Nearly half (49%) of children ages 7-14 are reported to already be using AI tools, and that percentage increases with the age of student, with more than 86% of college students reporting its use—and more than half are using it at least weekly.
Sadly, the response of some educators has been to ban it and then try to catch the cheaters. (Note: That won’t work.)
The correct response—from both teachers and parents—is to teach kids to use AI responsibly. In fact, for the very sake of humanity, it is crucial that students learn to use AI ethically and to understand its role in supporting, not replacing, their intellectual efforts. They are the ones who will shape the future of this technology, its governance, and its ethical guidelines.
Ethical AI usage is not just avoiding shortcuts or cheating; it’s leveraging AI as a tool for solving complex problems, fostering creativity, and improving human welfare. Students must therefore learn the difference between using AI as a resource and using AI in a way that undermines their personal learning.
We must teach our children to see AI as a complement to their intellectual growth rather than a substitute so that our future generations uphold the values of responsibility, integrity, and innovation in an AI-powered world.
As parents, you play the most important role in teaching your family how to use AI responsibly and benefit from it as helper and creative partner. Here’s how to get started:
Talk About Healthy Brains and Too Much AI
Healthy brains don’t need excessive AI.
Not surprisingly, excessive use of digital technology is actually responsible for reduced gray matter density in the area of the brain responsible for decision-making and impulse control. In other words, the more your kids use AI, the less able they are to control their desire to use it and to make the decision to think with their own brains.
As smart technology makes us dumb, we can’t—and don’t want to—stop it. The decline in cognitive functions attributed to excessive use of digital technology is known as digital dementia. While it isn’t an actual condition, research suggests that too much screen time can lead to dementia-like changes and possibly even increase dementia risk.
And it can start early: Excessive screen time is linked to deficits in cognitive development in children and lower cortical thickness, particularly in areas associated with language and literacy skills.
What healthy brains need is the kind of mental exercise provided by problem-solving games and activities. Brains need the kind of socialization and collaboration experienced through face-to-face interactions with others
And don’t forget that healthy brains also need physical exercise (at least three times a week for 30 minutes), sleep (7-8 hours a night), hydration (at least eight glasses of water a day), and good nourishment.
Clarify the Difference Between Cheating with AI and Using It As a Tool
When one of our kids was a third grader, he showed me a report he planned to submit to his teacher. It was clearly copied and pasted. When I pointed out the plagiarism, however, he responded, “Is that bad?”
Even my college students often misunderstand plagiarism—and that started long before ChatGPT.
Today, plagiarism is far more complicated. How much is too much AI? How much AI needs to be confessed?
Here are some scenarios to discuss with your kids. Are these students using AI ethically or not? Answers are at the end of the article.
Read more about AI in Who Generated My Cheese?, available at Amazon.
1. Isaac is writing a research paper on the Industrial Revolution. He uses ChatGPT to find and summarize articles, generate citations, and compile them into a bibliography. He reads through the AI-generated summaries and uses them in his paper.
2. Emma has a creative writing assignment but feels stuck on ideas. She uses Google Gemini to generate some story prompts based on her initial thoughts. It suggests several directions her story could take, and Emma chooses one of them. From there, she develops the plot and characters on her own.
3. Alex is working on a major research paper for his sociology class. To streamline the process, Alex uses Max Weber-Sociological Insights to generate a section of the paper that analyzes social trends. The AI tool provides insightful, well-articulated content, saving Alex significant time. However, Alex decides not to cite the use of the AI tool in the paper, considering the content to be sufficiently altered and integrated with their own work.
4. Anya is preparing a class presentation on renewable energy. She uses Canva Magic Design to create slides. The tool also suggests bullet points and talking points for each slide. Anya accepts all of AI’s suggestions.
5. Donte is required to write a short story in French for his final project. He struggles with sentence structure and grammar, so he uses Google Translate after writing his story in English. He then edits the French version by hand and corrects its minor errors.
Talk About Integrity–A Lot
Teaching kids about integrity is about more than how to use AI ethically—it’s about always doing the right thing and not taking shortcuts that appear to make life easier.
In other words, do the right thing even when it’s the hard thing, even when it’s different from what others are doing.
Teach Them to Outsmart AI
AI makes mistakes—many, many mistakes. And it’s biased. Thus, it’s a great tool for teaching your kids to think critically about the information it provides. Help them cross-reference its outputs from multiple, credible sources and question all content that seems too good to be true or is contradictory. It’s also a good idea for them to tell AI to explain its own reasoning and decision-making processes so that its underlying logic can be evaluated.
Prepare Them for the Future
Kids have to learn to use AI appropriately or they will not be prepared for a world where these technologies will be deeply integrated into every profession.
Our only real choice is to teach them to use it well.
Answers to the AI Ethical Scenarios
“Ethical or Not” Discussion Answers
1. Isaac’s use of the AI as research assistant is unethical. By relying solely on AI-generated summaries and citations, he bypasses the need for critical reading. Summaries alone may miss important nuances or details in the original sources, which are crucial to forming well-rounded arguments in his paper. Ethical use of AI would involve Isaac’s using the summaries as a starting point but then reading the articles to ensure a deeper understanding and accurate representation of the material
2. Emma uses AI as a brainstorming partner, and she develops the creative elements of her story.
3. Alex’s failure to cite the AI tool is plagiarism. The ethical issue here revolves around transparency and intellectual honesty. Even if Alex integrated AI’s output into his own work, a significant portion of the analysis was generated by an external tool. Not citing the AI tool misrepresents the true authorship of the ideas and fails to give proper credit to the source. Just as students are expected to cite articles, books, or other external sources, AI-generated content requires proper attribution.
4. Anya’s use of the AI presentation tool crosses into unethical territory. While it’s acceptable to use AI for design purposes, Anya relies too heavily on the AI’s suggested talking points without critically evaluating them. Presentations are meant to demonstrate a student’s understanding of the material, and Anya’s failure to engage with the AI’s content means she might not fully grasp the subject. She should have used the tool to organize her thoughts but then taken time to personalize and verify the content independently.
5. Donte’s use of AI is unethical. While using an AI translation tool can help with some difficult sentence structures, relying on it to translate his English story prevents him from truly practicing his French writing skills. He misses the opportunity to develop fluency. Using Google Translate to check the work, rather than translate it, would help him learn from his own mistakes and then correct them.