My thoughts on the evolving relationship between kids and technology

[If you’d rather not hear my musings that lead up to the headline, you can click here to wormhole to the answer – also, you’re part of the problem, and I worry about your kids. No offense.]

Today I write this, on a lovely Saturday afternoon, as I sit in a Seattle Hospital recovery room after the birth of my second son, Rex. After a busy and laborious morning, Ciara and baby are both snoozing after their journey and victories over childbirth. I provided ice chips.

I spent the first 15 years of my professional career teaching and coaching kids. Anyone who has dabbled in the realm of education will tell you the immense amount of care and responsibility they feel towards the children we are charged with. Now that I have two boys of my own, I am finding that feeling to be focused and magnified.

I worked in a few different high schools over the course of a decade (what do you think I taught?). Through that time I crystalized my opinion on what I believed was the appropriate use of tech in the classroom; I bet my answer surprises you.

Kids and technology, in general

Strong opinion, borderline belief: when it comes to kids, it’s less about the QUANTITY of technology and all about the TYPE.

In my classroom, we used tech every day. Their laptops. The Internet. Whatever software or website was allowed by the district was allowed in my classroom (unless it was a quiz or a test day).

All of my curriculum was online. Students could find every lab, lecture, or activity I ever delivered somewhere on their laptop. Click the link, access the work, and get to it. My website organized materials, for the most part, better than the average teenager’s backpack.

Cell phones (or iPads) were not allowed. Period. Can’t use it as a calculator, can’t use it to take a picture, can’t use it to text or call your mom. No, not even on her birthday (fun fact: kids only ever text their moms during school). It’s not the only way to do it, but it’s what I did.

So what was the difference between a cell phone and a laptop? Tablet devices were designed to CONSUME things. The glassy flow of apps… the algorithm… all engineered to hold you hostage. You can’t learn anything when your brain is held hostage.

You have to analyze the intent and incentive structure of the shareholders of the product when you think about how safe it is for your kid to use.

So right now you’re wondering…

1. Okay, both cell phones AND laptops can access AI… What’s your point? And probably:
2. “Wait… I’ve never really thought about what incentives AI companies have to build software that answers my questions for free… ChaCha (242-242) tried that in 2005 and it didn’t work out so what’s the play here?”

Let me give you a whole bunch of examples, creating buckets within buckets you probably didn’t know existed. It’s the long way but the right way to answer your questions. I’ll introduce the buckets with claims I’m sure you’ve heard.

[DISCLAIMER: I’m going to say things like “books are good” or “video games are bad” for your kids. That doesn’t mean I think any kid should read any book at any age. I am broadly referring to the content available through the medium. For example, just a regular ol’, bound by leather or cardboard, run-of-the-mill, put it behind me during a zoom call to make me look intelligent, stacked-a-couple-of-them-because-I-couldn’t-find-a-booster-seat-at-my-dad’s-place, average ass book.]

”Cigarettes are bad for your kids.”

Obvious.

Strategy: put literally any chemical they can think of to make those tiny cowboy killers as addictive as possible. Don’t let your kids smoke darts! The incentive is grossly misaligned. I don’t care how cool you looked smoking them in the ’80s.

”Books are good for your kids”

Also Obvious.

Strategy: Write something informative or entertaining enough a person will want to read it. Nobody ever got a dopamine hit the moment they turned from page 244 to 245. Book writers and publishers need to write good pieces of work that, in and of itself, are informative or entertaining enough to sell to the world. If the content is weak, it’ll never make it to the shelf. Incentive is aligned. Good content, good habit.

”TV is bad for your kids”

Tricky.

Let’s not drill into specific tv content… because that’s a debate I’m not prepared to have… so let’s talk about TYPE.

Animal planet? Amazing. Put a modern day nature documentary in front of your toddler or grandfather and they’ll both be drooling over their shirts when phosphorescent jellyfish are jellying across your 72” flatscreen. History channel documentaries.. the weather at five… Anne of Greene Gables on PBS… most of these are good natured and designed to relay information. Most of us would probably agree that’s positive. Incentives aligned.

When it comes to family TV time, I like to watch baseball. Or a great movie. They both have a beginning, middle, and end. A time to sit down, and then a good reason to get up and do something else. Movie makers put their name and legacy on the front of their work, and I think put a lot of thought and artistic effort into what they produce. To movies: I like and subscribe. Incentives aligned. My addiction to the mariners wastes hours of my life, but I can only watch it a few months a year. Balance.

