21st CENTURY HEADLINES: How to Raise ‘AI-Native’ Kids.
Across the country, we’re living through a moment of intense skepticism toward tech-forward childhoods. When it comes to phones, the received wisdom is that they’re bad for kids: Just last month, Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a surgeon general’s advisory against screen time; at least 35 states have now banned cell phone use in school. At home, many parents are embracing analog devices to shelter their children from the tyranny of app addiction at an early age.
“I’m decent at AI, and my 12-year-old is just passing me rapidly,” Scharf said.
And now, the age of the AI revolution is sparking fresh suspicions. Some parents are petitioning schools to remove it entirely. Jonathan Haidt, who’s changed the face of American childhood by campaigning to limit kids’ exposure to smartphones and social media, has warned that “AI chatbots and companions are the next uncontrolled mass experiment that Silicon Valley wants to perform on the world’s children.”
But when it comes to raising children, some parents have a different view. Just as the kids of Gen Z were expected to be “digital natives” if they wanted to get ahead, these parents think kids of the 2020s should be “AI-native” if they want to succeed in life. Sure, a lucky few kids might get a chance at a formal AI education, from a place like Alpha School in San Francisco—but the parents I talked to aren’t waiting for teachers to catch up; they’re taking matters into their own hands.
I spoke to one father, Tarun Sachdeva—a start-up founder from Toronto—who has become “creative partners” with his twin 7-year-old daughters, helping them build an animated universe around a character they generated and vibe coding a KPop Demon Hunters game with them on weekends. A Colorado father, Blake Scholl—founder of the aeronautics start-up Boom Technology—often spends Saturdays side by side with his 12-year-old son, building things like a cell phone, with ChatGPT coaching them through it. When their LLM helps them solve a new problem, he says, his son’s reaction is priceless. “He’s grinning ear to ear,” Scholl said.
Almost all of the parents raising AI-native kids expressed the same simple idea: The future is coming, and it’s inescapable; it’s a parent’s job to fortify their kids for the world ahead.
Kids whose parents scold them for using AI, Scharf said, “have an arm tied behind their back.” The upside of using it, he added, is clear: “It really ends up giving them superpowers.”
Related: Toy Story 5 to set stage for debate over AI in children’s toys.