Your teenager gets into a fight with her best friend. She’s hurt, upset, and doesn’t know what to do. Maybe in the past she would have spent the day replaying the argument, venting to another friend about the drama, practicing an apology in the bathroom mirror, or laboring over what to text.
These days, she can skip all that and ask AI what to say. It probably sounds better than anything she would’ve written herself. And that is the problem.
Parents have spent years worrying about what technology exposes children to, how it impacts attention spans, and makes it easier to cheat on homework. But AI has created another issue: What happens when our kids can outsource the experiences that teach them how to become adults?
It’s not just that AI can write a good essay on To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s also eliminating the frustration of staring at a blank page, organizing an argument, and ultimately figuring out what you want and need to say.
The same goes for relationships (friendships and romantic) and everyday decisions. Why try to figure out what to say to your friend when you can have AI tell you? Why figure out what the other person is trying to tell you when AI can make the hard decision you’ve been avoiding? There is no need to labor over tough choices when the algorithm can shoot out a well-reasoned list of pros and cons.
The uncomfortable middle
Technology has essentially allowed young people to skip the uncomfortable middle, the period of muddling their way through to an answer. And growth is what happens during those uncomfortable and awkward moments. We learn confidence by failing. Kids need to know they can survive getting it wrong.
Developmental psychologists often talk about the importance of “mastery experiences”: situations in which people build confidence through their own experiences.
Remember all the times you learned from your failures? Maybe it was that friend who lied to you. Or when you apologized to someone and it went spectacularly wrong. And what about all those school projects you didn’t understand at the outset and had to work harder to grasp. Or that decision you thought was a great idea when you were 16 but terrible at 17.
Those painful moments teach something a computer program cannot. They show you how to recognize your instincts and to believe in your ability to figure things out. Relying on AI robs a child of these lessons. And this isn’t just hyperbolic bluster.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2025 found that 54% of American teens ages 13 to 17 use AI chatbots for schoolwork and 12% use it to talk about their feelings and get advice.
A fine line
That said, there is an upside to all this technology. AI can help a student struggling with algebra (especially when his parents are clueless), allow a shy teen to practice a difficult conversation, or provide tutoring for a family that lacks the resources to hire someone. But there is a fine line between using AI to help you think and letting AI think for you. We need to teach our children the difference. And if I’m being perfectly honest, this can help adults too.
What to do
Ask yourself what you think happened before asking AI to decode a friend’s behavior. Take 15 minutes to come up with your own argument before asking it to generate an essay outline. Use AI to challenge your thoughts and help you see other perspectives, not as a first pass.
As parents, we can help guide our kids as well. We’ve become great at clearing hurdles out of our children’s path. Sending teachers emails when our child doesn’t receive the grade we think they deserve. Jumping in to solve their conflicts with friends and ensuring they never let anything fall through the cracks or fail. But our kids need to learn how to fix things for themselves.
One day, your child will have to make decisions that they can’t ask a bot about. Maybe it’ll be whether to trust someone, walk away from a bad relationship, stand up to someone, or stand by beliefs when no one agrees with them. They may have access to more information than any other generation in history, but information and judgment are not the same thing.
I want my kids to know how to ask good questions. But I also want them to trust themselves enough to answer a few on their own.
