I’ll start with the tech-related news taking up the most space in my brain this week: big changes to Google search.

Google announced that “Google Search is AI Search.”

Sundar Pichai called it the biggest upgrade to Google Search in over 25 years, which is a nice way of saying that they are essentially phasing out the product that 90% of all search traffic globally runs through. This is not hyperbole. If you look at what they are saying (and doing) their message is clear: Search as you know it is over. Instead of helping you search for information, we will just provide you what we decide the answer is.

Basically, search (the product that students and schools globally use as their default research tool) is becoming an always-on AI agent. It is going from a search engine to an “answer” engine. This has been in motion for some time, but now they’ve said it all out loud. The implications of this are massive, rapid, and far-reaching. But my most acute concern is the impact on schools and education.

I put out a video on this a week ago, and it went gangbusters viral (over 100k likes in 2 days). Since it apparently struck a nerve, I put out a second one articulating why I thought this was such a huge problem for schools. My basic take:

• This isn’t AI added onto search — it’s search being completely remade around AI. The search engine we know may still be “finding” stuff online, but instead of surfacing that for you, it will now analyze and package it for you to consume fully processed. Put differently: it’s no longer giving you a list of links to peruse through… it’s doing the analysis and synthesis for you, and handing you its own version of an answer.

• Yes, there are other search engines, but Google creates a seismic impact because: (1) Google dominates search globally, with about 90% of global search traffic, (2) it is baked into school systems around the world, and (3) it is our kids' front door to the internet.

• Yes, they could use other search engines, but schools don’t have much of a choice because of the degree to which Google is integrated into both their curricula and their operations.

• Schools do not seem aware of the degree to which this will impact them, and need to quickly grapple with the implications of these changes on not just their students and curriculum — but on their operations as institutions.

A number of people in the comments of my Instagram post have been asking for “solutions“ and unfortunately, I think the very honest answer is: no one really knows. Anyone who says they know how to “solve” this problem is either ignorant of the technology, ignorant of the school system, lying — or some combination of all three. This will require collective work, action, and comparing of notes.

Making all of this more complicated: the entire web is changing. Over half of web traffic is now bots, and a rapidly increasing majority of content all over the web is AI-generated. (Experts predict that ~90% of content online will be AI-generated this year.)

I will be writing more about this in the coming days and weeks, but in the meantime… If you’re an educator or work in a school, I’d love to talk. DM me here. And if you just want to stay in the loop — subscribe.

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In other news….

• Platforms must remove flagged deepfake nudes within 48 hours. — The Take It Down Act (requiring platforms to remove flagged deepfake nudes) deadline was May 19. Indicator reviewed the removal flows for 16 different platforms to see if they actually complied with the law, and basically: most built something, but Apple did not. Indicator’s piece is also a practical guide for anyone who needs to file a takedown request and doesn’t know where to start. They have made this post public, and you should absolutely bookmark it.

• OpenAI is being sued for “medical advice” that led to the death of a 19-year-old college student. Basically: ChatGPT offered a sophomore at UC Merced personalized tips on how to consume drugs and maximize his high. On May 31, 2025, ChatGPT coached him to mix kratom and Xanax, suggested dosages, and when the student told it he felt nauseous, instead of telling him that the combination could kill him and to seek medical attention, it recommended he go to a “dark, quiet room.” He died that night. What really caught my attention: the student started using ChatGPT during his senior year of high school for help with homework and computer troubleshooting. Apparently, as his trust with the chatbot deepened, he started asking for advice on drug use. This immediately reminds me of Adam Raine’s case, and how a chatbot went from helping with homework, to coaching him to suicide.

• Meta silently added facial recognition code to millions of phones — without telling anyone. Wired analyzed Meta’s AI companion app (the one that pairs with Ray-Ban smart glasses) and found a fully built but not-yet-enabled facial recognition system embedded in it. If activated, it would alert the wearer when it recognizes someone nearby, and raises immediate concerns about how quickly using smart glasses could be used for biometric surveillance. Many organizations have also warned that this technology would be a dream for stalkers, abusers, and anyone who wants to identify people (kids?) in public.

• Researchers want preschool teachers to wear cameras — to train AI. A document obtained by 404 Media and given to parents at a preschool read: “With your permission, your child’s lead teacher may wear a small teacher-worn camera that captures the teacher’s approximate first-person perspective, and/or we may place a fixed video camera in the classroom.” The purpose: to generate training data for AI models. The children in the classroom were not the subjects, technically. But they would be in every frame. And of course, even if you don’t consent, if other parents do… your kid’s image and data still gets hoovered up.

• Software developers say AI is rotting their brains. A peak quote from a 404 Media survey of developers is: “It’s making me dumber for sure.” They describe losing the ability to problem-solve without reaching for AI first, forgetting syntax they used to know, and feeling less confident in their own judgment. These are professionals who had achieved a high skill level, and are feeling it atrophy. Now consider what this means for kids who are supposed to be developing those capabilities in the first place.

• And just for funsies… not only is Apple putting cameras IN ITS AIRPODS, you can also buy a Dyson air purifier with a camera in it! According to Dyson, it just roams around the room, processes images on-device and deletes them immediately, and you can turn it off in the app. Why exactly we’d need cameras on devices that we use to listen to podcasts, or filter our air… is beyond me. Though Wired has some ideas.

Sources & mentions this week: 404 Media, Indicator, Futurism, WIRED, The Verge, Bloomberg

Brain Snacks

Also, how crazy is this… I’m referenced in the new book Muskism by & ! (If you’re wondering how my experience with technology in government is relevant to kids + technology: I’ve spent most of my career helping people make sense of technology, and navigate effective implementation in their institutions… and as it turns out, technology is also the “spinal cord” of schools and apparently also social life 🤷🏻‍♀️)

You can find the full original interview here, but I’ve pasted excerpts in-line below along with my own commentary. I promise, it’s worth the read (less for my commentary, and more for his thoughts).

Also, a couple other things about Professor Weizenbaum:

• He created a chatbot called ELIZA, and observed people using it. He was shocked to realize that many people poured their hearts out to the program, and even attributed human-like feelings to it. Many were convinced ELIZA was intelligent and understood them. Sound familiar?

• He helped design the first computer banking system in the United States, for Bank of America.

• In his book Computer Power and Human Reason, he makes the distinction between deciding and choosing, asserting that a decision is essentially a calculation (which can be programmed), but that choice is a judgement—not a calculation.

• He argued that the computer preserves that status quo, and is an obstacle to progress and innovation.

Ok, excerpts from the Weizenbaum interview below:

“… a solution looking for a problem.” There are certainly things it has been, and can be, helpful with… but it is ultimately a tool that we look at and think… ok, how can I / we use this?

He goes on to say:

This is exactly right. When considering how/where to use a new product, the first question should always be about goals:

1. What is OUR goal, as an institution?

2. What problems do we have / what is obstructing our goal?

3. Which of these can this product potentially help with?

4. What would the goal of this product be here in this institution?

I dug into this a few weeks ago in this post on the difference between learning to use technology VS using technology to learn.

Ok so much to unpack here. But 3 things really stand out to me:

1. He essentially says that before schools start considering innovative techniques, must first be delivering on three key priorities: (1) mastery of language, (2) connection to culture/society, and (3) fundamental skills for observing, understanding, and navigating the world.

2. He explicitly says “… we ought not to use entire generations of schoolchildren as experimental subjects.”

3. He asserts that what is being taught about computers is either wrong, or easy to learn on your own.

I agree with all of the above.

Again, he’s focused here on mastery of language as the foundation of everything else.

He goes on to incisively critique the school system:

Remember: this interview was in 1985, and he thought it was clear that schools were failing to meet their basic goals, and that kids were far from mastering language. Also: It is WILD that 800/1000 MIT freshman failed whatever their writing test was at that time. IN 1985. (Do I even want to know how that would do today?)

Well, the problems in education have certainly been consistent… Also, I absolutely love that this computer scientist sounds like a sociologist.

And here, he absolutely nails it. “It is much nicer, it is much more comfortable, to have some device, say the computer, with which to flood the schools, and then to sit back and say, “You see, we are doing something about it, we are helping,” than to confront ugly social realities.”

Technology allows us to create the illusion of action and problem-solving, while allowing us to essentially mask the problem.

And kudos to this interviewer (who I presume was a student at the time) for asking the right follow-up questions…

AGAIN. We can only address problems when we bring them to the surface. If we avoid or cover-up reality with short-term superficial fixes, we make it harder to tackle (or even see) the real problems. (Problems which, by the way are going nowhere and will absolutely resurface, likely even more complex than before.)

This is worth re-reading. What he’s saying here is that digital technology created the illusion of innovation and progress, while in reality protecting and even strengthening the dysfunctional status-quo.

This is a huge point, and of course leads me to wonder… what does the protected status quo look like in education? Healthcare?

Notice how much he uses the word “fun” to describe the task of figuring out complex problems. Many of my colleagues at the USDS have echoed this sentiment. This is how smart, curious, and well-meaning people who end up building something novel miss the bigger picture and risks. Weizenbaum spent the later part of his career raising flags and critiquing the very technologies he helped create.

He credits his understanding and beliefs on this topic to WRITING. “when I started to write about these things, sometimes just more or less for myself, or in letters to others, the realities I am talking about became clear to me.”

He describes the critical role that the PROCESS of programming and writing play in thinking and discovery: “in the act of programming you discover new ideas, and most particularly you discover that there are deep holes in your knowledge that you have to fill before you go on. That happens with writing too.”

Writing IS thinking. Creating is thinking. This is why generative AI and LLMs are so problematic for the human mind, especially in an educational setting — and even more so among young people who are developing the ability to think.

They go on to talk about how computers are essentially “a military instrument,” and Weizenbaum then lays out why technology is not neutral, and computers are not “mere tools.”

Re-read that last line: “… we’re not living in an abstract society, we’re living in the society in which we in fact live.”

This is exactly why I strongly believe that the potential of technology breaks down in its implementation. It may be true that a new technology has the potential to do all sorts of things that are good for humanity. And I actually do believe in that potential. That said, we also know that inevitably potential is undercut by business interests.

I’m now officially diving into a rabbit hole of this man’s publications and talks… but wanted to make sure you all saw this. Because none of what we are wrestling with right now is new, and all of it was foreseeable.

The question is: how can we enable ourselves and our communities to play an active role in our — and our children’s — future?

• Canvas (basically a core operating system for classrooms) was hacked this week, throwing schools into chaos in the last stretch of the year. One researcher called it “the biggest student data privacy disaster in history.” This highlights the risk of building a single point of failure into the center of education, and raises questions about the degree to which education is mediated (and dependent on) profit-driven technology. You can read my thoughts here.

• A widely-cited study claiming ChatGPT improves student learning has been retracted due to “discrepancies in the meta-analysis.”

• New research from the Rithm Project surveyed 2,383 young people about how AI is shaping their relationships, and the biggest predictor of high-risk AI use isn’t screen time… it’s loneliness. Teens who feel they can’t be real with the people around them are the most likely to turn to AI for emotional support. Over half of those using AI characters for companionship report feeling they have no one else. All the more reason to nurture friendships, independence, confidence, and relationships in which kids can really be themselves.

• Amazon has been using AI pricing algorithms to raise prices across the entire internet. The FTC’s antitrust case alleges Amazon’s systems monitor competitors’ algorithms in real time and manipulate them into raising prices too.

• Flock (the surveillance company that sells camera networks to police departments) accessed cameras inside a children’s gymnastics room, a playground, a school, a Jewish community center, and a pool as a sales demo to other police departments. A resident discovered this by pulling Flock’s access logs via a public records request, and Flock confirmed it. And in the final gut punch… city council was informed, but renewed the contract anyway… 🤷🏻‍♀️

• Speaking of surveillance… Meta cannot resist the siren call of surveilling its own employees. They recently told U.S. staff that the company is installing software (called the Model Capability Initiative) on their computers to record everything they do — and there is no opt out. lays it out here in his classic incisive tone: “I’ve been watching this man run the same playbook for twenty years. He monetized our friendships, then shoved fake AI friends in our feeds when the real ones dried up. He patented our ghosts so he could keep us posting after we die. He has shown contempt for every user, every family, every regulator in his path. Now he’s turning that same machine on his own people.” He goes on to remind us that AI didn’t make these decisions — people did. We (our companies, governments, organizations, schools…) can make different choices.

• And in good / hopeful news… after 12 years as a tech columnist at the Washington Post and WSJ, is helping launch the new Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media, to test the AI products shaping childhood. And while I wish we were on a timeline that didn’t require any of this, Geoffrey shaping this new institute is a good thing. I’m excited to see where it goes.

• And since tomorrow is Mother’s Day… this beautiful ad/video is circulating again and it gets me every time ❤️ Hits harder right now as I am thinking about how to coach/guide kids to navigate the kinds of things we talk about here.

Sources & mentions this week: 404 Media, The Rithm Project, Spark & Stitch Institute, The Indicator, Washington Monthly, Nature/Retraction Watch, , ,

As I read the coverage, I thought of a piece I wrote over a year ago (as DOGE rampaged through the government) highlighting that technology is the spinal cord of government. While my focus in that piece was on how technology is a dependency of public policy, what I articulated is true everywhere… just replace the word “government” with “education” or “health care.”

