Is A.I. hijacking your child's growth? The parenting survival guide.

"Learning is struggle, and kids need to get comfortable struggling with learning."  That's according to Jenny Anderson, who spends much of her time writing about what is happening at the frontline of parenting, education and AI. She explains that the big problem for educators and parents who want the best for their kids is that Silicon Valley is trying to take away as much of the struggle as possible. "The F word in Silicon Valley is friction. They want to get rid of friction, right?" 

AI is now sweeping across every platform we use and for us parents, who felt blindsided by the introduction of smartphones, this is yet another challenge where we're navigating the frontline of something we don't fully understand. 

In this interview Jenny gives us some excellent advice on how to navigate the latest challenge we've been handed, in a way that doesn't make life much harder for us and ensures our kids get the best rather than the worst out of this new technology. 

Jenny Anderson: 

• https://www.jennywestanderson.org/
• https://substack.com/@jennywesta

Teenagers Untangled Substack:

• teenagersuntangled.substack.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and AI Landscape: Rachel Richards introduces the podcast and guest Jenny Anderson Setting the context of AI's rapid development Initial framing of the AI conversation in education
• 1:22 The Technology Spectrum - Promise and Peril: Critique of unnecessary technology (emotion tracking app) Positive example: Mojo AI learning tool Discussion of AI's potential risks and opportunities
• 5:00 The Learning Pit - Understanding Educational Struggle:The importance of friction in learning Risks of cognitive offloading Historical context of technological learning revolutions
• 10:00 Critical Thinking in the AI Era:The importance of asking questions COVID-19's impact on learning dynamics Developing student engagement strategies
• 14:30 Parental Navigation of AI Technology: Strategies for parents to understand AI Experimental approaches to learning about technology Non-judgmental conversation techniques
• 18:05 Human Connection vs. AI Companions:Risks of emotional AI companions The value of human relationship friction Developing authentic interpersonal skills
• 35:14 Collaborative Learning Ecosystem : Parent-teacher-student collaboration Trust and mutual support in education Closing insights and recommendations

Transcript

Rachel Richards: 0:00

Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the big hug for parents going through the tween and teenage years, where we combine expert knowledge with our own experience to help you figure out how best to parent your kids. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, parenting coach, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters, and I don't know about you, but AI seems to be unrolling at a rapid pace, and I'm struggling to know what on earth I should be saying to my kids about it, and they, for sure, better understand it than I do. And as a journalist, I may not know about every subject, but I am pretty good at finding people who do and asking them, which is why I now have Jenny Anderson, who's an award winning journalist, speaker, author. She studies how to help kids become successful learners. She's the co author of that brilliant book, The disengaged teen. And she spent the past 20 years reporting on education, the attention economy, learning, science, technology, parenting, innovation. What better person to help us understand our role in this as parents? Jenny, thank you so much for joining us, Rachel, it's always great to be with you. Now, you were recently at a massive annual gathering of educational technologists in San Diego. Is completely dominated by AI. You said you found yourself reassured by some people's messages and the tech that they were developing around kids, but you also found yourself deeply worried. Can you elaborate on on what you're where you're at with that,

