By Casey Harper

Many adults and parents are gently wading into the new waters of artificial intelligence — or skeptically standing far off — but countless kids of all ages have already dove headlong and have yet to come up for air.

Social media swept through the millennial generation as they came of age, leading to dopamine addiction, distraction from studies, cyberbullying, body dysmorphia, and an explosion in the use of pornography. Now, the next generation of kids has also taken on the problems of social media, but they have added to it their own coming-of-age technological difficulty: artificial intelligence.

Clare Morell is an expert on these topics. Her new book, “The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones,” exposes some of the most poignant problems facing the next generation. Morell appeared on The Washington Stand’s “Outstanding” podcast where she laid out how social media and artificial intelligence are a one-two punch for kids today. For instance, Morell said that a quarter of boys ages nine to 12 have been on an online dating app. Even worse, one in three minors report having sexual interaction online, and one in five believe it was with an adult. Studies show the average child will be exposed to pornography before turning 13, with many discovering it accidentally through the internet.

Morell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and director of its Technology and Human Flourishing Project. She said that parents place their trust in parental controls and other blocking software at their own peril.

“I think we really have something to worry about here,” Morell said. “And I think actually one of the problems is that the tech companies have told parents that screen time limits and parental controls can shield their children from all the harms [of] their technologies, because they want children using their technologies, whether it’s social media platforms or smartphones. All of these companies recognize that children are a really big part of their business.” 

Morell added that even when kids’ use is limited, the technology is so potent that it can impact their entire day. She advocates for a cold-turkey approach, something many parents may find radical. However, when you add up the likely exposure to pornography, the chance of meeting an online predator, and the effect on developing brains, she might be on to something.

“The reality that I found through my research is that screen time limits and parental controls … are not enough to protect kids from the negative effects on their brains, that the technology itself is designed to be addictive and that the screen time limit doesn’t actually map on to a child’s mental or emotional time spent, because it creates this constant craving for more [of] the dopamine effects of these technologies,” she said. “So they may be on it for 15 minutes, and then they spend the rest of the day thinking about when they can get back on, to see how many new likes or followers or new messages that they might have.”

Artificial intelligence has led to disturbing impacts on kids, often compounded by social media. AI has become a common counselor for young people who often ask the most intimate questions and get questionable advice from any one of a number of new conversation AI chatbots. Chatbots can sound very human and be customized to fit a particular taste. They also learn over time the interests and likes of their human counterpart and can begin catering to them, a powerful tonic for a lonely child.

Relationships can move to outright friendship and even romantic relationships. AI-generated boyfriends and girlfriends quickly went from science fiction to the nightly news. Parents are reporting their kids having dysfunctional relationships and receiving bad advice from AI. In multiple cases, parents allege AI helped prod their child into suicide.

When kids need somewhere to turn, AI — not their faith or parents — has increasingly become the safe place. Morell argues parents must have proactive conversations with their kids to get ahead of this growing problem.

“I do think there is a deeper spiritual crisis behind a lot of these digital technologies, because it is teaching a worldview that is contrary to what we believe as Christians,” she emphasized. “Because fundamentally, the life of a Christian is a life of self-denial, and the screen is just telling you that your life is all about yourself.”