"When my daughter turned 16, I didn't hand her the car keys and hope for the best. She spent a few months in driver's ed, practicing parallel parking, checking blind spots, and learning to handle heavy traffic and bad weather. Like all new drivers, she needed guidance and practice before she could drive safely on her own. With generative AI tools, we all have something far more powerful than a car. And most of us aren't getting lessons at all."
"Instead of invisible algorithms steering us, we're the ones giving the prompts and receiving responses with super-human speed and fluency. AI can chat, generate art, produce stories, answer questions, mimic reasoning, and simulate companionship. These systems that "talk back" require cognitive and emotional skills that don't fully develop until adolescence."
Generative AI has rapidly become broadly accessible and visible, shifting influence from hidden algorithms to explicit user prompts and outputs. These tools can produce text, images, conversations, answers, and simulated reasoning with great fluency. Effective and responsible use requires cognitive and emotional skills that often mature during adolescence, yet many teens will experiment driven by curiosity and technological fluency. Two decades of bans and restrictions failed to build judgment or practical competence. Teaching AI literacy and providing guided practice equips young people to use generative AI as responsible operators rather than unprepared passengers.
Read at Psychology Today
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