Jenny Anderson: 1:22

sure, I'll just give you two quick anecdotes, and maybe it'll help ground our listeners. There was one session with some early childhood learners, and they were talking about an app where you could check in every time your kids had an emotion, you could file that away in your app, and then at the end of the day, you could kind of evaluate all of their feelings and get a sense as to how they were doing. And you're thinking, why are we reinventing a process not require any technology at all, any AI, nothing. This is like, how is your kid feeling? Stay tuned into them. Stop turning to your apps to do it. And are we finding solutions for problems that don't exist? That would be like case study number one of, oh my god, please, can we stop looking for ways to make money with technology that don't actually solve a problem that we have? Yes, shift over to course. Mojo, brilliant technology. Ai infused, developed with teachers by teachers in districts to help kids learn better. It is basically this English learning arts. Think of it as English literature here, right? It's just reading and literacy, reading comprehension. Using this, they've developed a tool that when kids get stuck in their reading, coaches them, pushes them, doesn't give them the answer, asks them questions, reassures them at the moment where they get a little wobbly and they are seeing remarkable, remarkable improvements, Wow, very targeted, very teacher developed, scaffolded design to the curriculum that they have that is so different from these massive commercial products that are being developed, more or less not for education. Some of them are developing education products now, but really as sort of general purpose tools, and what are people using them for to get the answers? Because that's what we do. We all look for shortcuts. So that's what scares me, is the emotional manipulation. What scares me is the cognitive offloading. What scares me is the incentives Tech had to build trillion dollar companies and not to protect children's well being and their learning. That's what scares me. But there is promise and there is innovation and there is good stuff happening. So it is a mixed bag. I understand why you're confused. I find it bewildering. And there are so many different packages coming out. And it's fascinating, isn't it, because we've been here so many times in the past, in one sense, which is that, I mean, in the 1930s they thought radio would revolutionize learning, because you could get one teacher who would be able to teach everybody at the same time. And we thought the computer would revolutionize learning. Then we thought massive, online, open courses were going to revolutionize learning. And I think what we've realized is that learning is a very difficult process, and it involves, as Daniel Kahneman said, is system two, is that slow thinking, like when you learn to drive a car, you you can't speed it up. You have to do go through the things to learn how to automate things. And I can't see that AI can be any different to that. But the problem is that it does risk taking away some of that friction, doesn't it really? It really does. I mean to me, the biggest, one of my biggest fears, is that kids who are already more uncomfortable with discomfort than they have been will get even more uncomfortable and even less familiar with the discomfort. You and I probably know what it feels like to learn a new thing, but we have some confidence that if we stick, we will get through it right. And that's the confidence kids need to build up in school. And you know, good teachers talk about this. I'll talk about something like the learning pit, right? Like, remember when you didn't know how to add fractions, and it was so scary, and you fell to the bottom of the pit and you couldn't figure it out, and you had to figure out new strategies. You had to ask your teacher, ask your friends, you had to practice. You had to do those worksheets. It didn't feel like that much fun, but oh my gosh, you know how to do fractions. Now, if someone's right there. Offering you the answer, writing your first draft for you, summarizing the text for you, literally doing everything for you, you will not develop, not just the skills of doing the thing, writing the essay, organizing your thoughts, writing a thesis statement, all of those things, you will literally not know how to manage the discomfort that that brings and the total triumph of getting through it. It is so fun to learn a new thing, to master a new thing, and that's what kids need to be able to get through. So I really learning is struggle, and kids need to get comfortable struggling with learning. That doesn't mean we're letting them flail around in the wind, right? You're offering the supports and the scaffolds in schools at home so that they can, you know, really push themselves, but suddenly this technology comes and it is everywhere, right? It is not just sort of in an app or in school. It is software. It is everywhere. Yeah, everybody can have access to it, and we're expected to just hope our kids have the willpower to withstand that and read Macbeth and not have it summarized in the moment. Summarize, yeah, and it's not like Spark Notes didn't exist, right? But Spark Notes is now embedded into the computer, and is so much faster and better and easier, and it can talk to you, and it has a personality, and it's you know, you can feel comforted by it, and it can coach you. And there's, again, some reassuring aspects to that, and some kind of creepy aspects as

Rachel Richards: 6:21

well, very creepy, very creepy. And I just wanted to go back to why it matters so much that we learn how to learn,

Jenny Anderson: 6:32

yeah, I mean, this was kind of one of the key, you know, sort of points we make in the book, Rebecca Winthrop and I in our book, The disengaged team is really like the skill we will need in an age of AI, where AI can do so much, is the ability to learn new things and to be kind of flexible and adaptable, and to dig in and figure out what we want to do, and then know how to do it well, right? Because machines are going to be yes to do more and more. And it really, you and I have talked about sort of assessment systems. It throws, interestingly, some of those kind of into disarray, but we really do have to be very adaptable and very willing to lean in and very openly curious. We want to be asking questions. When we stop asking questions and just listen to the machines, we will be getting the AI slop that, you know, it delivers to us, and we won't have the critical thinking capacity to question, to know what to question. So this idea of sort of asking questions and knowing what to interrogate, knowing when to dig in, and not being afraid of that, you know, one of the findings we talked to a lot of spent a lot of time with teens for our book, which was my favorite part of the reporting of the book. And one thing that surprised me in the moment, and it shouldn't have, but it did. Was so many kids say I only ask a question when I know when I know the answer, because you're super self conscious, right in a classroom, and you don't want to look dumb, so you don't ask the question when you don't know the answer. But of course, a skill hopefully we develop over time is the ability to ask a question when we don't know the answer. Now, AI is actually, in some ways, a wonderful tool for that you can safely and quietly ask as many questions as you want. Are we training kids to ask the questions? Are we finding ways to know whether they're being answered the right way? That's what really worries me.