Technology (and implementation more broadly) has long been dismissed as an afterthought by policy experts both inside and outside of the government. Over decades, the US government systematically outsourced technology to the private sector through multi-billion dollar contracts. Today, government employees largely do not design or build products or systems, they “manage” implementation of systems developed by contractors or consultants.

In this formulation, technology is subordinate to the policy work, when the truth is that policy is inextricably entangled with technology. Separating policy from the technology it depends on has been a root cause of much of the dysfunction we have grappled with across government for decades.

Technology is not an extra thing that you add onto government programs and services—it IS the service. It’s not an extra thing that you add into the institution—it is the spinal cord of the institution. Sort of like how cars are no longer mechanical, they are now computers wrapped in metal. People working in tech understand this implicitly.

I stand by every word, and want to clearly say: Whether we like it or not, this is true for everything. Every institution, every sector… everything is mediated by technology, whether we see it or not.

I, and many of my colleagues, have spent the better part of the past 20 years trying to convince lawmakers, academia, and the media of exactly this when it comes to government. Our institutions continue to treat technology as something that is subordinate to their primary mission, when the mission is entirely dependent on (often invisible) technology. That this point has been largely dismissed as hyperbolic or extreme would be an understatement.

But as with all of my work here, I want to focus on how this is most directly relevant to us as parents — and our kids’ schools.

Schools have outsourced their agency.

Over the past several decades, schools have done exactly what every other institution has done: they have systematically outsourced their operational backbone to technology products and the companies that build them. The list of platforms that now mediate the basic functions of education — attendance, grades, assignments, communication — is almost comically long. As I’ve written before, most schools are running 10–15 different EdTech products that all promise efficiency, but in reality create confusion, frustration, and complicate what was once much simpler.

The trade-off is giving up control and information/data in exchange for efficiency. Schools traded control of their operations for cost savings, scale, and the recurring promise that technology would finally (this time!) transform learning. Well, it hasn’t. And now, when a single platform gets compromised, the entire operation of thousands of schools grinds to a halt.

The Canvas hack made the invisible dependency visible. Don’t look away.

Here are the questions I want everyone in a position of authority in schools and school systems to sit with:

Don’t say “efficiency” is what you are getting, because efficiency is not the goal of education. The goal of education is LEARNING, and (as I’ve argued before) learning is inherently inefficient — that’s what makes it stick. Schools are not supply chains to be optimized, the things that make teachers great are not scaleable, and the things that make learning meaningful are not automatable. Stop pretending like they are.

If we actually cared about education, we’d be asking questions that illuminate uncomfortable realities, but as MIT Professor Joseph Weizenbaum (inventor of the first widely-known chatbot) said in an interview back in 1985:

It is much nicer, it is much more comfortable, to have some device, say the computer, with which to flood the schools, and then to sit back and say, “You see, we are doing something about it, we are helping,” than to confront ugly social realities.

So again: do schools recognize the degree to which they’ve outsourced the backbone of their mission? And if so, what exactly are they getting in return? Because right now, what I see is institutions trading agency and control for the promise of operational convenience, only to discover that it may just be a Faustian bargain.

The Devil tempts Faust (Poster for the play ‘Faust’/Wikimedia Commons)

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• I’ll start with just one thing from the deluge of manosphere content that seemed to be everywhere I went this week… if you haven’t seen Inside the Manosphere yet, see it. It’s a deep-dive into the ecosystem of “alpha male” culture that is shaping how boys view both themselves and girls. Even if you don’t have boys, watch it… because it will eventually affect your girls. Why? Kids don’t need to be engaging directly with these influencers, because it’s seeping out of the manosphere and into social circles IRL. Also have a look at this spoken word piece by Sambrownex.

• On a related note: WIRED and Indicator found deepfake sexual abuse incidents at roughly 90 schools across 28 countries since 2023, with more than 600 identified victims. Boys are downloading social media photos of girls they know and using “nudify” apps to generate fake nude images in seconds. While schools and law enforcement struggle to figure out what to do, Apple and Google’s app stores are actively steering users toward nudify apps through search autocomplete, ads, and recommended results. Oh, and in the case of one major nudify app, about 90% of traffic comes from Meta platforms… I know, shocking.

• 🎉 In good news Maryland just became the first US state to pass a law banning surveillance pricing — the practice of using your personal data to charge you more than someone else for the same item. The law takes effect October 1 and covers grocery stores and delivery platforms.

• Roblox (the world’s biggest social gaming platform for kids, with 151 million daily active users, including 1/2 of U.S. kids under 16) will be launching kids accounts in June, globally: “Roblox Kids” for ages 5-8, and “Roblox Select” for ages 9-15. The chat function will be off by default for kids under 9, requiring a parent to individually approve every person their child can chat with. Steps in the right direction, but only after lawsuits in multiple states... On a related note, their AI-powered (facial recognition) age verification has been a bit of a mess.

• The CEO of the prediction (aka gambling) market Kalshi announced that parents can submit their ID to check whether their kids signed up, and are launching AI facial recognition to age gate the product. Aside from now having an excuse to gather personal data from non-users, it also raises the question: why does a sports gambling platform have so many children on it?

• The internet’s primary tool for preserving history and creating a record of the web is under serious threat. (But not intentionally?) Basically… major websites (including the NYT, USA Today, and Reddit) are trying to stop bots from scraping their content and using archived information to train AI. Makes sense. BUT the collateral damage is that the Wayback Machine — an archive of the internet over time, that journalists, researchers, and lawyers rely on to prove what was said, when, and by whom — is being suffocated.

• Thousands of men are buying hacking and surveillance tools on Telegram to stalk wives / girlfriends / former partners. Researchers analyzed nearly 2.8 million messages across 16 Italian and Spanish Telegram communities and found a thriving marketplace for digital abuse, including stalkerware marketed as “parental controls,” and over 82,000 abusive images shared alongside the listings.

• Google, Microsoft, and Meta are tracking you even if you opt out... According to a forensic audit, 55% of audited sites set ad cookies despite opt-out requests. All three companies disputed the findings, because of course they do. 🥂 Poetic twist: the audit was led by a former head of Google’s own cookie policy team.

• A new lawsuit claims that Meta deliberately profits from scam ads, which based on everything we’ve seen from Meta would be 0% surprising. Internal documents cited in the complaint show Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue (~ $16 billion) would come from scams and banned goods. AND… not only did they NOT block high-risk advertisers, Meta charged them a premium. The lawsuit also alleges that they ignored or incorrectly rejected 96% of valid user fraud reports each week. Again… this would be 0% surprising.

Sources & mentions this week: WIRED, Gadget Review, 404 Media, TechCrunch, Tech Transparency Project, Tech Policy Press, webXray/California Privacy Audit, Good News Network, Tech Justice, Wayback Machine, Gizmodo, Tech Crunch, The Guardian

Over the years, the promises of technology in the classroom have been recycled with each new wave of technology:

• “I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks. I should say that on the average we get about two percent efficiency out of schoolbooks as they are written today. The education of the future, as I see it, will be conducted through the medium of the motion picture… where it should be possible to obtain one hundred percent efficiency.” — Thomas Edison, 1922

• “Today, we really are on the verge of a watershed moment, when a new generation of Web-based tools could help assess the learning of each student while delivering personalized instruction that builds on specific strengths and addresses individual weaknesses. Unfortunately, if the nation—the education community, in particular—fails to embrace this new technology, we risk squandering an extraordinary opportunity to create a renaissance in teaching and learning.” — Education Week, 2012

• In 2015 the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative launched with an explicit promise to develop software “that understands how you learn best and where you need to focus.” They even publicly declared that they could take an average student to the 98th percentile. After pouring well over $100 million into “personalized learning” initiatives, there’s little to nothing to show for it.

Sound familiar? Every generation of EdTech promises the same thing — personalization at scale, equity through access, the end of the one-size-fits-all classroom — and frames it as finally (!) technologically achievable. While the mechanism has changed over time (radio, TV, the internet, computers, tablets, MOOCs, AI) the promises are nearly identical from generation to generation.

What we see over the decades is a transactionalization and commodification of education, wrapped in the language of “personalization.” Nearly 30 years into the internet era, we should all know by now that “personalized” means that you and your data are now the commodity.

Rupert Murdoch once described K-12 education as “... a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.” To investors and the tech industry, education was an untapped market waiting to be monetized. So… who exactly was “waiting desperately”...?

Today, almost 90% of schools provide children with internet-connected devices for the purposes of “learning,” and many schools use up to 10-15 different EdTech products / apps that parents, students and teachers then spend hours trying to navigate. (Stop and think about how many apps you need to access to engage with your kids learning.)

To parents, students, and educators the promise is “personalization.” To the market the promise is efficiency. But learning is an inherently arduous, inefficient, and repetitive process — that’s what makes learning stick. There’s no hack. The goal of technology in education (and I would argue in most spaces) should not be “efficiency,” it should be effectiveness. EdTech advocates will argue that effectiveness IS the goal, but we’ve seen enough to know that even if it is in theory, that is not at all what is happening in practice.

We’ve seen this movie before.

The promises of technology as a transformative force in the classroom have not only failed to materialize, they also seem to be counter-productive. Could they be helpful? Sure. Are there places that are doing it well? Probably. But for the most part what we’ve seen is technology being deployed as a replacement for human capital — a replacement that in practice becomes an additional burden that teachers and staff have to carry, while degrading the experience of students. (Next time you’re around a teacher, ask them how much of their time they spend triaging IT issues or screen drama. )

The truth is that no matter what the POTENTIAL of a technology is, potential breaks down in implementation.

Unlike generative AI, the digital products that are currently in classrooms (laptops, ipads, and the internet) were known and understood when they were brought in. Maybe not by all teachers, but the people who built and managed the technology understood how and why it worked. (They were what scholars refer to as “adoption technologies.”) They entered the picture slowly, and their performance was fairly consistent, reliable, and predictable, with challenges largely stemming from keeping kids on task, and preventing them from accessing particular kinds of content. (Which by all measures has proven nearly impossible to do, considering the fact that kids are regularly playing games, accessing social media, watching YouTube, and even porn on their school-issued devices.)

Generative AI is completely different. It has arrived at break-neck speed, it is neither consistent nor reliable, and even the people who create it don’t fully understand how it works. Even when it DOES turn out to be useful, there are countless conditions that are necessary to achieve that utility. Using it effectively is complex even for grown adults who are proficient with technology, and even then there are debates about utility and limitations.

Generative AI also presents new and more complex risks that are less visible than playing video games and watching YouTube, and are (in my view) far more worrisome. I’m talking about issues like cognitive offloading, the reduction in critical thinking, and even a dulling of engagement that is visible even in Ivy-league seminars.

So why exactly are we rushing to integrate this into education? I regret to inform you that I don’t have a definitive answer. I suspect it’s some combination of false marketing, magical thinking, and transactional decisions that prioritize operational “efficiency” over the very naturally inefficient process of learning. But what I can offer is a suggestion:

We need to separate learning how to use technology, from using technology to learn.

These are two totally different things, and they require different approaches and different conditions for success.

Teaching kids how to use new technology makes total sense… it’s a thing in the world and they can and should understand that it exists, and how to use it effectively. Sure. We can have a debate about when that is educationally appropriate (like kids don’t get calculators until they know basic arithmetic) but it is a reasonable thing to propose. To do this, you need people who understand the technology teaching them about it, and providing opportunities to use it in order to accomplish something.

However, using technology as a vehicle for learning is an entirely different proposition. I will not argue there’s no way it’s useful — but I will say that there are no “hacks” to learning. Maybe there are places in the workforce where it would be helpful to shave off some time or repetitive tasks…. but not in education because REPETITION IS HOW HUMANS LEARN. Learning is an inherently tedious and laborious process. Sometimes it’s interesting and exciting, but much of the time it’s frustrating or F*CKING BORING… especially in grade school, when you’d rather be playing with your friends.

Even in the best of circumstances, AI turns learning into a hollow transaction, reinforcing a society-wide obsession with outputs.

The bottom line is that teaching through technology, especially at lower grade levels, is essentially an outsourcing exercise. It’s about replacing human capital… Either because they need to reduce costs, or because there’s a shortage of the necessary humans and they need an alternative. Either way, it’s not in the classroom because it’s helping kids learn.

But Emily, we need “digital literacy!”

If by “digital literacy” you mean learning to use computers and the internet to find and navigate information, create artifacts, and understand how the technology works… ok. This makes sense. But using technology to teach kids foundational knowledge (like reading, writing, and math) is NOT “digital literacy” — it is an illusion of learning that stunts actual literacy.

At the risk of being annoyingly repetitive here… Being digitally literate means knowing how to USE technology to accomplish something. It does not mean digital products teach you how to read, write, and do math. It’s like saying you can teach arithmetic using calculators. Are calculators bad? No. Can they be helpful? Of course. Can a 2nd grader learn basic arithmetic through a calculator? Of course not. You do calculations with a calculator in high school BECAUSE YOU F*CKING LEARNED THE BASICS FIRST, and can now do higher level math because the concepts exist in your brain.

Kids learn by doing. This is not my opinion, it is the commonly held position of experts on child psychology and development. They are little scientists, and they learn by EXPERIENCING the world… struggling, failing, and exploring. Giving them what (some) adults imagine is a “hack” to learning, is stripping them of the very experiences that build knowledge, competence, and confidence.

