By: Gregg Havass
AI is changing the ways in which we conduct our lives, businesses, and relationships in an unprecedented fashion, and at an alarming speed that is far greater than the ability of many of us to comprehend or adapt to those changes.
Unintended Consequences
Despite the many benefits of AI (enhanced automation, efficiency, and accuracy, 24/7 availability, smarter decision-making, ability to quickly resolve complex challenges, etc.), one of the unintended consequences of this revolutionary new technology has become a legitimate cause for concern for parents worried about its adverse psychological impact on their children.
AI Allegations
Over the last few years, several high-profile lawsuits have been initiated by parents against AI companies over allegations AI chatbots harmed their children’s mental health, encouraged self-harm, contributed to their children’s suicide, and/or showed their children AI-generated, non-consensual imagery involving minors.
Cause for Concern
If you’re a parent who is wringing your hands over AI and your teen’s involvement with it, your concern may be entirely justified, especially when your teen turns to chatbots for emotional advice instead of you.
Tracking Your Teen
It is crucial that you understand AI relies heavily on data collection and engagement to determine what will keep your teens’ attention and best address their prompts (instructions). As a result, every time your teens use chatbots, those apps learn what topics your teens click on, like, and spend the most time on.
Artificial Engagement
In turn, this enables chatbots to accurately predict what your teen will engage with next. Over time, these chatbots subtly shape what your teen sees and learns, as well as their interests, opinions, and self-image, for the sole purpose of generating clicks, collecting data, or providing a specific service.
Undue Influence
To be clear, chatbots ARE NOT neutral tools! Of particular concern is the fact that they can exert undue influence over troubled, vulnerable, impressionable, and/or easily influenced teens through stereotypes, misinformation, and harmful content in much the same way teens become addicted to their cellphones.
Trouble at Home
This form of manipulation can be especially alluring to teens who experience conflicts with one or both parents and often feel unheard, overcorrected, micromanaged, criticized, judged, rejected, and/or emotionally unsafe at home.
Opposites Attract
By contrast, a teen’s relationship with a chatbot represents the antithesis of what they perceive to be distant, combative, and/or unhealthy relationships with their parents. Ongoing misunderstandings, conflicts, and a lack of emotional connection with their parents can drive teens straight into the arms of a chatbot that never judges, disappoints, challenges, or disagrees with them, makes them feel vulnerable, nor holds them accountable for anything they do or say.
(Un) Safe Space
By default, the AI chatbot may become the teen’s confidante; a soothing ‘safe space’ in which the teen feels seen, heard, understood, and accepted without conflict or judgment. This ‘faux empathy’ displayed by chatbots trades genuine emotional connection for predictable validation, which, in turn, can distort how a teen views real relationships. In the absence of relational friction, teens miss the opportunity to practice elements that are common to most relationships, including patience, forgiveness, understanding, and repair.
Reclaiming Your Teen
The good news is that you don’t have to compete with a chatbot; rather, you simply have to offer your teen what a chatbot cannot: a deeper, more heartfelt emotional connection. The bad news is that time is of the essence, and, if your teen has turned to a chatbot for their emotional needs, you don’t have a second to waste!
Helpful Hints
The following suggestions may help you reclaim your relationship with your teen and foster greater understanding, connection, compassion, and kindness between you.
1. Listen calmly and intently to your teen before dispensing advice.
When your teen is talking to you, especially about serious issues that are truly important to them, put away your device, turn off the TV, and make sure you’re laser focused on EVERYTHING they’re telling you as opposed to listening as if you’re just waiting your turn to inject your opinion into the conversation. At times, teens just need empathy and a sympathetic ear more than they need advice.
However, if you feel the need to dispense advice based on what they’ve told you, ask them something like “May I make a suggestion?” or “Would you mind if I make a suggestion?” beforehand. Remember: Your teen needs you to be the voice of reason, so speak calmly when you address them and DO NOT yell, scream, and/or lose your temper! All that serves to do is emotionally dysregulate your teen, shift their brain and nervous system into survival mode, and make them reticent to discuss personal, sensitive, or important matters with you moving forward.