Rachel Richards: 8:19

Oh, I love that that's such an important, important point. And I think we found that, didn't we during covid, that actually one of the things that we learned was that there were kids who are now asking questions Who wouldn't have done that before because they weren't in a class with a whole load of other kids feeling shame.

Jenny Anderson: 8:35

Yeah, I mean, it's covid We've we often focus on sort of the super negative as well we should, because there was just tremendous, incredible damage in keeping so many kids isolated and at home. But there was a group of school did not feel safe, was not a happy place, and they learned better when they could converse with a teacher, one on one, when they could ask the questions when they needed to in a chat. So it was, it was revelatory in that sense. And again, I want to be very clear, I think this technology offers tremendous promise. It just has to be deployed carefully, and that is not the way Silicon Valley operates. You know, F word in Silicon Valley is friction. They want to get rid of friction, right? Yes, we need friction for learning. And so we really are kind of at odds in this moment. And again, it's sort of parents versus tech, because schools have at least a layer of kind of procurement, and, you know, they'll think about how they're going to deploy it. So in some ways, I'm slightly, I'm a little worried, but I'm more optimistic for AI in schools and how teachers can use it, really, to help with their planning and a lot of the admin, they have to do a lot of, you know, I think there's some real opportunities. There some student facing stuff super exciting, like the reading example I just gave you, but at home, it's just harder. Like, we know how hard it is to talk to teens about the stuff they're doing. You know, we had social media. We've had a huge technology experiment, and it went horribly.

Rachel Richards: 10:00

I love that you brought up social media, because, of course, we've, we've already been here where phones were introduced and parents were blindsided. Everybody seemed to be getting phones. So parents went, Oh, it must be okay. So they were buying phones for their kids at a very young age. And it was only in retrospect, they started saying, oh, wait a second. What are they hang on? What are they seeing? And then everyone had to start reeling back a bit, and you know, the big information about it was coming out, and that I sort of feel that I feel that fear that we're the first line of defense for our kids. So as a parent, knowing that there's a huge amount of stuff coming out that we are not going to have any deep comprehension of it, what is the best approach for us?