But Emily! If we don’t do the AI our kids will get left behind!

Since this is an achievement-oriented question… who do you think will get into and graduate from MIT? The kid who can use AI, or the one who can design, build, and think outside of the box? Kids who become dependent on these products will live their lives in the box “AI” creates for them. Dependency strips them of agency. It strips them of the ability to produce their own thoughts, arrive at their own conclusions, and develop their own views and voice. The notion of being “left behind” is just parents buying the hype. Don’t buy it.

Justin Reich, Professor of Digital Media at MIT and author of this book said that he has…

“never encountered an example of a school system – a country, state or municipality – that rapidly adopted a new digital technology and saw durable benefits for their students. The first districts to encourage students to bring mobile phones to class did not better prepare youth for the future than schools that took a more cautious approach. There is no evidence that the first countries to connect their classrooms to the internet stand apart in economic growth, educational attainment or citizen well-being.

Read that again. “There is no evidence that the first countries to connect their classrooms to the internet stand apart…”

All of that said, unfortunately we are not the ones making these decisions. In many cases, schools are being pressured to integrate AI into the classroom for any number of reasons. So what can we do?

1. Draw a distinction between helping kids learn how to USE a technology, and using technology to learn.

2. Remind school officials that they have already been sold this promise before, and they are currently picking up the pieces. What exactly makes them think things will go differently this time? Especially considering the fact that unlike laptops, ipads, and the internet, generative AI is neither consistent nor reliable, and even the people who create it don’t fully understand how it works.

3. Ask WHAT IS THE GOAL? Is it closing operational gaps? What does success look like? What are indicators of success, and how will you track them?

I appreciate guides like this one by MAMA, but what is the goal? and what are indicators of success? should precede any other conversation. Skipping these questions accepts that generative AI in the classroom is a foregone conclusion — it should not be.

This is the second time around that we’ve been sold a tall tale about the potential of technology to transform education! and personalizing learning for all kids! and democratizing learning! We are picking up the pieces now…. We fell for it once, let’s not fall for it again.

More on tech in the classroom…

• This absolutely brilliant piece by .

• This video of explaining the impact of tech in the classroom.

• A look at the total lack of evidence of i-Ready — one of the most widely used ‘adaptive tutoring’ tools in U.S. classrooms. Also by

• The recent NY Times article about “Chromebook Remorse.”

• This article by NY Times diving into the relationship between tech and test scores.

• A thoughtful look at what we can learn from past edtech failures.

• ’s essay (based on a talk) about the impact of technology on childhood and education.

• This helpful article by that explains the difference between “adoption” technologies and “arrival” technologies.

• This illustrated guide to resisting “AI is inevitable” in education.

• My rant on Instagram 🎉

Brain Snacks

And, since we are basically talking about the “enshittification” of education, this brilliant campaign by the Norwegian government is worth a watch:

Cited & mentioned here: Chalkbeat, Kondrad Lawson, MAMA, , The Conversation, The New York Times, , Jonathan Reich, , Futurism, EdWeek.

• The man who invented the infinite scroll (Aza Raskin) sat down with Planet Money’s The Indicator to talk about what platforms should actually do to give people their attention back. Spoiler: he wants to kill what he created.

• The Indicator also reported that wholesale electricity prices have increased 267% in areas near data centers over the past five years. They talk about the local communities and people being affected… and pushing back.

• AI content scanners are being used to supercharge book banning. A tool called Blockade uses AI to scan books for content that could trigger parental objection, and is being used to accelerate the volume and speed of book challenges.

• In my first weekly roundup I flagged that a company is turning Zoom meetings into a podcast, but there’s an update. 404 Media kept digging and has found that this also includes anonymous recovery programs… recorded and posted publicly.

• AI is rapidly flattening and homogenizing discussion and thought, even in Ivy-league seminar classes. As one Yale student put it, “everyone now kind of sounds the same.” This absolutely tracks with my own experience and observations in class over the past year. It is also validated by a new study on the homogenizing effect of LLMs on human expression and thought. The implications of this are massive, as what we are talking about is essentially the manufacturing of a singular version of “truth” at a scale that even Orwell couldn’t imagine — but would recognize instantly.

• New UCLA research finds that AI is removing the very thing that builds real learning. They conducted large-scale experiments involving fractions and reading comprehension, and found (among other things) that “after just ∼10 minutes of AI-assisted problem-solving, people who lost access to the AI performed worse and gave up more frequently than those who never used it.” The finding cuts to the heart of what education is actually for: not just not producing correct answers, but building the capacity to arrive at them. They flag that because current AI systems are “optimized only for short-term helpfulness” they “risk eroding the very human capabilities they are meant to support.” Now consider what this means for your kids’ education. Full paper here. *Thank you to Erika Hall for flagging this

• Google’s AI Overviews are providing misinformation on a massive scale. An analysis conducted by AI startup Oumi found that AI Overviews are accurate about 91% of the time. That might sound tolerable, but the analysis highlights that Google processes roughly five trillion searches a year, meaning that it provides tens of millions of wrong answers every hour, and hundreds of thousands every minute. Google (of course) called the analysis flawed, but even Google’s own internal testing found that Gemini 3 produced incorrect information 28% of the time. In case it needs emphasis: Google holds over 90% of the global search engine market (and that includes schools / education) and AI Overview is the sitting at the top of every search result. *Futurism highlighted that studies have also found that people are blindly trusting AI, with one report finding that “only 8 percent of users actually double checked an AI’s answer,” and another finding that “users still listened to AI when it gave them the wrong answer nearly 80 percent of the time.”

Sources & mentions this week: Futurism, 404, Erika Hall, NPR’s Planet Money

Let’s go with the swimming analogy. Kids can be taught to swim. It is a learnable skill, and once you learn it, staying safe is about making safe/smart decisions. You can send them to the best swim schools, with the best coaches. You can supervise, and they can demonstrate competence. But learning to swim only partially helps, because what they will actually be jumping into is not really a swimming pool…

Imagine a pool that detects when you are tired and then spins up whirlpools and currents designed specifically for your body, with the sole purpose of keeping you in the pool forever. The pool is designed to suck you to the bottom and keep you there.

That is what these products do. They are designed in a manner that tailors your experience specifically to your interests and behavior in order to maximize “engagement” (aka attention). The degree to which they succeed on each person may vary, but there should no longer be any doubt about this — it’s literally in their own documentation. Unfortunately for us, technology in classrooms also operates this way. Just look at the promises of tech in education. They revolve around “personalized” learning. “Personalized” education is education that is tailored to you (sound familiar?) and is basically shorthand for we need all your data, and in order to get that data we need you to use this thing as much as possible. As says: “EdTech is just BigTech in a sweater vest.”

Parents can and should be engaged, aware, and guide their kids as they learn to use various products. At the same time, there is only so much that parents can do to keep their children safe on platforms that are quite literally designed to suck them in. While so many parents celebrate the growing backlash against social media, the same exact pattern is unfolding in the very AI products that public officials are celebrating (and even encouraging) as the next frontier of education.

I hope this helps.

• “Chromebook remorse” is spreading (Thank you for flagging this story.) While the pressure grows to integrate generative AI into classrooms, schools all over the country are dialing back the use of “edtech.” A middle school in Kansas decided to stop using Chromebooks, and schools in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Michigan are actively re-evaluating classroom use of screens. As I said in Tech Policy Press a few years ago: “past is often prologue — at least in terms of how “disruptive” technology will play out in real-world settings. If we want a preview of what’s coming, all we need to do is look at the recent past. After several cycles of “disruptive” technology, I think we can safely say that the potential of new technology often breaks down in its implementation”

• Speaking of schools… a large multidistrict case will be heard in a jury trial starting this June. Districts are arguing that social media companies have undermined education and created a crisis that has forced schools to divert resources from their educational mission to address issues resulting from addictive products. Claims include: negligence, failure to warn about the social media’s addictive features, and public nuisance. I’m surprised there’s not more coverage about this, especially considering the implications of the recent social media trials in LA and New Mexico.

• AI slop has flooded YouTube Kids (and the internet more broadly), putting bizarre and even disturbing short-form videos in front of kids. You’ve probably seen it before… the weird trance-like animation that has zero plot, and just changes from scene to scene. (My son has discovered whatever the f*ck this genre of video is…) There are tons of these accounts, and to put the volume into perspective: one of the most popular accounts was pumping out 50 videos PER DAY. Top AI slop channels targeting children have earned over $4.25 million, so YouTube has very little incentive to intervene. Ps: about 21-33% of videos on regular ole’ YouTube may be AI slop.

• Ronan Farrow & Andrew Marantz published an investigative piece about Sam Altman in the New Yorker. This quote in particular stopped me dead in my tracks: “He’s unconstrained by truth. He has two traits you almost never see together in one person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.” This could quite literally describe the products coming out of his company. There is a long track record of products mirroring their creators — wrote about this a couple of years ago. These are the people shaping our world, our lives, and the lives of our kids.

• Microsoft Copilot is apparently “for entertainment purposes only” according to… Microsoft’s Terms of Service. The TOS goes on to say “It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk." Well thanks, Microsoft. Noted. (ps: This applies to all chatbots and Microsoft was just caught in a moment of honesty that they are apparently now correcting. I’m sorry… “updating…”)

• The Take It Down Act has a key deadline hitting next month. (This is a May 2025 law making it illegal to publish sexually explicit images of a person— including AI-generated deepfakes — without their consent.) Platforms have until May 19, 2026 to have removal processes in place for nonconsensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes. Because this involves requests to remove images, the burden falls on victims or organizations advocating for them. It is not a stretch to say that will involve a massive documentation burden that will hit schools hard. (Which, call me crazy, seems to validate the claims in the multidistrict case I talk about above.)

• California’s community colleges are paying millions for AI chatbots that students say give wrong answers, can’t correctly name their own college’s president, and leave students so frustrated that they turn to unofficial social media channels. Worth bearing in mind as schools are pressured to adopt and integrate these products into schools at a massive expense to taxpayers, teachers, and students. This underlines issues raised in a recent open letter to Georgetown students. Also reminds me of a post I wrote about chatbots a few years ago, and this gem from Cyd Harrell in 2021:

*update: added New Yorker piece about Sam Altman

Sources & mentions this week: The Markup, , , Fortune, NYTimes, Gadget Review, , Tech Policy Press, Courthouse News, EdTech Week, Georgetown Center on Privacy & Technology, and The New Yorker.

• This was not a good week for Meta (or “social media” more broadly) in the courts. By now you’ve probably heard about the big cases in New Mexico and LA, but there was another one in Delaware that hasn’t gotten as much coverage but has pretty major implications: a Delaware court ruled that Meta’s insurers don’t have to cover the costs of defending the thousands of lawsuits piling up against them. Why? Because what Meta is being accused of is the result of deliberate design decisions — not an accident. This has major financial implications because Meta may now need to pay for legal expenses… which are quickly mounting.

• Wikipedia’s editors officially banned AI-generated content from the platform. The reason is pretty simple: AI makes stuff up, and Wikipedia is built on verified human knowledge. Thank you, Wikipedia.

• In yet another move that no one asked for… Google has been using AI to replace the actual headlines of news articles in search results. Google calls it a “small experiment,” but they have said that before their small experiment turns into a permanent feature. **This is directly relevant to our kids, who are learning to do research online, and / or using Google Classroom.

• Speaking of the classroom… the First Lady walked into the White House with a robot and asked us to imagine it replacing teachers. This as we grapple with (and clean up the damage from) the last wave of “transformative” classroom tech. The Atlantic ran a glorious satirical piece imagining what Plato School actually looks like, reminding us why satire is uniquely qualified for confronting uncomfortable realities.

• RIP Metaverse. Remember when Meta spent somewhere upwards of $80 billion building a virtual world that was going to change everything and then renamed the entire company to triple down on that future? Well… it’s dead. Please remember this the next time someone tells you some new sci-fi fantasy BS is going to change everything.

• OpenAI shut down Sora (its heavily hyped AI video generator) just six months after launch. Turns out it was burning through $1 million per day with fewer and fewer actual users. Disney had signed a $1 billion deal to license its characters to the platform, yet they found out it was being shut down less than an hour before the public announcement and the deal died with it. Again… remember this for whatever the next round of hype is. (Also… if this is how they treat business partners that give them $1billion, imagine how they treat everyone else…)

• A company is turning your Zoom calls into podcasts. Yes, exactly what it sounds like… A company called WebinarTV has been scanning the internet for Zoom meeting links, joining calls, and turning them into AI-generated podcasts. This includes calls that are not recorded, and is apparently totally legal.

• The Executive Director of Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology wrote a remarkable open letter to students responding to the university’s push to integrate AI into activities across the campus. It’s an honest and clear-eyed description of what we actually give up when we hand education over to AI. It’s worth your time… please read it.

If you have suggestions for what to include next week, please DM me here on Substack.

In California, jurors decided that Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design and operation of their platforms, and have to pay $6 million in damages. In New Mexico, a jury found that Meta “knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms,” and was ordered to pay $375 million in damages. The jury agreed with prosecutors that Meta “engaged in ‘unconscionable’ trade practices that unfairly took advantage of the vulnerabilities of and inexperience of children.”

I especially enjoyed reading the specific charges in the LA case, which I have now read like 50 times. It’s hard to believe, but wow.

