“I have barely figured out how to talk to my kids about viewing online porn,” a parent shared with me recently. “It’s so overwhelming to think about them or their friends creating sexual content. The AI stuff is just so overwhelming. Can I just opt out of this altogether? I want to opt out!” she… Read More →
“What kinds of questions feel easier to ask AI than a human?” This is a question that the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Center for Digital Thriving has been encouraging adults to ask young people since ChatGPT and other models burst onto the scene a few years ago. Now, a national survey from Common Sense… Read More →
“Get closer!” my son said. I was standing in front of a giant piece of art that spanned half the wall. The image was completely captivating and I was reluctant to lose the perspective I had from across the room. My kid, on the other hand, was nearly climbing into the artwork. His insistence, and… Read More →
Caregivers are inundated with guidance about screen time. Some of it helps families find firm footing; much of it is conflicting, oversimplified, or untethered from the latest developmental science. It’s no wonder parents feel tired and eager for clarity. On our most exhausted days, we just want someone to tell us what to do. At… Read More →
“How is that allowed?” my middle schooler asked me recently. My son had just learned that Elon Musk’s AI chatbot and image generator, Grok, was being used within X to “undress” existing images of people online. We had already talked about nudify and “undressing” apps (add this to the growing list of awkward but essential… Read More →
When I’m leading workshops with parents about adolescence, I often invite them to travel back to their own teenage years. I’m not asking for a perfectly accurate replay of events. Instead, I ask for memories of what it felt like to be on that rocky, turbulent, exhilarating road from childhood to adulthood. Together, we fill… Read More →
Whenever I hear about a new set of parental controls, two feelings rise up immediately: relief and resentment. Relief that the industry is responding to parental concerns and acknowledging that young people aren’t mini-adults. Settings that help parents protect their kids from harm are not “nice to have” in 2025; they are essential. Resentment because we… Read More →
In my latest book, I describe my early interactions with a rudimentary 1990s AI program called Dr. Sbaitso. This was back in the days of dial-up internet, so this “doctor” was far from a fluid and sophisticated conversation partner. The voice was robotic, it took forever to generate answers, and the program rarely delivered the… Read More →
“That’s probably just AI,” my youngest said, pointing at an image that looked a little too perfect to be real. “How can you tell?” I responded. “It just seems like it,” he shrugged. On one hand, this skepticism is an asset in a digital world where the line between human- and AI-generated content continues to… Read More →
I remember watching the 2013 movie Her, where a man named Theo develops a relationship with an artificial intelligence operating system, and feeling two contradictory things at once: incredulous (“This could never really happen”) and uneasy (“This seems like it really could happen”). Fast forward twelve years, and my second impulse was right. We’re closer than ever… Read More →