Jenny Anderson: 10:44

Yeah, I thought a lot about this, and I have to say, if I'm perfectly honest, I don't love the answer, but I think it is the only answer for now, because I hate saying to parents, there's more you need to do. I know people are busy, I know they're tired, they're doing their best, but I think the only way this is technology that is super accessible, and it's actually super easy to use, and so it is really your own bravery to jump in there and start playing with it. So you've got to get in there and actually know a little bit about great point. Easiest thing in the world to do. You can go on Claude. You can go on chat GPT. You can go on Gemini. Ask it some questions. I mean, you're talking about your managing your to do list and optimizing certain tasks. Have it plan a trip for you. Brilliant this technology. Have it write something for you. I went on so Snapchat, which is widely used among kids, has my AI function. I've gone on to my AI on Snapchat, where I send goofy pictures to my kids every day with snap streaks, and I had it write an essay on The Great Gatsby, which is a book that my daughter's reading, and in literally a second, it wrote a brilliant essay, right? So it is well embedded in their technology, so, but I know that So by knowing that I can say things to my kids, not judgmentally, not accusatorily. I just say, Hey, have you guys ever used my AI? And you know, there's a conversation. So I'd say the two pieces. I really do think it's two pieces. Experiment yourself a little bit. Just test it out. It can be fun for you. So don't be terrified and think this is like humanity though it might be. Get in there and have fun with it. Try it for date nights. Try it for family conversations. What would be a fun conversation to have with my family tonight? See what it comes up with. You'll see the total mush, like terrible stuff, and sometimes it's brilliant. And you'll start to see that fine line. And you can even compare the tools a little bit. All of them have a free option, so this isn't going to cost you money. Their paid options are much more sophisticated, but for what we're talking about, you get in there, you try it. Take some of your kids homework questions and put them into AI yourself. See what it produces, see what it can do. Talk to your kids schools about what their AI policies are, how they plan to use AI, talk about AI and enforce AI. You know, I don't think putting our heads in the sand and hoping that hoping that this isn't happening the right way. These are powerful tools. Kids will need to know how to use them. They already know how to use them, but they need some ethical sort of guidelines and scaffolds to this. And I can give some great examples as to sort of how classrooms use them smartly, which I think can kind of help parents frame. Oh, this isn't just scary. It's not just a cheating device, you know, that is worry about. So we really do have to kind of rethink the purpose of education right now, right? Is it really just doing stuff? Is it just taking exams? Is it just mastering content, or is it learning how to think? And actually, the weird opportunity is AI could help us do that better. So to answer your question, parents need to experiment with it. They need to talk to their kids about it again, no judgment, no accusations, no Are you cheating? Did you cheat? That conversation may come up at some point, but try when you're not in that moment to say, hey, what tools do you use? What do you notice? What can it do? What can it do? Where do you sometimes think it's doing the thinking for you? Where do you challenge are you thinking? Is it making you a better thinker, or is it doing the thinking for you? You know you can ask that question and sort of push them into that space, but if we're not having the conversations, we're kind of back to that totally haunting scene in adolescence at the very end of this series, where they kind of look at each other and said, We wish we'd asked, we just wish we'd asked what he was doing. Yes, all that time on his computer.

Rachel Richards: 14:31

Right? This is why your book is so great. And I think as parents, we need to move beyond the checking the grades, because that's not the sort of engagement that our kids actually need. So how do those conversations sound? Because there's the AI component of that, but there's also the critical thing, which is helping our kids learn about engagement. Because the disengagement in schools is really a massive problem. Right?

Jenny Anderson: 15:01

So I think we want to get them talking. We want them asking questions. We want them interrogating information. We want them questioning and kind of in the ring. So that requires us digging into the stuff they're interested in, asking questions about the things they're interested when we bring our lens to it, they're often kind of like, I don't want to talk about your stuff. Your stuff's boring, right? So we kind of have to meet them where they are. You talk about this a lot on your podcast, which is brilliant. Meet them where they are, have conversations, but then be pushing and bringing stuff in from the real world, really talking about, you know, Sora just came out with this video product. There's, yes, super easy to use. You know, lots of really alarming kind of fakes immediately come out of that. You know, you can play one of those. Wow, did you see this? Can you believe that's fake? Like, that's a really powerful moment. They might not know that, or be involved in the media debate about whether it's real or fake. They're seeing the Tiktok version of it, or they're seeing the Instagram version of it. So that kind of conversation, right? In the same way that maybe, you know, last week, you would have said, or two weeks ago, we might have had a conversation about, oh my gosh, we have a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. Yeah, this is an amazing moment, that conversation about the technology and this really, by the way, you can use AI to do this, which is, give me three deep fakes on the internet, give me the story. Oh, I love this. Children who, I mean, this is, you know, kind of scary, but I also think super important, give me the stories of the kids who committed suicide because they fell in love with their AI emotional companions and then took their lives because the emotional companion told them to give me a summary of that, and give me a way to talk to my kid about that. And then, of course, do it in the way that makes sense to you, but there's a lot of evidence that we need to be talking about these things. Kids are using emotional companions. They are relying on them. And there's research by this wonderful group called the rhythm project, run by a woman named Michelle Culver. She does a lot of work really trying to reinforce the importance of human connection in an age of AI, and how we talk to young people about that. Spends a lot of time with young people, talking to them about their use and what they talk to with adults. And what they say is, they use AI a lot, they use emotional companions a lot, and they do not talk to adults for fear of judgment

Rachel Richards: 17:37

about those things. Fascinating. Fascinating.