2. Have empathy for your teen’s feelings and/or situations.
At times, what you perceive to be trivial matters may, in fact, seem like life-or-death situations in the eyes, mind, and feelings of your teen. Casually dismissing their feelings with comments like “C’mon, snap out of it!” “You’re just overreacting!” or “Don’t be a baby!” really sting, are demeaning, and only serve to tell your teen that their issues are unworthy of your attention or consideration. Instead, try saying something like, “That must’ve been really hard on you!” “I can certainly understand why you felt that way!” or “I’m so sorry you had to go through that!”
3. Be consistently present in your teen’s life.
Few things show you care more than being there for your teen. At the end of the day, all the toys, gifts, etc. you give them will NEVER take the place of the quality time you spent together. This includes the sports, plays, recitals, and events you watch them participate in, the awards you watch them receive at school, the jokes you share, the private talks between you, the walks you take together, the places you go together, the hugs you give them, and every ‘I love you’ you whisper to them in your tender moments together.
4. Keep your generational trauma away from your teen!
Everyone has a past, and, unfortunately, yours may have included some extremely unpleasant people, situations, and events that really cut you to the core. Regardless of the amount and severity of the hardships and trauma you’ve endured, your teen had NOTHING to do with them! PLEASE don’t subject them to the worst parts of your past, nor repeat the cycle of abuse, hate, racism, violence, drug use, alcoholism, etc. you were exposed to by the people in it.
Many victims of generational trauma make a promise to themselves that they would never treat their children that way but inadvertently do anyway. If you’ve made that promise to yourself, don’t break it! Do the self-work, seek counseling, forgive others and yourself, pray, practice mindfulness, meditate, and/or do whatever you have to do to keep the worst parts of your past away from your present … and your teen. In fact, that may be among the most selfless, loving, caring, and compassionate acts of kindness you could ever bestow upon them!
5. Apologize to your teen when you’re wrong!
Did you ever make a mistake? I’ve made plenty of them! Were you ever wrong about something? I’ve been wrong, too! Making mistakes and being wrong only makes us human, and it’s how we learn. However, when we’re wrong about something we’ve told or done to our teen, it’s incumbent upon us to apologize … and quickly!
A sincere, proper apology to our teen (or anyone else, for that matter) is not just a simple “I’m sorry.” It should include stating what we’ve done wrong, acknowledging that we understand the hurt it caused, and outlining definitive steps to amend our words or actions and prevent reoccurrence. It should also include our commitment to change and following through on that commitment.
Best of all, a sincere, proper apology may deepen our underlying relationship with our teen, especially if the words or actions that prompted our apology are never repeated. It also models vulnerability and serves as a life lesson for our teen as to how to properly and sincerely apologize when they’re wrong about something they’ve said or done.
In Conclusion
You may already know that being deeply aware of, and responsive to, our teen’s emotional wellbeing, needs, and moods are at the center of a secure and connected relationship with them. To my knowledge, there isn’t a chatbot around that can replace the feeling our teens get when we slow down, listen deeply and intently them, and offer them our full emotional presence. There is nothing more powerful, nor more comforting, to them.
So, go ahead and love your teen like never before, and remind them that you’ll never let ANYTHING come between you … not even a chatbot! You’ll both be glad you did!
About the Author
Gregg Havass is the President of WordsPerfect, a multimedia copywriting and digital marketing consulting firm he founded in 2001. A published writer and expert marketer, Gregg has created marketing, advertising, and public relations campaigns for scores of renowned local, regional, national, and global brands. Gregg’s passion for writing is only surpassed by his dedication towards mentoring at-risk, general education, and special needs students. During two decades as an active Broward County Public Schools volunteer, Gregg mentored approximately 3,000 students in the ‘Top of the Middle’ Program, a successful social-emotional and academic program he originally created for his own son. Gregg’s work as an SEL specialist and mentor of at-risk and special needs youth continues to this day, and his assistance is offered via onsite and virtual instruction.
Connect with Gregg:
Email: gregg_havass@msn.com
Email: gregghavass@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregghavass/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/topofthemiddle
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@myseldad