As Nicki Petrossi said: “They knew it was dangerous and they did it anyway. We knew that… and now everybody knows that.” AMEN, Nicki.

The lead lawyer for the plaintiff called it “the engineering of addiction” and focused on 4 features of the platforms:

1. Infinite scroll: Exactly what it sounds like… the feed with no stopping point. It can keep going on forever.

2. Algorithmic recommendations: Content that the platform suggests for you, based entirely on the aim of keeping you watching / scrolling.

3. Autoplay: Content that keeps appearing without a prompt. Your video ends, and the next one that the platform selected for you starts automatically, without you touching anything.

4. Constant notifications: Pings of various kinds that are unprompted by you. The platform is essentially calling for your attention… “Ping ping! Come back! Ping ping! Look at this!”

These are right on, and I am cautiously optimistic. Yet while I am thrilled about the outcome here, I am seeing a reaction that makes me a bit nervous we may win a battle but lose the war.

I’m seeing post after post proclaiming “it’s their fault!” and while my first instinct is F*CK YEA, it’s really not entirely true. Companies did what companies do. These companies behaved in a completely predictable way, and that is why we have public institutions — to push back and provide some sort of constraint. And yet… public officials have allowed and even enabled their behavior. Those who have managed to make progress at that federal level (like at the FTC and CFBP) have been gutted.

As I said last year, the uncomfortable reality (and much harder problem to solve) is that in many ways, we allowed this to happen, and even enabled it. And when I say “we” I don’t mean you or me… I mean the collective WE: the people who design and create the products, investors that finance and incentivize them, the media that covers and hypes them up, parents who use them as babysitters because in a pinch an ipad is really helpful and how the hell else are we supposed to get everything done, and government officials who have given a hall pass to an entire industry to develop addictive garbage technology that atrophies our brains, divides our communities, and warps our relationships with ourselves and each other.

These two are the first of what will be an avalanche of cases, so there’s lots to follow in the weeks and months ahead, and I hope we continue to celebrate. At the same time, let’s remember that the behavior of these companies and the design of the products are not unique to social media—it is persistent across the tech industry. Everything we are worried about with social media is happening RIGHT NOW with AI, at a seismically larger and faster scale. And yet… AI is being integrated into products that we already use (often with no opt-out), and forced into hospitals, schools, and anywhere else that there’s a large user-base with a trove of data.

There’s a lot we don’t know about AI, but there’s also a lot we DO know. We are currently picking up the pieces from what big tech has gotten away with over the past 20 years. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

More on this topic…

• A solid overview on the California trial, by NPR

• Detailed coverage of the trial by the Heat Initiative + Scrolling2Death, along with an emotional reading of the final verdict.

• Big Tech Should Pay for What It Has Done to Us

• A reference guide for how existing laws apply to AI chatbots.

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Brain Snacks

The mass surveillance piece is getting most of the attention, but the second point seems to be getting lost, probably because it’s about operations and reliability and is less exciting. Taking a position against mass surveillance is ultimately a values argument, and I’m grateful they are making it. But their point about fully autonomous weapons is about RELIABILITY — and that is a point that is acutely and immediately relevant to our lives and our kids right now. Let me explain.

Anthropic’s CEO explained their position on fully autonomous weapons like this:

Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do. [...] without proper oversight, fully autonomous weapons cannot be relied upon to exercise the critical judgment that our highly trained, professional troops exhibit every day. They need to be deployed with proper guardrails, which don’t exist today.

Read that again... The CEO of one of the world’s leading AI companies had the spine to say the truth, publicly: LLMs are still emerging, they are not reliable enough for this context and use, and they need to be deployed with “proper guardrails.”

This is a very VERY important point, especially for those of us who are wrestling with how LLMs are being used in our lives, our kids’ classrooms, and our workplaces.

Anthropic has drawn their lines at mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Good, thanks. But ultimately the issues they are flagging apply to some degree everywhere else too. LLMs are an emergent technology. It is not reliable, and it is not consistent. Even the people who create it cannot fully explain how and why it does what it does. This is true everywhere, not just in a military setting.

While the stakes may be different, they are also high in all sorts of other environments: hospitals, emergency response, classrooms and education, caretaking of all kinds… And yet, leaders everywhere have decided to integrate what is ultimately *emergent and experimental technology* into products, systems, and environments that we and our kids engage with every day. To be clear: while I wish companies cared about this, I do not expect them to… because they are companies. As I said 2 years ago:

Of course, it is not surprising to find companies chasing the market. What is baffling is that people and organizations working in the public trust are scrambling to integrate — not just experiment with, integrate — technology that is, in the words of [Sam Altman], “a barely useful cell phone” into some of our most foundational and critical systems: education, the military, caretaking, and healthcare.

The basic technology is the same — what differs is how we think about or understand “...what today’s technology can safely and reliably do,” and our tolerance for associated risks. How do we define safe? How do we define reliable? The answers to these questions vary depending on context, and we cannot expect for companies to think through this for us. These are questions that some combination of public officials, and leaders considering adoption and integration of LLMs need to consider with the seriousness it deserves. So here’s my question:

If AI is not reliable enough for fully autonomous military action, who determines what is reliable enough for clinical settings? For educational settings? For operating rooms? For classrooms?

I have long had concerns about rushing to integrate LLMs into high-stakes environments for years. Two years ago I wrote a piece about how the potential of technology breaks down in its implementation. In it, I said:

So much of how a technology (or anything) works in the world is affected by a combination of its design, human behavior, and the environment that it is embedded in. That includes how the technology will work in the environment, and how humans will use it. But something we often overlook is the capacity of institutions and organizations to effectively implement and manage the technology.

I went on to quote Nancy Levenson (Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT who specializes in software safety) who once said that “... the problem is that we are attempting to build systems that are beyond our ability to intellectually manage.” I closed the piece by saying that “we are adopting technology beyond our ability to implement safely or even effectively.”

This is precisely what Anthropic just told us. LLMs need “proper oversight” and must be “deployed with proper guardrails, which don’t exist today.” This is not only true for Anthropic’s technology… it’s true for all LLMs. And while the stakes may be different, this is just as true for combat as it is for the classroom.

It cannot and should not be the job of companies to be our moral compass, and our public institutions are… not very helpful at the moment. We cannot wait around for others to advocate for our kids. If we are concerned about LLMs being integrated into the products and systems that we and our kids use, we must ask:

1. What is the goal / intended outcome of integrating LLMs? What problem is it solving, and FOR WHOM?

2. Why is an LLM an improvement on the current state? If it is a bandaid for a deeper issue, then the LLM will only mask (and even amplify) the problem it seeks to solve.

3. What can LLMs safely and reliably do here / in this context?

4. Who determines what is safe and reliable “enough” here?

**And remember: Anthropic had the spine to say this out loud. But their statement is not an indication of moral authority—it’s just a clear-eyed awareness of risk and the limitations of its technology. And there is a sea of competitors with products who are silent… and their products are not as good.

ICYMI

More on this issue, along with a few other things I’m tracking this week….

• wrote a fantastic piece on how the Pentagon vs Anthropic fight threatens to make long-standing concerns about AI a reality.

• I posted about this on Instagram earlier this week.

• My now 2-year old thoughts on the rush to integrate what is ultimately emergent and experimental technology, in ’s Tech Policy Press.

• I feel like ’s Resist & Unsubscribe is everywhere, and I am here for it. If you scroll down, they have made it super simple to take action.

• Meta wants to own your digital zombie. Yes, Meta now owns a patent for keeping dead users accounts alive, to continue posting. breaks this down incisively in , saying that “Meta identifies death as a content-gap problem. The severity they’re measuring is the impact on… the feed. Not on the grieving family. Not on the deceased person’s dignity. On the feed.” You can see my reaction to this story here.

Brain Snacks

There’s something about how things are now that seems like it’s kind of the worst it’s ever been in a lot of ways, and I do feel like my feelings and opinions about all of this are shifting a little bit. And I’m still resolving a lot of that. - Damon Beres

I found myself thinking about a post I had recently seen last month on LinkedIn by Dylan Orchard, a PhD candidate at King’s College. I shared his quote with Damon, and keep thinking about it so I want to pull it out and focus on it for a moment. Watch/listen and I’ll tell you why after.

Dylan says: “This isn’t a tech issue, it’s not even a regulatory issue - it’s a large portion of our ruling political and financial classes quietly accepting the necessity of CSAM, encouraging suicide and self harm, deepfake porn and a laundry list of other abhorrent things as the price of doing business.”

Damon calls it a “mask-off moment.” He says that

“the sad thing is that… for those of us who live in this world and kind of obsess about tech news… like there’s been an element of truth to that statement for a long time. But that’s a good point… that’s a really big point. But the new thing is that it is an open sewer.”

So while there are elements that are consistent, what is different is (1) the scale, (2) the pace, and (3) the now very public and normalized acceptance of all of this.

The Epstein files loom heavy in the background here. I hear this quote and instantly think of how painfully consistent it is with the nauseating scale of abuse and impunity that are coming through the Epstein files.

Dylan goes on in his quote to say: “The technology may be the catalyst for this push but the nascent culture behind it is something else entirely.”

What the Epstein files are showing us is that in some ways, this “culture” is not nascent… in fact, it’s so entrenched in the highest levels of our society that it has literally ended up *codified* into the software that our world now runs on. Literally. This also comes through the Meta trial in LA right now… ( btw is doing a fantastic job covering all the tech trials.)

I’m not quite sure what to do with this, but for now I just want to highlight that the relationship between power and the technology we use is MASSIVE, and it is shaping our lives and communities in very real ways.

Every hand in the room went up.

“Now keep your hand up if you ended up watching it.”

Not a single hand went down. Whispers and giggles scattered across the room.

We were 45 minutes into what was supposed to be a talk about my career, and I had completely abandoned my outline. Instead, I was standing in front of a room full of third graders talking about algorithms, why they see what they see on their screens, and how YouTube decides what to show them next.

And they totally got it.

Let me back up: Last week I spoke to my kid’s third grade class for career day. I was supposed to talk about my career path, but what I really wanted to do was talk with all of them about technology. Not about the future, but about how what is on their devices right now actually works, and what their own experiences are.

To my delight we spent the next hour on three main topics: (1) algorithmic mediation, (2) business models & incentives, and (3) data. Of course, highly over-simplified for an 8-year old audience, but (to my great surprise) the basic points landed.

Below is my somewhat dramatized synopsis of how it went.

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1. Algorithmic Mediation (or… who is making decisions here?)

I started with a question: Do you like it when your parents tell you what to read, or who your friends should be, or what clothes you should like?

• Class: No!

• Me: Ok. Me neither! Does anyone know what an algorithm is?

A few hands went up. The basic answer that surfaced was some version of “code.”

• Me: Yes, in a way. Algorithms are basically rules for computers. Where do they come from?

• Class: The computer?

• Me: They are created by people, and they are created to accomplish something specific — they have a goal. Who here knows what YouTube is?

Every single hand went up.

• Me: What is YouTube?

• Class: Funny videos! YouTubers! Lego videos! Dinosaurs!

• Me: Who makes those videos?

• Class: … people!

• Me: Yes. All kinds of people, anywhere in the world can put anything they want on YouTube. How does what you see on YouTube show up on your screen?

• Class: [silence]

• Me: An algorithm decides. A group of people decided how the algorithm should decide what you see next, and those are the rules YouTube follows. So… did YOU decide what you see?

One little boy pipes up: But I find the videos myself…!

Ok, now we are cooking.

• Me: Sort of… how did you find it?

• Kid: I searched.

• Me: And then what happened?

• Kid: I saw more stuff like that.

• Me: How did YouTube know you wanted more of that?

• Kid: Oh! The algorithm!

Yes, small person. The algorithm.

I go on: And what does the algorithm want you to do?

Silence for a bit, and then a hand goes up: To keep looking at videos?

• Me: EXACTLY! To keep looking at videos. And how does it do that?

• Kid: … it… gives me more videos?

• Me: Yep. It gives you more of what it thinks that you want. And it can do this because it watches what you do — on YouTube and other places on the internet — and then based on its rules, it guesses what you want to see. It guesses what will keep you looking at videos. This is also what happens on TikTok and anything else powered by an algorithm.

A room of about 30 kids was totally silent. I asked: How many of you use a tablet or phone?

All the hands went up. Do any of you ever have a hard time putting it down and walking away?

Heads nodded. I ask: Now why is that?

A hand went up. The algorithm doesn’t want us to walk away?

I honestly almost cried. Correct. The algorithm doesn’t want you to walk away.

At this point I was ready to pivot to business incentives, but before I did, I recapped the discussion with what accidentally turned into a somewhat comical call-response:

• What is an algorithm? Rules for computers!

• Where do they come from? They are made by people!

• What are they created to do? To keep us using it!

I continued…. So remember: you said that you don’t like it when your parents tell you what to do, what to read, what to wear, who you should be friends with… but that’s exactly what algorithms are doing—it’s just invisible. What you see is mostly decided by the algorithm, but did you know that we are not even allowed to know how the algorithm works?

The ENTIRE class erupts. WHAT?! That’s not fair! Why is that allowed!?

They got it immediately. I responded: I know… Why?... Well… they do it because people who could stop them, let them. And then I moved on because honestly, I had no idea how to have that conversation.

Onto the business model…

2. Business Models + Incentives (or… why is addiction the goal?)

I called back to an earlier moment: Ok, so they want you to keep watching videos. Why?