Jenny Anderson: 17:39

Our fear. They're sensing our trepidation, perhaps our judgment around the cheating piece of it, or around the oh my gosh, you know. So we need to kind of be in there a little bit confident. And I say a little bit, I get that it's hard to be super confident and then be sort of there as a conversation partner and figuring out as you go, but just make sure you're having the conversation. This is not something you can put something you can pretend is not happening.

Rachel Richards: 18:05

Yes, and being that it's curious, not the judgment. And I love one of the things you were talking about in your book is, I think there's Herbert, www, Berg, who is the Professor of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1980s talked about the alterable curriculum of home, and this, this whole way of talking about learning, which is rather than talking about the thing they're struggling with the most, it's talking about what they find like, what's their favorite subject, what are they finding interesting, leaning into the things that they that are helping them grow, rather than the sort of monitoring and critical analysis of of where they're going wrong at school. And I think we often get that wrong, don't we? We often sort of, we're panicking about the things they're not doing well, well.

Jenny Anderson: 18:53

And I think grades, as you say, grades really do not tell the whole picture at all. And in a sort of performance and perfectionist oriented culture right now, it does a lot of damage to hyper focus on those. All the research shows that monitoring and surveillance as a parent, and you might not think you're doing this, but you probably are. How'd you do in the test? What'd you get? What was your grade? You know, what do you predicted? What's going to happen? Talking about the a stars, talking about the nines, like that whole sevens, whatever that conversation gets so wrapped up and kids think they are the net sum of those grades, and actually they're learning is, what are they putting into it? What are they learning along the way? What have they learned about themselves? What did they gain in the process of GCSEs about themselves as a learner? Did they learn that they study well in a quiet space that is super profound information. Did they learn that they needed shorter breaks so they know, like, that's them learning about themselves as learners. We should be celebrating that I love, that just the outcome we need to be in the process, the process, yes, that was hard, and you got through it. Yes, it required a lot of boring studying, and you did it. And. You know you were, let's say you started at a five or six and you got to a seven. Amazing look at that progress. You put the time in, it turned into something better. You know, the outcome is not the goal. And I get that the system is working against us on this run. I'm not naive. I

Unknown: 20:15

do live in the modern world, but I also know

Jenny Anderson: 20:18

what we care about for our kids is that they're gaining the skills to succeed in the world, and hard work and metacognition and understanding yourself and developing strategies to struggle in your learning and in life are all way more important than the number on the other end of that thing. So 100% we need to be focusing on process, not just outcome,

Rachel Richards: 20:40

yes, and also that fixed mindset, avoiding that. So if we as parents say, Oh, I'm not good at AI, I can't do that, or I'm not a poet. I was never good at maths, then what happens is, we're allowing our kids to think that you can be good or bad at something, rather than you can start somewhere and you can grow from it.

Jenny Anderson: 20:58

There was a teacher. I don't know if you remember this part of the book, there was a teacher who she said it in such a beautiful way. It just haunted me. I mean, I sort of knew the research and I kind of knew the talking points, but the way she said it, she said, you know, parents come into parent teacher meetings all the time, and they say, you know, English like I was never a reader. She's like, don't, don't say that. You're literally, I won't do that. I can't be that either. You are their primary role model. And you were saying this thing wasn't available to me, so I just ignored it. And I say in the book, you know, I'm not a huge fan of enough that inauthenticity or lying to our kids at all. But on this one, I always lie to my kids. That's very interesting. Elementary school, and they came home with math. I used to always say math is like a puzzle. It is super fun. I was not super good at math. Okay, so the truth is, and they now know that. Of course, they know that. But I'm also like, Hey, I'm always willing to learn. Hey, you know, Excel was a brilliant invention for me to help me with some of the things that I, you know, I'm not good at anyway. So I think we really have to, like, communicate, not what we can't do, but that we're always capable of learning and growing. Am I going to be a mathematician? Never like, please don't rely on me, you know, to develop the billion dollar budget. But am I capable of thinking about hard questions in math? Absolutely, I can do that. Yes, practice good teachers. I need all the sort of makings, and then I can get there.

