Last month, the American Psychological Association released a health advisory about the impact of artificial intelligence on adolescent mental health. Here are a few highlights from the report by topic:
- Simulated Human Relationships: “Adolescents may struggle to distinguish between the simulated empathy of an AI chat-bot or companion and genuine human understanding… Consequently, youth are likely to have heightened trust in, and susceptibility to, influence from AI-generated characters, particularly those that present themselves as friends or mentors.”
- What parents can do: Talk about AI companions with your kids. They likely already have access to them via their social media apps and it helps to know their parents are aware of the benefits and risks.
- AI Made for Adolescents: “AI experiences… should incorporate age-appropriate safeguards such as being trained on age-appropriate data, protective defaults, and design choices that differ from those intended for adult users.”
- What parents can do: Advocate for AI platforms that are designed for young users. Reach out to major tech companies, policy-makers, and talk to your child’s school about AI platforms they will use with students.
- AI for Healthy Cognitive Development: “For learning, AI can assist in brainstorming, creating, organizing, summarizing, and synthesizing information, and offering resources and solutions for challenging problems. Research indicates that these capabilities make it easier for students to understand and retain key concepts.
- What parents can do: Ask your child’s school how they are training teachers on classroom use of AI for the benefit of student learning.
- Protect Young Users: The APA advocates for protecting the sensitive information that could be shared commercially with large language models through the use of large language models. They also mention protecting the likenesses of children from being misused. Finally, they advocate for protecting children against the harm that can be caused by biased and false information.
- What parents can do: Consider reading about data privacy in ConnectSafely’s Parent’s Guide to Cybersecurity and about harmful bias in ConnectSafely’s Parent’s Guide to Media Literacy and False Information.
Perhaps the most important concluding point from this report is this: “the use of AI by adults (e.g., parents and teachers) can be highly influential in adolescents’ own attitudes and practices around AI; it is critical that adults model healthy behavior and critical thinking for adolescents.”
Said another way: when we use AI in our daily lives, we can show our kids and teens what we are doing and how we are thinking through the interaction with AI. We can model effective use and critical thinking.