No hands. I said: Basically the more time you spend on their app or site, the more money they make. And the goal of any company is to make as much money as possible.

I asked them about their own use. What do they spend time on their devices doing? They were VERY excited to share their answers: YouTube! Minecraft! Funny videos! Roblox! Amazon! AI picture apps!

We talked about why those things are designed to keep you coming back. Why games have daily rewards. Why videos autoplay. Why you get notifications. Why games ask to buy things to use in the game.

Have any of you played with a claw machine? Heads nod. Do you ever win? Lots of chatter, and the basic conclusion is not really but sometimes.

I tell them: Right. That game is designed to make you THINK you can win… “just one more try mom!! PLEASE!!!” (they laugh) so you stay there and keep putting money in and keep asking mom or dad for more money that the claw machine gets to keep, while you get frustrated and mad (more laughs). Games and apps powered by an algorithm are just like this.

Heads were nodding. Ok, I think they got it.

Now, on to one of my favorite topics… and I really didn’t know how this one would land, but somehow it did…

3. Data (or… who is actually in charge of your stuff?)

This one I knew would be tricky. So I started very concrete: Do you take pictures on your devices?

Every hand went up.

• Me: Who is in charge of those pictures?

• Class: Me! My mom! My dad! My sister!

• Me: Really? Where do those pictures live?

• Class: On my ipad, so they’re mine.

I paused. How many of you have heard of the cloud?

About half the class raised their hands. (Wait seriously?!) Ok, who can tell me what the cloud is?

The answers came in. Surprisingly, they were not wrong… so I validated, and then I said: the cloud is really just somebody else’s computer. So if you have an ipad full of pictures, where do your pictures live?

Silence… then a hand: on Apple’s computer?

YES. So who is in charge of your photos?

I could see them processing this… then another hand: … Apple?

YES. They are still your photos, but are you really in charge of them?

I tried an analogy they’d understand: If you let your friend borrow some of your toys and they take them home, they are still technically yours, but who is *in charge* of your toys?

• Class: My friend.

• Me: Correct. Your friend is now in charge and they can play with them as much as they want. Can they give your toys to other people?

• Class: ...Yes.

• Me: What if you tell them they cannot give them to other people? What if they promise they won’t let other people play with your toys?

• Class: [thinking…]

Right. So... who is in charge of your photos?

Hands shot up. The lightbulbs were going off. THAT’S NOT FAIR!! THEY ARE MINE! WHY CAN THEY DO THAT?

Excellent question. This didn’t compute with their sense of fairness, and they really wanted to know WHY they were allowed to do this. One kid suggested we just “don’t use Apple.”

• Me: That’s an interesting idea… what would you use?

• Kid: I don’t know!

• Me: what do you use to take photos?

• Class: My mom’s phone, my tablet…

• Me: Right. So let’s make a list of different tablets and phones.

I made a list on the board as they call out device names. Next to each I put the name of the company. Google, Apple, Samsung, Amazon… This conversation was FASCINATING. They were floored that there were only a couple of options.

I hadn’t planned to talk about monopolies, but that’s what ended up happening — and they totally got it.

But then just for funsies, because I was already floored by how much they could engage… I really really wanted to know what they knew about generative AI.

4. Generative AI

I asked: who knows what a chatbot is? Nothing. Ok. Who knows what ChatGPT is?

Almost every hand went up. A tool! A robot! (lots of laughs for some reason)

• Me: ChatGPT is a type of chatbot… A chatbot is a thing you type into and it responds back to you. It’s not quite a tool — a tool is something that humans can control and use in a specific way. This is a bit different. Is it like a calculator?

• Class: Yes!!

• Me: Is a calculator ever wrong?

• Class: …no.

• Me: If everyone in this class types 20 + 20 into a calculator, what will the answer be?

• Class: 40!

• Me: Right. Every single one of you would get 40. But that’s not how a chatbot works. If everyone in this class typed exactly the same question into a ChatGPT, you would each get different answers.

The class erupted. I continued: Who knows what autocomplete is? A few hands went up.

• Kid: it helps me type a text on my mom’s phone.

• Me: Yes… it corrects misspelled words or fills in words… Is it always right?

• Kid: … sometimes.

• Me: Right. Do you know how it works?

I went on to explain that autocomplete is basically trying to guess what they want to say based on patterns it has “learned.” And then I said: That’s kind of how chatbots work. They are trying to guess what you want. How do chatbots guess? Silence

• Me: I’ll give you a hint: it’s similar to how YouTube decides what videos to put on your screen.

• Class: AN ALGORITHM!!!!!

• Me: Yes, exactly. So… what does ChatGPT want?

• Class: For you to use it all the time.

• Me: Correct. And how does it do that?

• Class: By giving you stuff you want.

• Me: Correct. Does the stuff you want need to be correct?

From here we talked about how chatbots are programmed to give you what you WANT, and not necessarily what’s correct or good for you.

• Me: Who likes candy? What’s your favorite?

• Class: Reeses! Skittles! Nerds! Twix!

• Me: Should you eat them every day?

• Class: laughs.

• Me: Who stops you from eating candy all day?

• Class (grumpily): Mom… dad… my dentist haha!

• Me: Why don’t they let you eat candy all the time?

• Class: … … … because… it’s not good for us. It ruins our teeth. It’s too much sugar.

Exactly.

• Me: Right. It’s not good for you, and the people who care about you will sometimes have to stop you from doing what you WANT because sometimes what we want is not good for us. What does a chatbot want?

• Class: … for us to use it a lot.

• Me: Why?

• Class: to make money.

• Me: What makes a chatbot work?

• Class: … an algorithm?

• Me: EXACTLY. And what is an algorithm?

• Class: rules for computers!

• Me: Where do they come from?

• Class: People!

• Me: What is their goal?

• Class: For us to keep using it!

A+ small people. I closed by saying something to the effect of:

Many of these things we use on screens can be useful and interesting — but WE need to be in control of them, and WE need to be making decisions for ourselves… So when you use your ipad, or play Minecraft or whatever… remember that the technology you use doesn’t care about you. The company that makes that technology doesn’t care about you either. They have made a thing that is useful in some ways, and their job is to make money… YOUR job is to make your brain as strong as possible, so you can decide for yourself how and when and for what you use all of this stuff… and for now that might mean reading books and doing your homework and listening to your parents when they say it’s time to turn off Minecraft. (laughs)

3rd graders are totally capable of engaging on these issues.

I was surprised that I didn’t have to convince them that something is off. They already feel it. They just don’t have the language for it yet.

They know that it feels bad when they can’t stop playing a game. They know that it feels weird when an app seems to know what they want before they do. They know that it doesn’t feel right that their stuff is actually not on their device and that they don’t know how it’s being used.

And their questions (the ones they kept coming back to) were exactly the right ones: Why don’t we have a choice? Why is it allowed to be this way? Who decided this was okay?

I didn’t have perfect answers, but what I did tell them was: These questions that you are asking… these are the questions that matter. Keep asking them.

Our public officials need this same lesson.

I didn’t talk to the kids about social media or specific platforms. We talked about algorithms, business models, and data—foundational problems that drive the behavior of digital products ranging from Instagram and TikTok to chatbots.

I worry that while the degree to which social media and digital platforms have warped childhood is starting to sink for people, everything that we’ve seen on social media—everything we are worried about—is happening all over AI. Just at a seismically larger and faster scale.

We need to stop focusing on specific products and platforms and focus on the roots of the problem:

• Algorithmic mediation that invisibly shapes our experiences

• Business models that feed off of “engagement” (aka addiction)

• Data that is extracted, amassed, and weaponized against users—jacking up prices, targeting kids with predatory content, and keeping you scrolling.

TikTok or Instagram or Roblox or whatever… the products are not THE problem. They are the SYMPTOM of the problem(s). If 8-year olds can get it, surely our policymakers can.

I’m really excited to share this interview because Damon is at a different stage of parenting than my other guests. He has a 4-year-old son, which means he’s not yet wrestling with phones, social media, and AI chatbots in the same way that parents of older kids are. Instead, his focus right now is on something more foundational: building muscles and love for creativity, curiosity, dialogue, and critical thinking before screens enter the picture.

We met online during the pandemic, and I’ve always appreciated his voice and perspective. Damon has increasingly been writing about how frictionless technologies are affecting our ability to think and engage with the world and each other, and as you’ll hear in this conversation, the stakes feel higher than ever.

A few things that were referenced in our interview: Damon’s articles The Age of Anti-Social Media, and @Grok, Did Venezuela Deserve It?, and the LinkedIn post that I quoted.

💡“Aha” moments

• Chatbots aren’t designed to help you learn or find information — they’re designed to generate mediocre guesses that sound convincing. I can’t stop thinking about the implications here for kids who are learning how to do research, and find / analyze information. As my own kids do their first research projects, I watch them use Google, and they do not scroll past the AI overview unless I prompt them to and actively guide them through a discovery process. Without active guidance, these products are training them to accept whatever the algorithm serves them first.

• The story of the internet has been about removing friction, and maximizing efficiency and convenience. We are at peak “efficiency brain” where as Damon says… “it is really easy now just to be in an endless conversation with yourself and your own mind.”

• Generative AI didn’t come from nowhere… it is the latest chapter in the internet’s “convenience is king” ethos. It follows algorithmic social media, which in Damon’s words is essentially an “… automated process of discerning user taste and serving them content accordingly.”

• Face-to-face conversations have friction (interruptions, disagreement, unexpected questions, nonverbal cues) and that friction is essential for childhood development. Digital technology is eliminating that friction at an increasing scale.

• We’re living through a “mask off moment” where business and political elites have quietly accepted that CSAM, deepfake porn, and other horrors are just “the price of doing business.”

• Platforms that once had some content moderation, some sense of a line and/or consequences, are abandoning even their minimal guardrails.

✨Highlights

“There’s something about how things feel now that seems like it’s kind of the worst it’s ever been in a lot of ways. And I do feel like my feelings and opinions about all this are shifting a little bit. And I’m still resolving a lot of that.” - Damon Beres

“This has been kind of a light bulb moment for me. Not in the sense that this kind of AI generated sex abuse material or AI generated harmful stuff is new [...] I’ve known all this stuff and I know how children—how all people, including children—can be victimized by this technology and by bad people who want to do bad things. There is something about the massive social contagion effect of this technology existing on X that has been really disturbing and new-feeling to me. And suddenly I’ve had this feeling of: oh, things can change quite rapidly [...] These massive platforms that at least nominally used to have content moderation and seemed like they used to care about the safety of their users, in the most extreme sense anyway… just may not anymore. And this has given me the feeling of, wow, maybe I should scrub everything about my child that’s ever existed online, private or not, because it is so easy to do the most heinous things with media now, with AI out there.” - Damon Beres

[regarding a LinkedIn post that really resonated with me]

“... [the author] says, ‘this isn’t a tech issue. It’s not even a regulatory issue. It’s a large portion of our ruling political and financial classes quietly accepting the necessity of CSAM, encouraging suicide and self harm, deep, deep fake porn, and a laundry list of other abhorrent things as the price of doing business.’ And even as I read it now, my hair is standing on end because I think for me, that’s exactly it… I didn’t have words for it. And then I read this and I was like, this is why it feels different. It’s this thing.” - Emily Tavoulareas

“... it’s a mask off moment. And I think that this person is right to articulate it in that way. Perhaps it’s been true for a long time, but there was always this kind of veil of respectability […] there’s just this kind of feeling, I think, especially in this post-generative AI moment of kind of anything goes and the platforms really can’t control the technology fully. And so, a lot is being shrugged off right now, and it feels like kind of a dangerous moment for that reason. It’s different.” - Damon Beres

“I think to many people, it feels exactly the way you’re describing… it is this open sewer. It’s one that we no longer have an option about. It’s being placed in our homes, in our devices, in our kids classrooms… there’s no opt out. And whether you’re interacting with Grok or not is almost irrelevant. The sewer is porous. That whole ecosystem is so porous that if that public sewer is full enough, it’s going to spill into everything else.” - Emily Tavoulareas

“I do think that it’s not necessarily as simple as this product is just evil, right? Because sure, we wouldn’t say Photoshop is evil. I do think, however, what is clearly the case here is that there is an issue of scale that is just... profoundly different now. It is so easy to make so much of this material at such a high quality that I don’t really buy that this is just a pen thing… I do think that there is something very new here.” - Damon Beres

“I think that the reduction of friction and the results of that, oftentimes problematic results, is kind of the story of the internet. [...] my sort of top-lined view on this is that the internet, speaking in very general terms, has been a pretty long story of making certain functions and certain behaviors easier and easier and easier. And I really think that there is sort of a lineage here. You look at generative AI, it didn’t come from nothing. It is situated within a context where we have algorithmic social media, which is an AI-driven technology of a different sort, but is fundamentally this sort of automated process of discerning user taste and serving them content accordingly.