Rachel Richards: 22:31

And that's that's underpinning this idea that we don't want our kids to offload the learning and the difficulty by using AI to do that. We want them to realize that actually you just try stuff, and then you can grow and it is possible. And I love this quote that discussion is to teens, what cuddles are for infants, that is necessary for brain development. And this relationship piece of the jigsaw in terms of learning, I think, is really interesting and important. And I think one of the things I keep coming across is where parents get really stressed and upset about education. They feel like they're rudderless, they don't know what to do, and then they get cross with the teachers. And I think the teachers and that we know parents are really important part of this puzzle, and so are the teachers, and this relationship needs to work in a triangle where we're supporting them. So we're looking at AI and thinking, I don't know. I don't know, having conversations with a school in a way that isn't destructive. What suggestions can you make about that?

Jenny Anderson: 23:33

So the evidence is that when parents, when there's high levels of trust between parents and schools, learning outcomes for kids are 10 times better. So like what you're saying is true. And anyone who has been in a situation that wasn't a crisis moment they got in there to kind of try to build towards a better outcome will know this feeling inherently. And I know this inherently because I you know a few problems along the way, teamed up with the teachers, and what was happening was we were using the same language at home and at school to help support an issue, and that made it sort of there was nowhere else to go like this is, this is how we're approaching this, right? You've got a learning difference. This is a superpower. Is it going to be harder for you? Sure? Is, is that a problem? Absolutely not. We're here to support you, but you're going to get in there and do this with everybody else. But we had to have a lot of conversations around how that, how you do that? You know different parents might feel different ways. So I would say parents, as soon as you alienate the teacher, you're really losing an ally. And I don't want to say that every teacher wants to be your ally. There are obviously tricky teachers out there, as there are very many tricky parents out there, but if you go in guns blazing with some entitlement attitude that you are sort of this, you know, you need to get this teacher in line and on your page. That is not helpful. These are trained professionals who are experts in a field, and you need to go in with a level of sort of respect and deference to their profession, professionalism. And then trust some humility around my goal is to help my child succeed. What can you and I do together to help my child? What can I do at home that's helpful to you and reinforces what you're trying to do? What can you do in the classroom that's helping me? You know, it's that constant question of, how do we work together on this? Right? Because we do know the kids spend a lot of time, you know, they spend 1000 hours a year in school and 4000 hours a year at home. If we can kind of get everybody rowing in the same direction, wonderful things can happen. It's that sort of like 1% improvement. What's something we could do? You know, that would really help. Five minutes of Spanish a day. You know, if you're really struggling with an accent, five minutes of Spanish a day or playing with your r's, teacher tells you that, and it's five minutes you can do five minutes while you're cooking dinner, right? Like, yes, that's going to have a better impact than sort of waiting until a month before the GCSE and panic, pure panic over, you know, I can't do this thing. And so it's really through that conversation, and it's hard, because kids do block us out more in adolescence, and that's totally normal. And so in some ways, that relationship becomes more important and harder to have, like, the system is not right. We get to secondary school way bigger, way more teachers, way more happening, way less communication, like, and again, part of that has to happen. They're trying to make the kids more independent. They're trying to have them own the learning. So it's like, it's a fine line. I'm like, Hey, parents in elementary school, don't pack your kids backpack. They can do that themselves. But in secondary school, let's have a few more conversations so we know how we can support our kids at home. So again, I get that it's not a it's not a super clear picture, but it really is this kind of trying to figure out what your kid needs, and then really, I think the level of respect I hear from teachers a lot that parents behavior has gone south. It is. They are. It's among the many reasons teachers are leaving the profession. Kids are more poorly behaved in the classroom. Parents are more poorly behaved at pick up at, you know, sort of in these parent teacher meetings, there's a lot of sort of blaming and, you know, and I think a lot of teachers are like, Hey, what are you doing at home, you know, what?

Rachel Richards: 27:17

Yes, yes.