What’s unbalanced: Binge-worthy TV dramas on platforms whose business strategy is to keep me glued to the couch. Episode after episode after episode that grabs and keeps your attention until you’re two pints of ice cream deep, at 1am, with “suggested for you next” appearing on the screen before credits begin to roll. Or 28 seasons with 32 episodes each (I exaggerate) of Bluey on Disney+ for my kid. I LOVE Bluey. The accents are incredible. The messages aren’t half-bad. But the postures and habits that come from seemingly inexhaustible amounts of content is what I am choosing to guard my youths from.

I label the TV category as “tricky” because the worst version of myself wants to say yes to the couch-glue. It’s easy, entertaining, and comfortable. But humanity was not made for comfort. We were made for greatness.

”Games are bad for your kids”

Said nobody ever. Unless the name of the game started with “Hunger."

"VIDEO games are bad for your kids”

Complicated.

The N64 controller has like 9 buttons and a D-pad. The games you play on it are either fun group games (think Mario Kart) or challenging adventure games (think Zelda). Sincere, real life camaraderie, or a puzzle. The latter I genuinely couldn’t solve until I was 28 years old. There are several games that have been made recently that fall into similar categories of “pretty cool” for kids. RPGs, Wii Sports, Guitar Hero 3.

I’m cool with these things. Subscribe.

The rise of video games specifically designed to turn our brains into mush started in the early 2000s in the form of online multiplayer games. Halo 2 or whatever. This inserted a new flavor of addiction: playing a game that has no end against strangers who yell profoundly demeaning things at you from two time zones away with a voice in the thralls of puberty.

Then around the 2010s or something, the App Store came out with this thing called “in app purchases.” So now, you don’t just buy or download the game, you can spend money on fake stuff inside of it to help you play it better. The first one I remember was this cartoon army game called “Clash of Clans.” For those who never dabbled (good for you), the object was to build a silly cartoon army and use it to ward off invaders or attack online bad guys. You could group up with your buddies and send each other resources. You could also grab your mom’s credit card and spend $500 on “gems” to help you build your army up faster. Genius.

The REAL disaster for video games came when these two concepts got married. Major platform online multiplayer games (Call of Duty, Fortnite) that you spend real money on to get “better” equipment and level up faster. The video game manufacturers’ incentive evolved from making something cool enough to pull off a shelf to wanting all your time and money.

This is the same genre to me as the binge tv shows – except worse. They can be played indefinitely and are engineered to give haptic feedback in cadences and dosages that rival drugs. Plus, thirteen year olds still say really nasty things to you from two timezones away.

”AI is bad for my kids”

Existential.

Takes deep breath … exhales

Short answer: My kids need to learn how to use AI…

…and…

I DO NOT want my kids to use AI.

Here’s how those thoughts intersect (the long answer).

I think the incentive structure between developing kids and AI scores high.

Kids are curious, highly energetic, love to feel seen, respected, and understood. They hate being bored, talked down to, or confused.

AI knows everything. It has no off button, unlimited patience, and loves to be used. Some models even have a decent sense of humor and can be entertaining to talk to. Use AI, spend tokens, AI companies make money, everybody wins.

My problem has nothing to do with cost. It’s this catch:

In addition to all those positive things… AI is also a great robotics engineer…lawyer, linguist, historian, artist, composer, and just about anything else you could ever want your kid to be. Mathematician. Writer. Problem solver. Name the skill that doesn’t involve moving molecules and AI does it better than 85% of humanity. By the time my kids can read, it’ll be closer to 100%. And probably moving molecules.

How do we reconcile these truths?

Kids are human. Like water, electricity, and most people you’ve ever met – they’re experts at finding the path of least resistance. Need to clean their room? Shove the clothes under the bed or in the closet. Want an extra serving of ice cream? Ask mom, not dad. APUSH assignment due next period? Take a picture of a friend’s work and copy the answers during lunch.

Research paper due? Stuck on a math problem? Respond to a mean text a friend sent you? Ask AI to do it for you.

People don’t spend time becoming great at things tools can do for them (there aren’t many expert chariot drivers or butter churners in the developed world). AI isn’t designed to help you learn, it’s designed to give you exactly what you ask for.