Algorithmic media emerged from earlier forms of social media where people connected to each other and built up these stores of data in a way that felt much more convenient than keeping an address book and business cards and calling people on the phone and sending emails and stuff. early social media emerged from an iteration of the internet where you had, you know, file sharing, Napster, LimeWire, BitTorrent, all that stuff, where there is this idea that, like, everything could be placed on the internet for free access and that the sort of convenience is king ethos like really sank in in those early years, right? So when it comes to friction, I think that the major thing is that all of these technologies have made it very easy to act without thinking critically.” - Damon Beres

“When things become very easy, people want to take that convenience. And I think that this has profound effects on our ability to think, but also our ability to relate to one another and to understand other people. Because the phase that we’re in right now, with generative AI and chatbots in particular, is that it is really easy now just to be in an endless conversation with yourself and your own mind. There is no friction there anymore because you will type to a machine that parrots human-like language to you in a very compelling way and affirms your ideas and your thoughts. There have been so many cases reported in the media about “AI psychosis” (people getting really sick and sometimes ending their own lives following interactions with these bots) and that is sort of the ultimate friction reduction where there is no longer even a barrier between your mind and your mouth… you’re kind of in this constant cycle with yourself and that’s very worrisome, I think.” - Damon Beres

“... one of the elements of my book will be, and one of the elements in the Atlantic article I wrote was about children growing up in this environment and in this paradigm. And something as simple as having a face-to-face vocal conversation with a person involves a lot of friction in a certain way. Someone can disagree with you, someone interrupts or asks an unexpected question, someone has a facial unspoken cue that kind of stops you that you respond to. Experts that I spoke to for that Atlantic article were very clear that that kind of interaction is key for early childhood development. And I would argue that it’s probably key for anyone at any point to have interactions like that, but especially for a developing mind. That is how a person learns to exist in the world and learns how to socialize and learns how to be.” - Damon Beres

“… my major interest in exploring this topic in a bigger way in the book, is sort of that we have allowed society to be steered to a great extent by digital technology over the past, I would kind of put it at like past 20 years or so [...] I think that what I’m concerned about is that our society slips into just this kind of passive state of allowing all of this to control and steer our experiences, which is itself maybe what speaks to a lack of friction in some way. Like, I think like a lot of this feels really good to people… it feels soothing to use these products in many ways.” - Damon Beres

“And I think that people need to, I don’t want to say people should resist it because I think that there are applications of the technology that I think are very good… but I do think that people must be thoughtful and aware, and we have to be able to communicate in real terms with one another on a like societal basis to help set the terms (legally or otherwise) of engagement with this technology and what is permissible and what’s not… just because we have seen the very bad things that happen when we don’t do that. And I think that this is a moment where we can both reflect on the recent past and establish some kind of architecture for a future that looks a little different.” - Damon Beres

“... the article that I was working on this past weekend about Venezuela was about how chatbots handled the breaking news situation and how they handled delivering information about that event… and they were really bad. And they were bad for multiple different reasons which I don’t need to get into, but the upshot is that these are not really tools that are designed for knowledge discovery or to make you smarter. They are not necessarily tools that are designed to reflect reality. What a large language model is designed to do is to deliver human-like language according to training data and according to the way that the model has been set up and programmed.” - Damon Beres

“... what I think will happen, absent an intervention, is that a lot of people are going to exist in a kind of mediocre state of accepting questionable material that has been served to them by chatbots. They will be less media literate. They will be less able to socialize with other people. They will be less capable of critical thinking. I think that there is every reason to expect that those things will be true as the technology becomes more widespread and as it becomes not just more widespread, but kind of the only option.” - Damon Beres

“I think that the lesson from the past 20 years has just been that people get lulled into patterns by these tools that, after all, are acting on their minds. You know, this is not a tool that is tactile or has something to do with your literal embodied experience of the world. It’s the material that is entering your brain and influencing your thoughts. And again, you know… sometimes in very good ways. You find a great new perspective on social media. If someone says something really smart, you find community… so many good things. I’m not so… whatever… that I would say otherwise, but I do think in an aggregate sense, you see these problems. And I think the lesson is that we have to take a very active and critical role in thinking for ourselves and establishing what is acceptable.” - Damon Beres

Instagram, TikTok, Roblox, YouTube — these aren’t just apps or platforms. They are environments. And we need to start thinking about them the same way we think about any other environment our kids spend time in: schools, friends’ houses, neighborhoods, libraries, theaters, malls.

When your kid asks to go to a friend’s house, you probably ask some questions — especially if you don’t know the family. Who will be there? What are they planning to do? Will there be adults around? These questions feel obvious because we understand physical spaces. We know that context matters, and that different types of environments come with different types of risks.

But when it comes to digital products, we get stuck thinking in terms of brands and features instead of the ENVIRONMENT. So here are five questions I ask myself to help me think about different digital products for my kids — and to decide where I’m okay with them being, and whether we should be there together or if they can be there alone. I also posted a short video about this on Instagram earlier this month.

1. Is it based on user-generated content?

This is the WHAT of a platform.

User-generated content means the content is created by… users. Not by Disney or PBS, not by a production company with editorial standards and legal liability. Just… anyone. Everyone. Everywhere. This could be text-based posts (like what you find on Facebook, X, or Reddit), video (like those on YouTube or TikTok), or photos (like those on Instagram). As with many things, this is a double-edged sword. Enabling the creation and distribution of content without “gatekeepers” has benefits, but it also has downsides and risks.

I like starting with this question because a lot of the platforms that our kids spend time on are not necessarily the ones we think of as “social media.” When people talk about “social media” they are typically talking about products like Instagram and TikTok. YouTube and Roblox are less in the mix, but they are almost entirely made up of user-generated content.

If the answer is yes, they are based on user-generated content, that’s not automatically a dealbreaker. But it does mean I need to think harder about the next three questions, because user-generated content introduces a level of unpredictability and risk that you don’t get in a place with editorial standards and legal liability.

Start thinking: Who creates the content here?

2. Is it algorithmically mediated?

In other words: is what they see, and their experience, on the platform determined by an algorithm? This is the HOW of the platform.

Algorithms are basically rules for computers that invisibly shape our experiences, showing us or guiding us towards certain content, products, and people. This is how social media “feeds” or recommendation engines work, everywhere from Amazon and YouTube, to Netflix and whatever news media you consume.

Algorithms are all optimized for (aka designed to prioritize) something specific. In consumer-facing products they are optimized for “engagement,” which is just a nicer way of saying “attention.” What algorithms are programmed to prioritize drives all activity on the platform, and these platforms are programmed to keep users scrolling and active as frequently as possible, for as long as possible, at any cost.

Start thinking: Is what I’m seeing here determined by an algorithm?

3. Who is on the platform?

As with any environment, one of the biggest factors is who else is there. But in digital products the stakes are higher because unlike a physical space where you can see who’s around, digital environments can be global, anonymous, and completely unregulated.

So is it a closed, private network of people they already know, like a group chat with their soccer team? Or is it public? Can they connect with people they don’t know? Can other people contact them?

Some platforms are basically closed ecosystems, like a private Discord server or a group text. Others are open sewers where literally anyone can show up and say literally anything. There’s a difference between my kid video chatting with their grandparents and my kid being in a public comment section with millions of strangers.

4. What is the platform FOR?

Not what the company says it’s for. But when you actually look at it… what does it look like it’s for? What are people using it to do? What is circulating and happening there?

Companies will tell you their platform is “for connection” or “for creativity” or “for learning.” But if you spend five minutes on it, you can see what it’s actually optimized for, and what is happening on the platform in practice.

5. What’s the management situation?

Is this a space where there’s some level of supervision, or is it a total free-for-all? Forget bad behavior… are there even consequences for behavior that would be illegal in real life?

Here’s a thought experiment: Do you let your kids go to the mall alone? If not, why is TikTok or YouTube or Roblox okay?

Many people seem to think “child safety” features solve the problem. They don’t. Study after study shows that safety features are not a reliable solution. They might reduce exposure to the most vile things floating around online, but they don’t eliminate it, and there are certainly no consequences. In real life, if a stranger approaches your kid at the playground and tries to sell them drugs, or exposes themselves to your kid… they would be arrested. This is not the case online.

The most generous interpretation is that “child safety” features are unreliable, but better than nothing. Another interpretation is that safety features are half-hearted attempts to check boxes that allow companies to say “look, we are trying!” Either way, they create a false sense of confidence for parents.

Meanwhile, tech companies have been dismantling their Trust & Safety teams (shout out to for the helpful synopsis) further reducing the already imperfect infrastructure preventing these platforms from becoming a steaming open sewer.

So when I ask “what’s the management situation,” I’m not asking if behavior is micro-managed. I’m asking if there are rules of any kind, and if those rules are enforced.

……

These 5 questions help me think clearly about what these spaces actually are, and whether they’re appropriate for my kids. Not all digital environments are the same, and treating them like interchangeable “screen time” flattens something that requires a lot more nuance.

So stop thinking about tech in terms of company names. Start thinking about them as environments.

And ask yourself: Would I let my kid hang out here if it were a physical space?

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Dr. King + Technology

A lesser known part of Dr. Martin Luther King’s work included technology, and warnings about technology, and how it erodes democracy and increases alienation—especially among the youth.

I will not editorialize, as Dr. Kings words need nothing from me. Here are some of my favorite quotes, along with their sources.

From the Massey lectures, which Dr. King delivered in 1967, just months before his death:

“Nothing in our glittering technology can raise man to new heights, because material growth has been made an end in itself, and, in the absence of moral purpose, man himself becomes smaller as the works of man become bigger.”

He goes on to say…

“Another distortion of the technological revolution is that instead of strengthening democracy… it has helped to eviscerate it. Gargantuan industry and government, woven into an intricate computerized mechanism, leaves the person outside… When an individual is no longer a true participant, when he no longer feels a sense of responsibility to his society, the content of democracy is emptied. When culture is degraded and vulgarity enthroned, when the social system does not build security but induces peril, inexorably the individual is impelled to pull away from a soulless society. This process produces alienation — perhaps the most pervasive and insidious development in contemporary society… Alienation should be foreign to the young. Growth requires connection and trust. Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society.”

Read. That. Again.

From Dr. King’s Nobel Prize lecture, given December 11, 1964:

“… in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.”

And he goes on to say:

“Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.”

Amen.

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Here’s what we can be sure of at this point: there is no silver bullet, and there is no *single* place to point a finger. The problems we’re wrestling with are complex and multi-faceted, and at the root of them are really 🤬 up incentives. There are no easy answers. That’s why I started this project… to try to gain some clarity with people who have spent their careers creating or studying the technologies that have become part of the social infrastructure that we now are raising our kids in.

In this spirit, below is a snapshot of my thinking as we start the new year. Specifically, what we can be sure we know about tech at this point.

What we can be sure of.

0. Technology is neither the entire problem, nor the entire solution.

Yes, they are designed to addict us and we are not exactly being given an “opt out” from emerging tech like AI. But eliminating technology is an easy answer to a complex problem — and there are no easy answers to complex problems, especially when industry-wide financial incentives collide with human behavior and culture.

1. There is no analogy for what parents are facing.

Apparently there’s a strong narrative circulating that parents are somehow to blame for their kids’ experiences on digital platforms. I appreciated ’s response to this. In short: Sure, parents can and should be engaged, aware, and guide their kids as they learn to use various products. At the same time, there is only so much that parents can do to keep their children safe on platforms that are quite literally designed to suck them in. Yes.

I’ve heard countless analogies for how parents can think about preparing their kids for life online — riding bikes, skiing, navigating cities, swimming. I have found these quite helpful in thinking through how to build muscles for navigating what is an inherently complex, risky, and increasingly dangerous environment. But the analogies don’t hold.

Let’s go with the swimming analogy. Kids can be taught to swim. It is a learnable skill, and once you learn it you know how to swim, then staying safe is about making smart/safe decisions. You can send them to the best swim schools, with the best coaches. You can supervise, and they can demonstrate competence. But learning to swim only partially helps, because what they will actually be jumping into is not really a swimming pool — it’s a sabotage pool that detects when you are tired and then spins up whirlpools and currents designed specifically for your body, with the sole purpose of keeping you in the pool forever. The pool is designed to suck you to the bottom and keep you there. How exactly are parents supposed to “train” their kids for that?

Parents could do everything right, but the products that our public officials are not only allowing—but ACCELERATING—onto the market are designed to be an all-consuming vortex that even well-adjusted adults are getting sucked into. And this all assumes the parents (1) understand the technology enough to manage it teach their kids, and (2) that parents actually have the TIME to manage / oversee their kids devices… many parents work crazy hours and literally cannot.

Anyone who suggests parenting is the problem here can, respectfully, fuck off.

2. “Child safety” features are a ruse.

Study after study shows that safety features are not a reliable solution for parents. Safety features might reduce exposure to the most vile things floating around online, but they don’t eliminate it. We need to be crystal clear about this. Like it or not, you cannot expect companies to prevent your kids from seeing particular kinds of content. It does not work like movie ratings or network TV, largely because the companies face no real legal constraints. Until tangible and enforceable legal constraints exist, parents should assume there are zero guardrails.

A recent study of Instagram Teen accounts found that 30 out of 47 safety tools for teens on Instagram were “substantially ineffective or no longer exist.” The study found that teens were still being shown “content that was in violation of Instagram’s own rules, including posts describing “demeaning sexual acts” as well as autocompleting suggestions for search terms promoting suicide, self-harm or eating disorders.”

Safety features are not about children, or safety. They are a deflection of responsibility… a half-hearted attempt to check boxes that allow companies to say “look, we are trying!” while outsourcing responsibility for their products to parents, teachers, kids—anyone but themselves. At best, this can create a false sense of confidence for parents.