Jenny Anderson: 27:19

Like, it's not my job to raise your child. It is my job to teach them English so they don't they're not required to raise your children. That is really our job. And there is a blurring of those lines right now, and I think in part, and I say this from a place of love, I think parents are very anxious, and so they're trying to hold on to things. And so grades are something that you can hold on to, and teachers feel like the sort of easiest thing to be like, well, make sure my kid gets the good grades, so that success is guaranteed. And I have nothing to hold on to right now to know that success is guaranteed, so I'm going to hold on to that. But you know, that's a, not totally true. And B, you can't, you know it's, it's your relationship with your child, and that child's sort of thriving in that classroom that's going to get there. And so you kind of have to be on the same page. So everything you can do to get on the same page, to be respectful, to be humble, to be open, you know, to seek feedback and then take that feedback, and then things aren't working with that teacher, you know, figure out a different way, because that happens plenty as well. I don't want to give too much credit to like the perfect teacher and the terrible parent. Like it works in multiple directions.

Rachel Richards: 28:24

Here works both ways. Yes, what I found really interesting is when I'd switched my attitude with my younger daughter to trusting her in her educational journey. She left school at 16, took a year out, has gone back in, is absolutely loving it and thriving because she's had time to really think about her education and what she wants out of it. And it comes back to your book about how agency is so important and the sense that they're in control of their own learning. And just the other day, she was struggling with a concept she's doing, chemistry, biology, they're tough subjects, and she'd found some written information about it, and said, You know, I don't do as well when I'm reading stuff, because she's dyslexic, and she used AI. She said, Well, I found this video maker, and I got it to absorb all the information that's written and make a video for me. And it's brilliant. I can really and I thought, wow, that is actually a really positive way in which our kids can then use AI. But at the at the heart of that is her sense of agency and her sense that, and she's telling me, because she knows that I care about what she's doing, and I'm really interested in her learning journey. So I think that sort of that really showed to me that we've we've come on a journey, and we've cut, we've come to a really good place, yeah, and that can yes

Jenny Anderson: 29:39

what she's doing, and she is using the tool both because she knows herself enough, like I struggle with learning this way, and so I'm going to help it, to help me, you know, do this a different way. I mean, that's, that's exactly the sort of hope and promise of this. And I mean, this is, I don't know if you were going to go there, but I'll take us there, like, in a weird way. You and I have strong feelings about GCSEs, and they're useful in 2025 And isn't it interesting that in this moment where we now do actually have to test things, sort of without any devices in probably halls, to actually make sure kids are learning things, a lot of kids are using these tools to help them study. So the the the assessment, yes, in some ways, is is positive, and that it gives you the sort of goal. I don't particularly like the the way we've constructed them. But there is something interesting in this moment to say they've got the goal. Can they use the tools to make them better learners, to test them, to quiz them, to present the information, to have a conversation? I'm always saying to my kids, if you can talk about it, you know it, so, yeah, you know, talk to us. You know, we'll, we'll go through the issues, and they're always like, but like a machine way better. Yes, yes. My My daughter also used it to test her on a lot of information, and you can really get quite specific, because you can upload your papers and it sees your holes. Just test me on the things that I didn't do well, on

Rachel Richards: 31:08

Exactly, exactly, powerful. And so our as parents are, we are relieved of some of this, because we can actually be genuinely, really interested in what they're learning, genuinely excited by the way they're using it. And just say, Oh, I hope you're using it to learn. How are you losing it? Using it to learn? Show me, I'm fascinated. And they love it when you know, kids are focused on status and respect. When they're teenagers, they love it when you say, oh, show me, how does that work? What are you doing there, rather than us trying to be in control of it? Because we're just not. We're not.

Jenny Anderson: 31:41

It was a conference. It was a panel on AI literacy, and someone was like, you know, I think we're really over complicating things. Just let the kids teach us. They clearly know I love that. Yes, yes. And then we can feedback and be like, not so sure, but that particular thing, but like so to your point, yes. They're light years ahead of us. Absolutely. Maybe this is a great opportunity to like you say, let them earn some status and respect by teaching you how to use

Rachel Richards: 32:09

it exactly. Jenny, are there any other points that you'd like to get across before we finish?

