Helpful or harmful? When it comes to AI and young kids, experts have these tips for parents

While much advice and research around artificial intelligence and kids tend to focus on older kids and teens, a lot of critical brain development happens before age 8 — making those early years a key window to help kids understand what AI is and isn't, experts say.

Young children are encountering AI in their day-to-day lives at home, in child care or at school. That includes smart assistants like Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri, or generative AI content they may find while watching YouTube.

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By the time that a child is preschool age, they have the ability to learn information from technology, said Lauren Girouard, a researcher at Harvard Graduate School of Education and the University of Michigan who studies how children 12 and under interact with digital information.

And though overall research on young children and AI is still developing, particularly in psychology, there's growing early evidence that children process information from AI material in the same way they do other technology, Girouard added.

"We know that AI-powered learning tutors can be really valuable," Girouard said. "But what we know about kids' interactions with the very personal, at-home AI that we've had since the advent of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 is an entirely different ballgame that we're still learning about."

Experts who spoke to PBS News offered some tips on how to have age-appropriate conversations about this technology with young children.

Teach around the AI they already encounter

If you have a smart speaker with an AI assistant, like Alexa or Siri, use your interactions with it as a way to distinguish between human and computer responses, said Jennifer Katzenstein, co-director of the Center for Behavioral Health at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital.

In these moments, "it's worth explaining: That's the computer answering," she said.

Katzenstein also suggested encouraging the child to ask another adult what they think too, which teaches kids to "understand there's a human response, and then there's a computer response."

Especially with children younger than 5, parents can also help kids understand that AI is able to tell stories or answer questions, but just because it has a friendly voice, that doesn't mean it's a human.

Young children might already be talking to relatives on the phone or over video, so it's important to explain the difference between a device that allows human-to-human communication versus a machine, said Dr. Jenny Radesky, division director of developmental behavioral pediatrics at the University of Michigan School of Medicine.

Until her son was 7, she said, he thought Siri was "an actual woman who lived in California."

"Little kids are much more magical thinkers," Radesky said. And because they attribute more human-like qualities onto technologies, they can start to develop parasocial attachments to devices that sound like humans, she added.

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Use concrete terms that kids will understand to explain that AI isn't human, Radesky said. You can remind them that even though it sounds like you're talking with a human, the machine has never been sad, doesn't know what it's like to snuggle and doesn't have a body or soul.

Radesky suggested choosing a different "wake word" for your smart speaker, if possible, to something other than a human name. (Her colleague renamed his device "Computer," to shift away from using a prompt like "Hey, Siri.")

Another option: Forgo the smart devices entirely, said Dr. Molly O'Shea, a pediatrician who works with the American Academy of Pediatrics on children and AI use.

"I actually encourage parents — when a child comes to them and asks a question that the parent doesn't know the answer to — to actually go through the process of guessing the answer, thinking through, problem solving out loud," O'Shea said.

Stay away from AI toys, at least for now

There's not enough research to suggest that AI toys are broadly beneficial to children right now, experts say.

Common Sense Media, which conducts risk assessments for AI products, released guidance earlier this year that urges parents to keep AI toys away from children aged 5 and younger, and to "exercise extreme caution" when purchasing them for 6 to 12 year-olds.

They tested "three AI companion toys," some of which were "cuddly, colorful and feature[d] kids 3 to 8 in their advertising." But young children "lack the cognitive development" to use the torys safely, the report noted.

In general, AI toys pose an "unacceptable risk" to children, getting past guardrails around sensitive topics, the group said. Its testing found that 27% of the toy responses were inappropriate for children, and were "too mature, complex, or scary" for young kids.

AI toys can also pose privacy risks by collecting data on children and may set unrealistic expectations by creating dependency and making "real relationships seem difficult" in comparison to technology that doesn't say no and is always available.

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Preparing children how to think about AI toys is useful, Katzenstein said, since they may encounter them at a friend's house or be given one as a gift.

"We can't control everything that's in front of them, and the evolution of what toys will be is likely headed in that direction, for better or for worse," she said.

The most important thing caregivers can do is prepare children to think critically about the technology, she added.

AI toys also don't provide the same "richness of play" that young children enjoy with stuffed animals or toys by using their imagination, Radesky said.

The concept of "scaffolding" is important to children's growth, she said. That's when older people with more skills, such as parents and teachers, provide a temporary framework to help children learn at a more complex level than they're able to on their own.

"Kids learn best from human interactions and from their own independent exploration," Radesky said. "That can be scaffolded by a teacher or a friend or parent."

In her experience, AI toys "spoon feed" children by interacting with them in a way that's not useful developmentally.

Human-to-human interaction is the "most important element" of children's interactive development, O'Shea said. Replacing that interaction with an AI toy that simulates the give and take of a conversation will likely limit opportunities for "nuanced emotional, social and language development" for kids at a crucial time in their development.

Radesky said parents may want to know the answer to the question: Are AI toys going to be helpful or harmful to young children?

"The balance of that question right now is that there's much more risk of harm, than help, just based on how we know kids learn," she said.

Instead of AI, stick to old school content and build old school skills

The internet is full of AI-generated content, including on video platforms like YouTube Kids.

That can be problematic for children for two reasons, Girouard said. First, it's harder for young children to learn from a screen than directly from a person. At the same time, the quality of AI content online may not be very high, she said, often rife with errors or things that don't make sense.

"It almost is the content equivalent of Fruity Pebbles or Froot Loops, where it looks really colorful and vibrant, and kids think it tastes good," she said. "But it doesn't actually have a lot of nutritional value, in that there's often flat-out mistakes in AI slop content, or there's no educational content at all."

For parents who are worried their kids might watch too much AI-generated content, Radesky recommended shifting their video viewing to something "that they know isn't AI-generated."

She suggested simple switches to "old-school videos" like animated Disney movies or PBS Kids content.

Parents are busy and shouldn't feel guilty about kids' intermittent screen time, Girouard said. Knowing where you can find high-quality content is key.

"Kids are going to interact with screens whether you try to keep them away or not," she said.

But screen-free time is important to help build resilience skills that children will need in an AI age, Radesky said. Those skills include:

• Critical thinking, or having your own ideas and creativity that you can experience independent of AI. "That is best built through all the traditional things: teaching, reading, teaching," Radesky said.
• Emotion regulation, which is important for being able to handle moments of friction or distress, regardless of an AI model's ability to step in and solve a problem. "You learn that [skill] through unstructured play, or social play, because there's lots of unexpected things that happen that you have to make these micro-adjustments to," she said. Those moments of friction help kids "naturally and slowly grow" self-regulation skills.
• Relationship building, which include caring about, connecting with and understanding the feelings of other people. Those skills can be taught through everyday games, like throwing a ball around, playing a board game, cooking or drawing, Radesky said. "All of that involves turn-taking and laughing together and waiting for the other person and wondering what the other person is thinking," she added.