A week or so ago I was invited to an #AskTheExperts webinar on Raising Independent Thinkers in the Age of AI. It was organized by the Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development and is the first event of a new series they are calling Character Matters: Values and Resilience in the Digital Age.
The panel was opened by Kris Perry (Executive Director Children and Screens) and moderated by Tenelle Porter (Rowan University). Also on the panel were Naomi Baron (American University), Timothy Cook (ACS Amman), and Victor Lee (Stanford). Each of them came at the question from a different direction. Naomi on what AI is doing to the motivation to read and write. Tim on friction, and on why offloading is an incentive problem we built rather than a failing of children. Victor on what his data actually show about cheating, which is not what most people assume.
My own eight minutes were built around two questions that came in from the audience beforehand. One parent wrote that she was worried about her child’s reliance on AI and the disappearance of curious thoughts, and someone else asked, more hopefully, how AI might be used to support creativity and independent thinking.
I tried to argue that the answer to both is the same, and that it begins with noticing that curiosity is not one thing. There is the itch of a knowledge gap, which wants closing, and there is the pull of wonder, which wants staying open. Generative AI is superb at satisfying the first and quietly corrosive to the second, and the difficulty is that this comes from the tool working well rather than badly. The way out, it seems to me, runs through Dewey. His four impulses for learning (inquiry, construction, communication, expression) are a far better guide to what a child might do with these machines than the word “chatbot” will ever be. Ask what your child is making with it, not what they are asking it.
For those interested to learn more – these two articles may be a good start.
- Mishra, P. & Henriksen, D. (2025). The Curiosity Paradox: How Sycophantic GenAI May Undermine Learning. TechTrends
- Mishra, P., Henriksen, D., & Woo, L. J. Beyond Boundaries: Transdisciplinary Creativity with Generative Artificial Intelligence. In In M. Worwood & J. Kaufmann (Eds.), Generative artificial intelligence and creativity: Possibilities, precautions, and perspectives.
My thanks to the whole Children and Screens team, and to Sarah Probst in particular, who organized the webinar. Thanks to Tenelle for the framing and for keeping us honest, and to Naomi, Tim and Victor for a wonderful, enlightening a conversation. And genuine thanks to the audience, who sent in dozens of questions ahead of the session.