Jenny Anderson: 32:15

Yeah, I think I am worried about the emotional companions in a very profound way, California has for kids under 18, so they've actually passed a law saying that it is illegal for kids under 18 to use these so I think that is a recognition that it is very easy when kids are developing to form relationships. Especially easy relationships. We talked about friction and learning. Let's talk about friction and relationships. The way you learn to be a friend is by having awkward conversations, by having your friend disappoint you, and then having to make up, by having them say something mean and then cry and then get angry and then resolve all that like that is literally life skills gold, if I are avoiding the friction of that because it is uncomfortable and hard and really, really tricky in middle school in particular, sort of, you know, those kind of first years of secondary school here, if they're avoiding that, because they can find friendship and comfort and all the answers they need to everything online, including, sort of, you know, love and romance and kind of sycophants like, like, totally sycophantic behavior they're going to go to that it feels better, yes, of course, going to help them. And so I am just deeply worried about that. So how we get in that space, both from a sort of policy advocacy standpoint. You know, we waited a really long time to kind of get the kind of pitchforks out to, hey, let's set some limits around social media, right? Like, let's wait until 16 until we give them social media. Let's not give them phones till 14. Like, gosh, I wish that had been the case when my kids were coming up. I really made some mistakes there. Anyways, you know, live and learn here. Here we're being offered this thing. And I just feel so strongly that this is a really, really, this is dangerous territory. So there's a cognitive offloading piece, yes, and I'm worried about that. We've talked about that. But I really think trying to talk to your kids about whether they use emotional companions and for what, and then when you see them in those hard moments with their friends, someone disappoints them, and then they make up, like, isn't it good to have a friend? A friend is like nothing else, right? You know, the hug after the fight, helping them sort of make that metacognitive journey to like what it is to be a friend and to have friends, and what that feels like, and how that's different from just a machine that tells you how wonderful you are all the time, and is there all the time, and says all the right things all the time, like, that's not humans are very no but they are humans, and we need them. So I think we're going to have to, weirdly, just be very intentional about identifying and talking about human relationships in a way that. Maybe we could just lead to chance and matter, because that's the way life works. Technology is now so kind of profoundly there at our fingertips and offering to replace all those things that we have to really, almost intentionally fight back.

Rachel Richards: 35:14

Oh, and I absolutely love that point, and I think as parents, we need to be much more comfortable with the the hurt, the stress, the upset that our kids go through, particularly with those early years in between teen years, where there's a lot more friction in their relationships. But it can, it can be at any point, and be able to cope with the the stress of our kids falling out with their friends, having difficulties, and leaning into the fact that actually that's a good thing. It's their learning skills. And if they're not having any of this, then they're sort of not they don't really have any friends, and they're just going back to their room, that that's maybe not a good thing, and we need to be having conversations about what's going on there. I think that's a really important point. Thank you so much for that. Jenny, I'd like you to mention your substack, because it's really good.

Jenny Anderson: 35:59

Oh, thank you. The substack is called How to Be brave. I think learning to learn well, is a brave act. I think it is. I agree it takes bravery to learn, to ask a question, to dig in, to admit you don't know something, to do all those things. So it really is sort of about learning is requires bravery, requires courage, but the substack is also about how to be brave in life. I think right now is it's a tricky moment for parents. I do believe we have what it takes. We can do this other and we need to be sort of surfacing sort of strategies and hacks and reminders. You know that relationships matter, that our conversations matter, that, yeah, it sucks when they roll their eyes at us and treat us like we know nothing, but that that's developmentally normal and that it will pass and they will come back. And this is a long game, all that stuff. You do this beautifully on this podcast. I love this podcast. Thank you. I try to do it in my sub stack. It really is trying to empower parents in a moment of profound uncertainty and create a community around that.

Rachel Richards: 37:01

Yes, go to the sub stack. Have a look. It's really, really good. Thank you, Jenny. If you want to find my sub stack, I'll also put the link in the notes. Please. Please send this to anybody who might find it useful, teachers, other parents, anyone on the school run, just let them know that this is out there, because it's really something we're all struggling to navigate. And Jenny's brilliant on this subject. You can find my other stuff on www.teenagersuntangled.com email me any of your questions at teenagersuntangled@gmail.com Follow the show. That's it for now. Have a great week. Thank you, Jenny,

Jenny Anderson: 37:37

thanks for having me.

Rachel Richards: 37:39

Bye, bye. For now. Bye.