Position on AI, apps, and screens for kids

The short answer

AI, apps, screens, and other new technology are exactly as effective for learning/creating/connecting as you make them. Use them mindfully for the right purpose, as a partner to human intelligence, and there are many potential benefits. These are sources of empowerment, for better and worse, and they are the reality of our kids' world. Forbidding them or encouraging fear/disdain for them are not shortcuts to raising better kids. This publication routinely recommends homeschooling and parenting approaches that leverage technology to save human time, and enhance human ability, but very few technologies have robust guardrails against poor judgement. As a teacher and/or parent, your responsibility to instill good priorities, including ethics, is even more important as kids gain new capabilities through emerging technology.

Pragmatic Homeschooling takes a position of enthusiasm toward the potential of technology in education and home use for kids. We celebrate finding ways to use it that level the developmental playing field that has long favored neurotypical, wealthy, well-connected kids. And, we caution adults and kids alike who adopt emerging technology to maintain diligent mindfulness of its impacts, especially the moral, social, environmental, economic, and political danger that humans wielding ever more advanced tools can (and will) amplify.

The long answer

As the name of this publication suggests, I'm a pragmatist about most things. Every generation of humanity in this globalized age experiences remarkable advancements in technology, but perhaps the most extraordinary thing about what we're seeing now is how simultaneously universal and personal the shifts are. The world is profoundly accessible to us, and we have immense power to make our mark on it. I've often mused that humanity has acquired all this receptive and expressive power before we're mature enough to handle it responsibly as a species, and it's safe to say this dilemma is compounded for the young people currently growing up with these powers.

What gives me hope is that today's kids are the ones I can see developing the maturity we adults are missing - precisely because they are growing up shaped by the immersion in powerful tools, information, and connection. These things used to be limited resources and exclusive privileges. Just a few years ago, you might easily not live in a place with easy access to a library (or a social hub, or a museum), or your family might not be wealthy enough to afford a tutor (or art supplies, or a computer), or your neurodivergence might leave you feeling like an outsider in your community - but now none of these things will limit the vast majority of kids growing up in developed nations today. The adults they will become are destined to be shaped by a vastly different set of boundaries than any generation before them. While my generation is caught up in fear, excitement, and confusion toward technology like AI, the ubiquity of screens, and the marketplace of information (and misinformation), kids are figuring out how to handle and wield it all in ways that would never even occur to us.

I may sound like a starry-eyed optimist, but let me assure you I think humanity is in for some very unpleasant growing pains as we absorb the changes technology is bringing us. People will misuse and abuse our new powers, and as always we will hurt each other in the pursuit of our own goals with any new tool we acquire. Nevertheless, I believe the only way out is through.

Take AI, which at this moment generally means large language models (LLMs) that train on massive troves of text in order to be capable of a facsimile of informed human interaction. This version of AI is easily mistaken for the true artificial intelligence we've dreamed of in countless sci fi novels, but I can't think of an author that accurately imagined the path this technology has actually taken - powerful, fickle, unreliable, deceptive, and ultimately... a bit too human. I have been more infuriated by ChatGPT's failings than by any actual person I've ever depended on for work. But I've also gotten frankly amazing insights and products from it at speeds and in an array of categories no person could have rivaled. The potential for massive benefit to humanity is there, if we can mindfully confront the very real issues. These issues will not be addressed by banning AI from schools, businesses, or communities - places where the the appeal of its potential will drive adoption, whether above board or below. LLM-style AI will improve when people understand it and use it - not just for shortcuts to the kind of results we used to want, but to create results on a whole different axis.

Current AI models can be used to answer questions on a kid's math worksheet, thus achieving the traditional goal of getting a good score. People have used shortcuts for this goal since long before the rise of AI, from copying a friend's answers to peeping the grading key. The problem, then, is the goal, not the method. Why isn't our goal in math class to learn math, rather than get a good score? AI can help with either, but we're stuck in a mode where we think scoring well on an assignment is the primary measure of success. And then, students routinely using AI to ace their take-home assignments without effectively learning the material usually flunk the next quiz where they can't just get the answers from AI. The system fails itself, just as it always did when kids who stole the answer keys lost access in a testing environment or, more importantly, real life.

But change the objective, and AI opens up a much more virtuous cycle. Take a few steps back from the idea of needing math to score well in school, and we might use AI to help us develop the problem solving skills to recognize what math principles we need for real world situations, and how to engage the readily available tools to address them. This is not about "what if you don't have a calculator with you?" or "what if the internet is down?" anymore. This is about assuming the common reality we live in will present us with challenges routinely, and we will have immense power to tackle them through commonly available technology. The keys will be recognizing what tool we need for what problem, and the common sense to evaluate the viability of potential solutions.

Another potential villain in child development and learning is prolific screen use. But again, screens and apps at worst only enable the behavior we let them - and at best they are tools that can help kids engage more deeply with learning in a school environment. People might cringe when I report that my kiddo spends much, much more time on screens in homeschool than she did in traditional school, but I'm extremely happy with how much more engaged with the material she gets this way. Our screens can educate through telling stories, demonstrating ideas, simulating abstract systems, inviting creation, and providing structure in ways that are dynamic and flexible beyond what I could realistically achieve with only physical materials.

Homeschooling presents the opportunity to pioneer in this challenging space. Traditional schools are going to struggle to adapt at the pace of change, but at home with a smaller number of students and more flexibility around our priorities and approaches, we're able to constantly try and evaluate new things. That's what this publication is about, and it's a big part of what motivated me to homeschool in the first place. Our experiments are not always success stories, but it's my goal to share what we learn from them and foster a community to discuss how tech-positive homeschool integrations can support next-generation learning styles.