AI has taught the curious minds of the world more than every copy of the World Book Encyclopedia ever published combined and it has to be catching up with Wikipedia at this point. But the audience thus far has largely been practiced learners and problem solvers who have experienced the reward of a hard-won answer to a tough question. The real reward after that effort was the ability to continue asking better questions to solve harder problems. Moreso than the answer itself.

AI hallucinates. It messes up. If you’ve used it to solve a problem you knew something about, you know that. If you use it to solve a problem you know very little about, it’s harder to know that.

Without the skill of problem solving, we lose that blip on our radar that tells us not to take whatever chunk of information at face value.

So what’s the handoff to your kid look like?

First – you need to improve your understanding of how AI works. We can’t repeat the same mistake of the last generation of parents who handed their kids social media and smart phones because “all their friends were doing it.” If you’re not at least a 5 on The Operator’s AI Ladder, I strongly suggest you start flexing that muscle and start climbing in order to help your kid navigate the most powerful technology ever created and made available to the general public.

Second – use AI with your kid. The answer isn’t “put your laptop away”. It’s to guide them as they reach for the keyboard. “What made you think to ask that question? How are you planning on using that information to help prepare you for [school thing]?” .. “Now that you have that info, what’s your strategy for studying and remembering it?”

Don’t: buy a damn tool.

Do you know how many different opinions there are about how to teach and parent kids? Look up how many parents there are in the world. Subtract, idk 10 or 11. That’s how many.

Buying the thing is going to hand you something you don’t even like. Worse, it’ll pose as a shortcut to your own understanding of this tool.

Don’t fall for the trap. Keep working on your ability to wield this thing and by level 9 you’ll be able to build an agent that’s your kid’s personal tutor. Not to mention that understanding is guaranteed to pay off at work.

So, as things stand, am I going to let my kids grow up using AI? Sure. The same way I let them use my car.

Until they’re 16, from the back seat, buckled up, while I’m driving.

I’m writing this from a hospital recovery room in Seattle. My second son, Rex, was born this morning. Ciara and the baby are both asleep now, worn out and victorious. My job in all of it was ice chips.

Before I was a dad, I spent fifteen years teaching and coaching kids. Anyone who has taught will tell you about the weight of it, the care you feel for children who aren’t even yours. Now I have two of my own, and that feeling didn’t spread thin. It sharpened.

I taught high school for a decade. Over that time I landed on a strong opinion about technology in the classroom, and I think it will surprise you.

My one rule for kids and tech

Here it is. With kids, it is not about how MUCH technology. It is about what KIND.

In my classroom we used tech every single day. Laptops. The internet. Any website the district allowed, I allowed, except on quiz and test days. All my lessons lived online. Every lab and every lecture was a click away. My class website was better organized than the average teenager’s backpack.

But phones and tablets? Not allowed. Ever. Not as a calculator, not for a photo, not to text mom. (Fun fact: kids only text their moms during class.) That was my line.

So why ban the phone and hand them a laptop? Because a tablet is built to make you CONSUME. The smooth scroll of apps. The feed that always has one more thing. All of it engineered to hold your attention hostage. And a hostage brain cannot learn.

That is the whole test, and it is the one I want to hand you for AI too:

Look at who built the thing, and ask what they get paid to make you do. That tells you how safe it is for your kid.

A quick tour of the buckets

Let me walk you through a few things you already have opinions about. For each one, ignore the headline and look at one thing only: what is the maker paid to get you to do? Books, TV, games, AI. Same test every time. Here is how they sort out, and then we’ll point the test at AI.

”Cigarettes are bad for your kids.” Obvious.

The makers’ whole game was packing in whatever chemicals made them more addictive. They win when your kid can’t stop. That incentive is rotten to the core. I don’t care how cool they looked in the ’80s.

”Books are good for your kids.” Also obvious.

A book has to earn its place. Nobody ever got a rush flipping from page 244 to 245. So writers and publishers have to make something good enough that a person actually wants to read it. Weak content never makes the shelf. The maker wins by being worth your time. Good incentive, good habit.

”TV is bad for your kids.” Tricky.

Forget specific shows. Look at type. A nature documentary? Put one in front of a toddler or a grandfather and both will sit slack-jawed when the glowing jellyfish drift across the screen. The weather report. A PBS classic. Most of it is built to inform, and the maker wins by teaching you something. Lined up.

A good movie is the same deal. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A reason to sit down, and a reason to get up after. The people who make movies put their name on the work. (My one weakness is Mariners baseball, which eats hours of my life. But the season runs only a few months. Balance.)

