AI Is Raising Your Child (Unless You’re Paying Attention)

Imagine giving your 5-year-old your car keys

….and saying “Go on, figure it out.”

Or pouring your 10-year-old a glass of wine after dinner and calling it “just a sip.”

Sounds ridiculous, right?

Now, consider how many five-year-olds are given tablets, AI voice assistants, or YouTube, with no training.

And how many nine-year-olds, like mine, figured out that “TV rules” don’t matter anymore because everything they want is already on YouTube.

“Mummy, stop saying you don’t know. Just Google it.”
That’s what my five-year-old said to me, wide-eyed and sincere.

“We don’t need cable TV during the week. Everything we want is on YouTube.”
My nine-year-old wasn’t being cheeky. She was being real.

And honestly? She wasn’t wrong.

We live in a world where AI knows more than most teachers, social media teaches emotional regulation (badly), and parents are often just trying to keep up.

But winging it won’t work in a world of generative AI, algorithmic influence, and dopamine-designed platforms.

👨🏽‍💻 Community Spotlight: “They Ask Siri Before They Ask Me”

“Yetty, I feel like I’m losing the battle in my own home.
My kids will actually ask Siri before they ask me anything now.
It’s like I’m fighting an invisible opponent and losing.”

That message came from a father in our community. And honestly? It captures exactly what so many parents are feeling right now.

There’s a growing silence between us and our children, not because they don’t have questions, but because they’ve found quicker answers somewhere else.

We are no longer the primary source of knowledge or advice.
The algorithm is.

And there’s something deeply painful about watching your influence as a parent quietly fade, while a faceless voice in a box becomes your child’s go-to.

Not because you don’t care.
Not because you’re not present.
But because somewhere along the way, tech became easier to talk to than we did.

Maybe it started with a tablet to keep them occupied.
Maybe it was a laptop for school that slowly became a doorway to YouTube, TikTok, and a world we barely understand.

And now, here we are—asking ourselves quietly:
“How did we get here?”
And even more importantly:
“How do we get back?”

Because Siri doesn’t sigh.
She doesn’t pause.
She doesn’t say, “Ask me later.”
She answers immediately, confidently, without nuance, context, or connection.

So, how do we compete with that?

How do we parent when our influence is being quietly replaced by a system we didn’t build and barely understand?

💡 The Real Answer Isn’t Out-Teching the Tech

You don’t need to be faster than AI.

You don’t have to know more than ChatGPT or ban every app.

You just have to be more human than the algorithm.

What Siri can’t do is:

• Look your child in the eyes with love and understanding
• Teach them how to navigate nuance and emotion
• Help them slow down and think critically
• Model digital wisdom—not just provide information on demand

While Siri or ChatGPT can answer questions, they cannot teach context.
TikTok can entertain, but it can’t offer (real) wisdom.
And YouTube can show them the world but not help them make sense of it.

So, yes, we point out how Technology is taking over our human interaction, but where did children who have just arrived (yes, on Earth) learn that so quickly?

📱 Now… Be Honest, How Many Times Have You Seen This

You’re at a restaurant. A family sits together, but nobody’s speaking. Each one, from toddlers to adults, is off in their own digital universe, scrolling, watching, and tapping.

Everywhere you turn, people are crossing the road with their eyes glued to their screens.

Sounds familiar? The truth is that it’s more real than we’d like to admit or perhaps we have even been in one of these scenarios?

We’ve allowed this to become normal.

We hand over devices like toys.
We reward digital “good behavior” with more screen time.
We model distraction while asking our kids to pay attention.
We tell them to look up, but we rarely do the same.

It’s uncomfortable to admit, but we’re not just victims of this digital chaos.
We’re part of the system that created it.

Now imagine a world where people are being fined not for reckless driving, but for crossing the road with their eyes glued to their screens. Or fined for putting more value into the screen in your hand versus the human in front of you?

🔍 So What Would a Perfect Digital World Actually Look Like?

Let’s be honest.
There’s no perfect. But there can be better.

A better digital world might look like:

• Digital literacy is taught like reading and math
• Families creating tech boundaries together
• Parents reflecting on their screen habits before enforcing rules
• Screen-free dinners where we actually talk again
• Children earning the privilege of digital tools after showing they understand how to use them well
• And a community that says enough is enough. Let’s bring back real presence.

If we want our children to grow up digitally wise, we have to start living that way too.

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being present and modeling the behaviour we want our children to emulate.

🌱 We Need a New Digital Culture

And this starts with agreeing that our youngest users are modeling what they see around them.

Just this week, I read an article about a student who was suspended for using AI to complete schoolwork, and within months, he had raised funding to expand the AI tool to help people cheat on various tasks. Make it make sense?

Earlier this year, Chungin “Roy” Lee announced he had been suspended from Columbia University after creating an artificial intelligence tool to help prospective software engineers cheat on job interviews. On Sunday, he announced he had raised $5.3 million in seed funding for that very same tool.

The company is charging $20 per month or $100 per year for unlimited usage. (source: fortune)

While we are still trying to figure it all out, the messages we send to our young people are confusing. When is it too much? When does it cross the line? Why do I have to talk to a human when the bot can respond so well? And remind me – do we celebrate cheating or frown upon it?

These are fundamental questions that demand intentional and mindful responses and actions.

A perfect digital world won’t just happen; it starts by us designing our digital lives with care, for ourselves, and especially for the next generation.

Source: AI Is Raising Your Child (Unless You’re Paying Attention)