just Benching Them?
Right now, there is a massive push to just pull the plug. Ban the phones, block the AI, tell the kids to go outside and touch grass. I understand that it feels safe, like we are protecting them from the wild west of the internet.
But here is the reality we have to face: when we completely ban our kids from technology, they aren’t necessarily safe. They are just benched.
As parents and educators, we are all losing sleep over two main questions:
Are our kids going to forget how to think?
With AI capable of doing homework in five seconds, will they lose their critical thinking skills? How do we ensure they still know how to write, reason, and create, rather than letting a chatbot do the heavy lifting?
Will they be resilient enough to handle modern life?
With social media feeding them a constant, impossible highlight reel, are they equipped to face rejection? Will they know how to navigate the very real waves of anxiety and the fear of missing out?
Talk, Don’t Take:
If your child child comes to you and says, “I’m being bullied online,” and your knee-jerk reaction is to take the phone away, they are unlikely to trust you in the future with critical information. We have to set up lines of communication where kids can ask for help without the threat of losing their digital social lives.
Teachers Need to Pivot:
We have to change how we teach. We can’t assign the same worksheet from ten years ago and be surprised when a student uses AI to write it. Instead, we need to teach students how to harness AI to come up with even better solutions, (And yes, there are brilliant ways to do this—which is exactly what I teach).
Build a Village:
We have to teach the next generation how to manage anxiety and depression instead of treating these as personal failures. We also need to realize that teenagers may need to talk to other trusted adults in addition to their parents. Why not line up other trusted adults—coaches, aunties, neighbors—who can be that sounding board? Let’s build a community to help raise each other’s kids.