AI for Parents: Part 2
Last week I covered the fairly benign uses for AI, namely Voice Assistants, Educational Apps, Video Games and chatbots. But as kids get older natural language processing tools like Chat GPT emerge. I know. Ugh.
Natural Language Processing Tools
That’s a mouthful isn’t it? And isn’t it crazy that most of us hadn’t even heard of this until like a year ago? And now it's potentially a giant issue for teens? Oh technology.
To state the obvious, NLPT’s are really easy to access. As kids get older and their lives/obligations get more intense, many will be tempted to use AI to help with school work. Maybe they already are. And what’s more, now tech companies are specificaly marketing to teens with homework friendly features.
I literally just got this in my email last night!
I’m worried about this. Schools have their work cut out for them if they are going to stay on top AI and Schoolwork. I feel myself spiraling a little. So I’m going to take a deep breath while read on to hear what the kids think about AI.
What the teens think about AI & Schoolwork*
Most teens I surveyed say they really aren’t using AI themselves
Only 18% admitted to using it.
—> This is fewer than I would've expected. Assuming everyone is telling the truth in my anonymous survey, I think that's heartening.
Teens suspect their peers are using AI
81% believe their peers are definitely or maybe using AI for schoolwork
Teens aren’t unified as to whether its ok to use AI or not
45% think its not ok
45% aren’t sure
10% think its ok
—> This seems at least partially attributable to lack of clarity from parents and schools.
School policies about AI are not all the same and/or are not well understood
18% report no policy
18% say its ok for research
56% say its prohibited
Of those teens reporting that AI is prohibited in their school policy, 42% say consequences are an automatic zero and 29% say there is a possibility of suspension
Only some parents are addressing AI at home
Less than half (45%) said their parents have spoken to them about it
When parents do address AI at home, they aren’t always giving a lot of detail
“Don’t do it”
‘Its stupid”
“Just don’t”
—> Now granted these are parent quotes as shared by teens in a survey. Its possible they are just summarizing. Its also possible that that’s all they took away from the conversation.
What parents can do
Start talking to your kid about AI if you aren’t already. Share your point of view.
Get into the reasons why. Here are two areas of concern parents gave as shared by the teens:
“Don’t do it because if you get caught it can be bad for your reputation. Also even if you don’t get caught it’s not right to cheat on anything.”
“Don’t use it, you’ll end up getting caught and the punishment will be worse than actually doing the work.”
These are spot on. While you might be mastering a prompt writing skill, you’re not mastering facts nor long-form writing skills— which were more likely the point of the assignment.
Address the confusion. And there’s plenty of confusion here. Do you and your kid fully understand the school policy? Do you, as a parent, agree with it? For example if the school says its ok for research, do you agree or do you think its a ‘100% don’t do it’ situation?
Stay close with your school district. As evidenced by the email I got from the Google Bard team yesterday, AI is not going away and is now being actively marketed to teens. I don’t know if those who wrote my school district’s AI policy are aware of this. Also, (shame on me) I don’t actually know what our school district’s policy is. But I’m going to change that. I will be reaching out to to share the Bard Marketing email and also to find out more about my local policy today.
Some Disclosures
*DISCLOSURE 1: The stats and insights shared in this article are from a survey of teens that ran for one week. Survey takers were assured anonymity. Survey takers were a 55/45 mix of public and private school kids ranging in age from 13-17 across several school districts in 2 states. This was NOT a huge comprehensive study, it's a temperature check so please take it as such!
DISCLOSURE 2: I used AI to help me research last week’s AI article (you can read it here). I think its important to share that. I bring it up this week because its relevant to how parents can talk to kids about the topic. Which I address below.
My $0.02
Parents probably need to talk about this topic with kids ALOT. The message may not be getting through and they will benefit from repetition as they will faced with this temptation all the time.
AI produces mediocre outputs. As a user of NLPT, I think of it as my drunk intern. It provides rambly, inconsistent, occasionally incorrect research with sporadic flashes of brilliance. I absolutely use it for research– but as one of multiple sources. I would never take its results at face value. I will always corroborate its results with other sources.
Using AI and saying your kid can’t doesn’t necessarily make you a hypocrite. We grizzled parents have years of practice being skeptical of what we read. Fact and source checking has been drilled into us. Out kids, on the other hand, are new to all of this and in this era of social media news, sources don’t hold the same gravitas they once did. So many feelings but that’s a topic for another day.
Paid subscribers get additional insights from my survey about when kids are getting phones and what social media apps they use the most.
Some Additional Teen Insights
Because I will always ask any young person I come across about their cellphone and social media usage, this survey was no exception. Here’s what I got:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Thoughts from a digital mom to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.