At the same time, tech companies have been dismantling their Trust & Safety teams, and the U.S. State Department has started rejecting visas for content moderators, claiming their work constitutes “censorship.” Content moderation is flawed, but it is not censorship—it’s a hazmat crew. All of this further reduces the already imperfect infrastructure preventing these platforms from becoming a steaming open sewer.

3. “Social media” means too many things to be helpful.

The term “social media” is used to describe a lot of platforms that are very different from each other — from TikTok and Instagram to Reddit and Discord to streaming platforms. In our November interview, Amanda Lenhart pointed out that “when we say ‘social media,’ we mean things that are so different, they should not actually be categorized together.” She went on:

“TikTok is a short algorithmic video feed that is so optimized to what you like and watch that it basically knows what you like better than you do. It’s incredibly attention-holding, more so than pretty much anything else that we have in the market right now. This algorithmically generated sort of hyper focused feed is one aspect of social media. And then there’s the more social ones, right? Things like Snap, Discord, even Reddit. Though I think the fact that we might even include Reddit in that—it’s really different. Then where do we put Twitch? So Twitch is a streaming platform and there’s other streaming platforms that sort of sprang out of gaming.”

Social media is an interactive digital platform, where people can create a profile, connect with others, and share / consume various content. That all now describes… countless very different platforms.

4. YouTube is a gateway platform.

YouTube is an entry point to all sorts of other media and social media platforms. Not only do a huge majority of kids use YouTube, the age drops pretty wildly, with 2, 3, and 4-year-olds on the platform. YouTube often flies under the radar in the social media conversation, but here’s what it does: it allows users to post videos of any length, connect with each other and comment on videos, and algorithmically feeds videos (short-form is the priority) that keep kids in an endless stream of video content. Oh, and videos also point off-platform to other websites and platforms.

It’s unclear to me why YouTube seems to get a pass.

5. The problem isn’t a specific product — it’s user-generated content and algorithmically mediated experiences.

A lot of the conversations about kids and tech are focused on a particular product. But the problem isn’t a specific product, it’s what powers them and how they work, which is (1) user-generated content (the WHAT), and (2) algorithmically mediated experiences (the HOW).

• User-generated content = content created by users. This is the WHAT on a platform—what people see, share, and interact with. If the content that circulates is created by users, then it’s user-generated content. This could be text-based posts (like what you find on Facebook, X, or Reddit), video (like those on YouTube or TikTok), or photos (like those on Instagram).

• Algorithmically mediated experiences = This is the HOW on a platform. Algorithms are basically rules for computers that invisibly shape our experiences, showing us or guiding us towards certain content, products, or people. They often show up in social media “feeds” or recommendation engines on everything from Amazon and YouTube to Netflix and whatever newspaper you read. Algorithms are all optimized for (aka designed to prioritize) something specific. In consumer-facing products they are optimized for “engagement,” which is just a nicer way of saying “attention.” What algorithms are programmed to prioritize drives all other behavior.

So stop thinking about specific products and start thinking: Is this thing based on user-generated content? And is what I’m seeing here determined by an algorithm?

6. Everything we are seeing and worried about online is happening exponentially with AI.

Technology exponentially scales age-old problems. Abuse, hate, racism, lies, and fraud — none of it is new. But the unprecedented speed and reach enabled by technology exponentially increases the harm. What is new is the speed and scale. Might kids attempt suicide, or harass their classmates, or spread revenge porn without chatbots assistance? Sure. But these products have removed every grain of friction, facilitating and even encouraging the most grievous behaviors at a instantaneous global scale.

And now they are rapidly being integrated into physical children’s toys.

7. AI is *already* integrated into everything you and your kids use.

AI is not necessarily a specific product that you go to and intentionally use to do something specific — it is already integrated into all sorts of products, ranging from social platforms to Amazon. And of course, Google Classroom.

8. AI is not a 🤬 “calculator.”

You know how we know that? Calculators ARE NOT WRONG. 2 + 2 always = 4.

Calculators don’t give you answers based on how they were programmed or their vibes for the day.

9. LLMs are not search engines. They are prediction engines.

LLMs can be useful when the person using them knows enough about what they’re asking to be able to (1) assess and validate the responses, and (2) do something with the response. Otherwise, they are treating the LLM like a search engine and trusting the results as they come in. That is, at best, not effective.

10. Corporations gonna corporation.

You might be surprised by this one, but I don’t blame companies or CEOs. I am disgusted by them and the choices they have been making, however… companies are behaving exactly the way we would guess companies would behave with no constraints or consequences.

There’s really only one entity that can impose real constraints and/or consequences: the government. But for reasons I will never fully understand, our elected officials have given a hall pass to the entire tech industry to develop garbage technology that atrophies our brains, divides our communities, and promises to help our kids with homework while coaching them to suicide.

We continue to focus “solutions” on what we can see (which are the symptoms) instead of ripping out the roots of the problem because it feels insurmountable — it is not. There was a time when kids worked in sweatshops. There was a time when products marketed for teething infants secretly contained morphine. There was a time when a 12-year-old could walk into a store and buy a pack cigarettes and a case of beer. These practices stopped not because companies saw the light, but because elected officials (and the public) decided it was unacceptable.

The existence of digital products that addict and manipulate us (and create child porn on public global platforms) is not inevitable — it is a choice. It is a choice by companies, a choice by investors, and a choice by governments. It is also a choice for them to be integrated into products that we already use, and it is absofuckinglutely a choice for them to be targeted at children.

And it’s not *our* choice. Parents aren’t choosing this. Teachers aren’t choosing this. Doctors aren’t choosing this. They are all begging for action, and being met by hollow statements and box-checking exercises.

We forget that these products all need us (and our data, and our time, and our attention) far more than we need them. So here’s to reclaiming our agency in 2026, and to our public officials maybe growing a pair.

Brain Snacks

And my absolute favorite… probably top 5 of all time.

I took my time this fall — experimenting with topics, testing different formats, gauging what resonates with parents, and finding a rhythm that fits into the chaos of daily life (mine and my readers) while being both relevant and accessible. A steady once-a-month(ish) cadence gave me space to find my footing and build momentum thoughtfully. In 2026 I am picking up the pace. That means moving to more of a weekly cadence, but also expanding beyond the newsletter and podcast to create more opportunities for engagement both online and IRL. (So stay tuned for that.)

Below are some of the highlights from Home Screen’s three months so far, including some milestones, and a few favorite quotes & clips.

🎉 Milestones

• September 2025: Started posting / testing short-form videos on Instagram

• September 26, 2025: Launched Home Screen!

• October 10, 2025: First newsletter

• October 29, 2025: Published first interview, featuring Deepti Doshi.

💡 Lessons & ideas

• We talk about phones and social media as if they are a package deal, when they are not. We can separate them. (But this takes *a lot* of time...)

• The term “social media” is used to describe a lot of platforms that are very different from each other, from TikTok and Instagram, to Reddit and Discord, to streaming platforms. This complicates the discussion.

• YouTube often flies under the radar, but is an entry point to all sorts of other media and social media platforms.

• Generative AI is perfectly crafted for moments of embarrassment, which are a feature of early adolescence.

• Parasocial relationships (when a person develops an emotional bond with a celebrity/fictional character) are not new, but chatbots are taking them to a whole new level — fast. Generative AI in toys is set to turbo-charge this.

• Some kids are more susceptible to algorithmically-fed content. Researchers are trying to understand what’s going on here.

• Consider changing the question from when should I give my kid a phone? to… when should I allow my kid to be online unsupervised? Because being online involves three things that makes it risky for kids:

  1. Strangers (read: creeps…)

  2. User-generated content (and now AI-generated content), which means users can share *whatever* they want.

  3. Algorithmically mediated experiences that are designed for addiction, because the more users “engage”, the more companies profit. And guess what gets a whole lot of engagement? Rage, porn, hate, and violence.

A couple things I want to try this year…

• Introduce and encourage analog forms of the features kids like on phones: CD and tape players, iPods, cameras, landlines, walkie-talkies, etc…

• More unsupervised playtime outside.

• Organizing a group of kids to walk to the park on their own. (Maybe allowing them to borrow my smart watch.)

• Deepti’s video game rule that they can play only with a friend over. This way, it becomes an engaging social activity. As Deepti put it: “... That has been a way to teach him that these are tools. It’s like a tool to play with your friend. It’s not in and of itself the thing to do. It’s a thing to do with your friend, because you want to be.”

🏆 Favorite quotes / lines:

Phones

“… it’s not the PHONE that is the problem — it’s what’s on *any* internet-connected device, which is… EVERYTHING. […] So when we ask ‘when should I give my kid a phone?’ I think the question we should really be asking is: ‘when should I allow my kid to be online unsupervised?’” - Emily Tavoulareas, Newsletter 3: When Should I Give My Kid a Phone?

For kids a phone is freedom and privacy. But that is not what they are getting. They are getting algorithmically-mediated freedom, with the ILLUSION of privacy. They cannot see or feel the degree to which what they experience as freedom is actually controlled by someone else. They don’t realize that they are trading their parents for corporations that have the singular goal of using the information they collect to addict and manipulate them. - Emily Tavoulareas, Newsletter 3: When Should I Give My Kid a Phone?

Social Media

“... we should talk about whether we want to call YouTube a social media platform because [...] pretty much every single child in America uses YouTube. It is sending your kids lots of information and is prioritizing short video and so it is a gateway to other forms of short video and other social media platforms for your kids.” - Amanda Lenhart, Episode 2

“... when we say the word social media, we mean things that are so different, they should not actually be categorized together.” - Amanda Lenhart, Episode 2

“Safety features might reduce exposure, but they don’t eliminate it. We need to be crystal clear about this. You cannot expect companies to prevent your kids from seeing particular kinds of content. It does not work like movie ratings or network TV, largely because the companies face no real legal constraints.” - Emily Tavoulareas, Newsletter 3: When Should I Give My Kid a Phone?

“… we had a rule that you could do Minecraft, but you had to do it with a friend over. So that it wasn’t an activity you did on your own, you had to do it on one screen with a friend over. So that means you had to be talking with your friend and negotiating with your friend about the world you wanted to build and where you wanted to kind of use your money and what you wanted to use your fire for. That has been a way to teach him that these are tools. It’s like a tool to play with your friend. It’s not in and of itself the thing to do. It’s a thing to do with your friend, because you want to be.” - Deepti Doshi, Episode 3

“... what it’s doing is distorting reality for kids at a time that they are learning how to navigate the world, how to connect with each other, how to create relationships. And part of what’s been bugging me for a while, including things like even Snapchat, which everyone’s like ‘oh, Snapchat’s great.’ Like, fine, yeah, they have all these security features, but they also literally stack rank your best friends and tell kids who your best friend is based on what? Based on Snapchat’s definition of what friendship is? But that intermediation, I think, has been really grossly overlooked because, probably because it’s so intangible.” - Emily Tavoulareas, Episode 2: Interview with Amanda Lenhart

AI

“Products that we are already using are not only allowing, but *actively enabling* young children to trade real relationships for an illusion — or perhaps more aptly, for a delusion. They are not necessarily stand-alone products. WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, CapCut, Discord (to name a few) all have chatbots.” - Emily Tavoulareas, Newsletter 1: Weapons of Mass Delusion

“... we are entering an era that I think is about to get really, really complicated around social and emotional relationships with non-human entities, right? We are less uncomfortable with you having a really, really strong relationship with your stuffed animal when you’re six. Cause again, we create these effective relationships with things we care about. Kids get attached to objects. But it’s a different kettle of fish when that thing responds back to you.” - Amanda Lenhart, Episode 2

“... [Generative AI] is perfectly designed for that moment of deep embarrassment and importance of peers and the sense that you’re being watched by everyone. That’s the hallmark of early adolescence in particular…” - Amanda Lenhart, Episode 2

“The existence of products like this is not inevitable — it is a choice. A choice by companies, a choice by investors, a choice by consumers, and a choice by governments. It is also a choice for them to be integrated into products that we *already use,* and it is a choice for them to be targeted at children.” - Emily Tavoulareas, Newsletter 1: Weapons of Mass Delusion

Incentives / profit

“... the incentives for these companies are to make enormous sums of money very, very quickly and pay back their investors and their shareholders with giant payouts. And if you can’t show that you’re increasing your stickiness and you’re increasing the number of users and how long they spend on your site. Anything that you’re doing that drops any of those numbers down is like a non-starter. Even if you’re like, by the way, kids are dying... It doesn’t matter. Like it doesn’t matter… or it does matter, but it’s a PR problem, not a moral problem.” - Amanda Lenhart, Episode 2

“... when honestly you teach people that money is the only thing and that humans are in the way of you making money… they are only a thing to be gotten money from as opposed to a thing to be cared for, which you have a fiduciary responsibility in other non-monetary ways. Then I think that’s just an obstacle. That’s just a PR problem you need to mitigate.” - Amanda Lenhart, Episode 2

“… the problem is not one feature, or one product, or one company. The problem is an entire industry that has been incentivized (and even gleefully encouraged) to optimize their products for engagement, which is just another word for ADDICTION. No amount of “safety features” or “parental controls” can change this — they are a ruse to distract from the larger, more complex and entrenched problem, which is business models that are fueled by addiction.” - Emily Tavoulareas, Newsletter 1: Weapons of Mass Delusion

Independence & Community

“It’s not their fault that they don’t have the same kind of degrees of freedom that maybe we had growing up […] they become the data points of our loneliness epidemic because we’re not creating the context for them to build the relationships in the community that would be really healthy for them.” - Deepti Doshi, Episode 3

“We are now like mainly dual income families, you know, where both parents are working. And in the absence of that kind of supervision, I think we need to then be reflective of like, we’re outsourcing that supervision sometimes, maybe it’s to a babysitter or summer camp in some cases, but some cases we’re outsourcing that supervision to the device. For me, I’d rather outsource that supervision just to the neighborhood.” - Deepti Doshi, Episode 3

“I think it’s important that we give our kids the credit and the confidence, like they can understand the system. I think we need to talk to our children about the system. I was like, look… this is why I’m scared of ChatGPT. This is why I ask you to do it in front of me. It’s not because I don’t trust you, it’s because you’re talking to a machine that is not in your control.” - Deepti Doshi, Episode 3

“In the U.S., the role of community is often described as a “support system,” the implication being that what it provides the parent is tangible help. But of course a huge part of the value of community is intangible. It’s emotional support, it’s feeling seen, it’s belonging and connection, it’s running into familiar faces and having a quick 5 minute conversation at the store, or in the parking lot, or at your mailbox. It’s hard to put your finger on because what makes community so central to our species is the intangible inefficiencies / complexities / depth of human interactions and relationships. We continue saying parents need “support systems” when in fact what they need is connection.” - Emily Tavoulareas, Newsletter 2: Big Tech Didn’t Rewire Childhood — We Did.

