Not so long ago, parents debated how much TV time to allow their children.
That looks downright quaint as parents today must contend with trickier decisions about how—and when—to introduce their children to fundamentally different technologies.
Shunning technology altogether isn’t the answer, but rather parents must navigate how AI tools and other newfangled technology can deepen human connection, as three experts recently shared during a panel discussion at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York.
That’s why understanding the intent behind the technology is so important in navigating this pivotal time.
“The best way to get children ready for a high-tech future is ironically a low-tech childhood,” said Dana Suskind, author of the book Human Raised and the founder and codirector of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago.
“It doesn’t mean that technology doesn’t play a role,” Suskind added. “[But] the relationship, that messy human relationship at this point, should never be replaced.”
IDENTIFYING WHAT KIDS REALLY WANT
Sometimes that means intuiting what children really want, even if technology could potentially deliver much more.
For Chet Kittleson, a request from his daughter for a phone or smartwatch was actually about something much different—she wanted a portal into her best friend’s bedroom.
That realization a couple years ago led Kittleson to cofound Tin Can, an analogue-style landline.
The company has intentionally shied away from adding functionality or the types of now-commonplace “smart” features that might stoke addictive behaviors. The $100 gadget has essentially aimed to reinvent the landline for Gen Alpha.
“They just want to be able to talk to their friends and that’s it—it’s so simple,” said Kittleson, the company’s CEO. “It made our jobs pretty easy. The product is not a revelation. We brought something back that was there for a long time.”
WHY THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY MATTERS
But going back in time isn’t the only solution, and indeed AI, when it has the right design intent, can help empower children and adults alike with information that might have been difficult to intuit otherwise.
Seeing his brother experience an emotional breakdown after getting bullied in school led Sachin Chaudhry to found TrustCircle, which uses technology to help identify children who are at risk for any emotional reason—and why.
TrustCircle has now been deployed across the state of Hawaii with some 200,000 students there using it, even in the youngest grades, and that information can then be used to connect them with a school counselor who can step in to help, Chaudhry said.
“If the technology is designed to empower a child, then that technology actually gives the child an opportunity to self-express, self-reflect, and understand themselves better and make good decisions,” said Chaudhry, who is also an Ashoka Fellow.
“Believe it or not, in the coming day and age, emotional resilience will be the No. 1 skill that our kids can have,” he added, “because time will throw a lot of ups and downs in front of them and they need to maneuver with that one skill and come out happily.”
