We get the same conversation in every parents’ workshop. A parent — almost always thoughtful, almost always caring — opens with one of two questions:
- "Should I be worried about what AI is doing to my child?"
- "What should I be teaching my child about AI right now?"
Both questions are good. Both deserve answers that aren’t panic and aren’t evangelism.
Three things worth distinguishing
Most arguments about "AI and kids" collapse three different concerns into one. Pull them apart and the conversation gets clearer:
- Use of AI tools in schoolwork. A homework-policy question. Mostly a question for schools, with parents amplifying the school’s rules at home.
- Exposure to AI-generated content online. A media-literacy question, in the same family as "is this news source trustworthy?".
- The child’s own future agency in an AI economy. A career-readiness question, and the one most parents really want to talk about.
Different questions, different answers.
A few questions worth asking before reaching for fear
- Do I understand how this tool actually works, or am I responding to headlines?
- Is the harm I’m worried about specific to AI, or to screen time / persuasion / unsupervised access?
- What would my child gain by being one of the few in their year who actually knows how to use these tools well?
A parent who can answer those three questions calmly is already further along than 95% of the public discourse.
What we tell parents in workshops
Don’t ban it. Don’t worship it. Teach it. The children whose parents help them build a thoughtful relationship with AI now will look very different at 25 from the children whose parents pretended this generation’s most consequential tool didn’t exist.