Here is the part that is not lined up: binge shows on platforms whose whole business is keeping you on the couch. One episode rolls into the next before the credits even start, until it’s 1am and you’re two pints of ice cream deep. Or it’s the 900th episode of Bluey for your kid. I love Bluey. The accents are perfect. But the habit those bottomless feeds build is exactly what I’m guarding my boys from.

I call TV tricky because the lazy version of me wants to say yes to the couch glue. It’s easy and comfortable. But we were not built for comfort.

”Games are bad for your kids.” Said nobody, unless the game started with “Hunger."

"Video games are bad for your kids.” Complicated.

An old Nintendo 64 controller has nine buttons and a D-pad. The games were either fun with friends in the room, like Mario Kart, or a real puzzle to crack, like Zelda, which took me until I was 28. Friendship, or a hard problem. Plenty of newer games still live in that good bucket, and I’m fine with those.

The rot started in the early 2000s with online games you play against strangers. The game never ends, and a stranger two time zones away yells awful things at you in a voice that’s still changing. A new kind of hook.

Then the App Store added “in-app purchases.” Now you don’t just buy the game, you spend money INSIDE it to do better. The first I remember was Clash of Clans, a cartoon-army game. You could also borrow mom’s credit card and drop $500 on pretend “gems” to build your army faster. Genius, for them.

The real disaster came when those two ideas got married: huge online games like Call of Duty and Fortnite, where you spend real money to level up faster. The maker’s goal stopped being “make something good enough to sell once” and became “take all your time and all your money.” Same bucket as binge TV, but worse. It never ends, and it buzzes your hands in doses tuned like a drug.

”AI is bad for my kids.” Existential.

Deep breath.

Short answer: my kids NEED to learn how to use AI.

And: I do NOT want my kids to use AI.

Both are true. Here is how they fit together.

The pull between a kid and AI is enormous. Kids are curious and full of energy. They want to feel seen and understood. They hate being bored, talked down to, or confused. AI knows everything, never runs out of patience, has no off switch, and is happy to be used all day. A few of them are even funny. The kid is hooked, the company makes its money, everyone looks like a winner.

My problem isn’t the cost. It’s this.

AI is also a world-class engineer. And lawyer. And historian, artist, composer, mathematician, writer. Name a skill that doesn’t involve moving physical objects, and AI already does it better than most people alive. By the time my boys can read, “most” becomes “almost all.” Probably the physical stuff too.

So how do you hand that to a kid?

Remember that kids, like water and electricity, take the path of least resistance. Room needs cleaning? Shove it under the bed. Want more ice cream? Ask the parent who says yes. Paper due next period? Snap a photo of a friend’s and copy it at lunch. Stuck on a math problem, or a hard text from a friend? Just ask AI to do it.

People don’t get good at things a tool can do for them. There aren’t many great chariot drivers left. And here’s the catch: AI is not built to help your kid LEARN. It’s built to hand them exactly what they asked for.

The kids who got the most out of AI so far were already good learners. They had felt the reward of fighting through a hard problem. That reward was never really the answer. It was earning the right to ask a better question next time. A kid who skips straight to the answer never builds that.

And AI gets things wrong. If you already know the subject, you catch it. If you don’t, you can’t. Without your own problem-solving muscle, you lose the little alarm that says “wait, that’s not right.”

So what do you actually do?

Two moves, and one trap to skip.

First, get better at AI yourself. We can’t repeat what the last round of parents did, handing over phones and social media because “everyone else was.” If you aren’t solidly a few rungs up the AI Operator ladder, start climbing now, so you can actually guide your kid through the most powerful tool ever put in front of regular people.

Second, use AI WITH your kid. The answer is not “put the laptop away.” It’s to sit beside them while they reach for it. “What made you ask it that? How will you use the answer to get ready for the test? Now that you have it, how are you going to remember it?”

Don’t buy a tool for this. Count the parents in the world. That’s how many opinions there are on raising kids. A bought “solution” hands you someone else’s, and worse, it poses as a shortcut around your own understanding. Skip it. Keep building your own skill, and a few rungs up you’ll be able to build your kid a tutor of your own. That skill pays off at work too.

So will I let my boys grow up using AI? Of course. The same way I let them use my car.

From the back seat. Buckled in. While I’m driving. Until they’re sixteen.