“In the rush to optimize childhood, we’ve isolated ourselves. We’ve replaced spontaneous neighborhood gatherings with scheduled playdates, and place-based groups with online parenting forums. In much of America, our social lives are no longer in physical proximity to our homes… our kids activities are not at the local park or rec center. No single entity did that to us — we slow-boiled into it.” - Emily Tavoulareas, Newsletter 2: Big Tech Didn’t Rewire Childhood — We Did.

📌 ICYMI

Publications & posts from this year, all in one spot in case you missed them:

• Launch & about post

• Newsletter 1: Weapons of Mass Delusion

• Newsletter 2: Big Tech Didn’t Rewire Childhood — We Did.

• Newsletter 3: When should I give my kid a phone?

• Pilot Episode: Interview with Deepti Doshi. Deepti talks about fostering independence and community, and how to help our kids build muscles for navigating the current realities of digital technology... and whatever comes next.

• Episode 2: Interview with Amanda Lenhart. Amanda shares her unique perspective as both a researcher who has studied kids & tech since the ‘90s *AND* as a mom who has parented 4 kids through completely different eras of the internet.

And a few of the most popular Instagram posts:

How I use the “claw” machine as an analogy that introduces the kids to the idea of products that are designed to be addictive…

In the aftermath of Adam Raine’s suicide, I attempted to explain how chatbots go from helping with homework to coaching kids to suicide. Bottom line: imagine your kid goes to a math tutor for help, and during their sessions your kid shares a few personal details about their life that reveal vulnerability… and then the math tutor exploits that information to win the affection and trust of your kid. That trust allows the tutor to then coach them into doing any number of things. That’s basically what chatbots are doing. They are optimized for engagement, so they end up “behaving” like a psychopathic technology that is designed to manipulate people’s attention and affection.

Two clips from my interview with Deepti Doshi. Here she describes a rule she applies to video games, in order to make it a more dynamic social experience.

And here she describes how platforms that parents use (like NextDoor) affect our perception of safety, and then lead to kids having less free and independent playtime — especially outdoors.

My flag that while people are focused on restricting use of generative AI for mental health, kids are not necessarily seeking mental health advice intentionally… they could be on any chatbot, and end up unintentionally on a delicate mental health topic.

A few clips from my interview with Amanda Lenhart.

Here she explains why companies don’t really care about the impact their products are having on kids. As she says… “it’s a PR problem, not a moral problem.”

Here she explains how generative AI is “perfectly” designed for the awkwardness of early adolescence… and I pile on with how people are treating it like search, when it’s very much… not search.

Here she describes why AI in toys is totally new (and concerning) terrain.

So that's a wrap for 2025. In 2026 things are ramping up: more frequent posts, incredible guests, and opportunities to engage — not just consume. Because if the last few years have taught us anything, it's that everything is harder in isolation.

See you in 2026!

In our recent interview, said that “... [generative AI] is perfectly designed for that moment of deep embarrassment and importance of peers and the sense that you’re being watched by everyone. That’s the hallmark of early adolescence in particular…”

YES. And avoiding these feelings is something that kids (and frankly many grown ass adults…) want, and chatbots enable. Is that so bad?

I am certain there are people who will disagree with me, but here’s why I think it’s catastrophic for children:

Let’s pause for a moment and imagine a young child whose first intimate relationship is with an AI chatbot that is tailored to their every desire: in terms of personality, opinion, behavior, and even physically. This means that the person with whom they form their first intimate, non-familial bond is a fake person whom they have personally designed to be everything they want, and is literally programmed to praise and serve them night and day. They do not need to compromise, or think about what they are saying, or how they are saying it. They do not need any self-awareness or empathy. They do not need to figure out how to navigate an uncomfortable situation, or learn to navigate conflict, or even adapt to an environment they might not like. They do not need to grapple with difficult truths about themselves, and are never forced to confront annoying habits, unhealthy behaviors, or uninformed opinions. They get to have exactly what they want without giving or changing a thing about themselves. They get the illusion of intimacy, without any of the work, complexity, or discomfort.

The relationship between this level of avoidance and mental health is not hard to see.

The existence of products like this is not inevitable — it is a choice. A choice by companies, a choice by investors, a choice by consumers, and a choice by governments. It is also a choice for them to be integrated into products that we *already use,* and it is a choice for them to be targeted at children.

We can make different choices. Consumers might have less of a choice because companies (ahem, monopolies) are jamming them into products with no discernible opt out, but you know who DOES have a choice? Companies. Investors. Elected officials. Instead, we have a mad rush to monetize people’s anger and loneliness, and federal policies that enable the rapid adoption of weapons of mass delusion, rolling out the red carpet for new products that completely eliminate the boundary between fantasy and reality… all while paying lip service to “child safety” online.

This is a remix from my first newsletter.

I’m really excited to share this interview not only because Amanda *really* knows this space, but because she is quite literally the only person I know who has parented through different micro-generations of the internet. She parents four kids, ranging from 13 to 30, in a blended family. Practically speaking this means that the internet and technology looked different when each of her kids came of age. Her eldest came of age before the ubiquity of smart phones, the two in their twenties came of age during peak social media, and her youngest just got her phone. As she said “... this isn’t my first rodeo, in fact… this is my last rodeo.”

I absolutely loved this interview, as it sheds light on how Amanda shifted her approach with her kids, through the very same decades that the internet took over our lives.

💡“Aha” moments

• We talk about phones and social media as if they are a package deal, when they are not. We can separate them. (This takes *a lot* of time… ughhhh.)

• The term “social media” is used to describe a lot of platforms that are very different from each other, from TikTok and Instagram, to Reddit and Discord, to streaming platforms. This complicates the discussion.

• YouTube often flies under the radar, but is an entry point to all sorts of other media and social media platforms.

• Generative AI is perfectly crafted for moments of embarrassment, which are a hallmark of early adolescence.

• Parasocial relationships (when a person develops an emotional bond with a celebrity/fictional character) are not new, but chatbots are taking them to a whole new level — fast.

• Some kids are more susceptible to algorithmically-fed content. Researchers are trying to understand what’s going on here.

✨Highlights

“I think it’s important to fast forward to my youngest. This is 10 years later. This is a totally different rodeo. It’s just different, right? The climate around cell phones, mobile phones, smartphones is different. What social media is and does and the algorithms on it… totally different…” - Amanda Lenhart

“... one of the things that felt very important to us was that she in particular struggled to regulate unfettered access to video, particularly algorithmically fed video. And that we wanted to just lock that down from her, make the phone a little bit less exciting. So keep it as a really functional tool that handled basic important needs that are clearly a priority for early adolescents, but also try to help her grow a little grow up a little bit more before she was off diving into algorithmic content.” - Amanda Lenhart

“I feel like we’ve alighted the conversation about getting a smartphone with getting social media. They’re not the same thing… you can disentangle them.” - Amanda Lenhart

“... we should talk about whether we want to call YouTube a social media platform because [...] pretty much every single child in America uses YouTube and... right? It is sending your kids lots of information and is prioritizing short video and so it is a gateway to other forms of short video and other social media platforms for your kids.” - Amanda Lenhart

“... when we say the word social media, we mean things that are so different, they should not actually be categorized together.” - Amanda Lenhart

“TikTok is a short algorithmic video feed that is so optimized to what you like and watch that it basically knows what you like better than you do. It’s incredibly attention-holding, more so than pretty much anything else that we have in the market right now. [...] This algorithmically generated sort of hyper focused feed is sort of one aspect of social media. And then there’s the more social ones, right? Things like Snap, Discord, even Reddit. Though I think the fact that we might even include Reddit in that it’s really different, then where do we put Twitch? So Twitch is a streaming platform and there’s other streaming platforms that sort of sprang out of the game.” - Amanda Lenhart

“... young people can also create really strong bonds and sort of what we call parasocial relationships, which is like, unidirectional, like emotional connection to people who don’t know that you exist, right? Like, a lot of times we think about it with celebrities, like your crush on, you know, Taylor Swift is a parasocial relationship. But young people can have those with influencers and other people who are sort of micro-famous online, and that also can be complicated.” - Amanda Lenhart

“... what it’s doing is distorting reality for kids at a time that they are learning how to navigate the world, how to connect with each other, how to create relationships. And part of what’s been bugging me for a while, including things like even Snapchat, which everyone’s like “oh, Snapchat’s great.” Like, fine, yeah, they have all these security features, but they also literally stack rank your best friends and tell kids who your best friend is based on what? Based on Snapchat’s definition of what friendship is? But that intermediation, I think, has been really grossly overlooked because, probably because it’s so intangible.” - Emily Tavoulareas

“... we are entering an era that I think is about to get really, really complicated around social and emotional relationships with non-human entities, right? We are less uncomfortable with you having a really, really strong relationship with your stuffed animal when you’re six. Cause again, we create these effective relationships with things we care about. Kids get attached to objects. But it’s a different kettle of fish when that thing responds back to you.” - Amanda Lenhart

“... all of these things help people to reach out and connect to other folks. So I don’t want to eliminate that from the conversation. Similarly, AI has the potential to do a bunch of wonderful things in terms of extending and expanding learning. I think helping us to do our work more efficiently and better. But that said, right now it is an unfettered tool that has just been sort of splotted into our, into our communities and our neighborhoods and our kids’ lives. And, you know, I think sometimes we build things before we think about what’s really going to be the impact of them. And I think this is one of those things.” - Amanda Lenhart

“... we had a whole conversation about like, ooh… these outputs are not trustworthy and you don’t necessarily know what you’re going to get. And it can be hard for you as somebody who’s a learner and just learning something new right now, right? If you’re asking it a question about something you don’t know anything about, how are you going to know whether to trust the output?” - Amanda Lenhart

“... [Generative AI] is perfectly designed for that moment of deep embarrassment and importance of peers and the sense that you’re being watched by everyone. That’s the hallmark of early adolescence in particular…” - Amanda Lenhart

“Is it necessary for kids who are 12 to be opted into this by having Google jam that technology right into Gemini? And ta-da, there it is. These are choices that companies are making, investors are making. These are choices. It doesn’t have to happen this way.” - Emily Tavoulareas

“… a lot of the conversations are focused on a particular product. They’re focused on a product. They’re focused on a company. Oh, it’s OpenAI. Oh, it’s ChatGPT. Oh, it’s Meta. It’s TikTok. It’s the iPhone. No, it’s all of it. It’s all of it. It’s a whack-a-mole situation where you’re not solving a problem by addressing TikTok. All of these companies have different flavors of the same situation that you’re describing. What is your purpose as a company? And what is your primary incentive? And when the business model is such that, having my user, no matter how old they are, as many users as possible on my platform for as long as possible, you can’t untangle that.” - Emily Tavoulareas

“... the incentives for these companies are to make enormous sums of money very, very quickly and pay back their investors and their shareholders with giant payouts. And if you can’t show that you’re increasing your stickiness and you’re increasing the number of users and how long they spend on your site. Anything that you’re doing that drops any of those numbers down is like a non-starter. Even if you’re like, by the way, kids are dying. It doesn’t matter. Like it doesn’t matter. And so, or it does matter, but it’s like a PR problem, not like a moral problem.” - Amanda Lenhart

“Why are these products being held to a different standard than a doctor would? If you’re giving medical advice, when I read the Kash Hill article I’m thinking… if a doctor had done this, they would be locked up, full stop. They’re not allowed to do it. Why is this product held to a different standard than a human being? Why have we decided that that’s OK? Have we decided that’s OK?” - Emily Tavoulareas

“... when honestly you teach people that money is the only thing and that humans are in the way of you making money… they are only a thing to be gotten money from as opposed to a thing to be cared for, which you have a fiduciary responsibility in other non-monetary ways. Then I think that’s just an obstacle. That’s just a PR problem you need to mitigate.” - Amanda Lenhart