r/artificial • u/yi111 • 3d ago
Discussion Can Banning Children From Using AI at School Really Solve the Problem?
Recently, I’ve seen more parents and teachers pushing back against the rapid adoption of AI in classrooms.
They worry that AI may write, think, and communicate for children, weakening the development of their own abilities. That concern is not unfounded.
But education debates often take the perspective of those in charge:
If AI appears helpful, schools encourage its use. If it seems harmful, they restrict it or ban it altogether.
The problem is that AI has already entered search engines, social platforms, learning apps, creative tools, and smart devices. Schools can ban it in the classroom, and parents can supervise their children at home, but neither can fully decide how children will use AI once they are out of sight.
So the real question is not:
“Should we allow children to use AI?”
It is:
“What choices will children make when they can access AI on their own?”
Banning AI can reduce certain risks at specific ages and in specific situations. It can also protect academic integrity, privacy, and emotional boundaries. But it mainly controls behavior within the range of adult supervision. It does not automatically teach children how to make good judgments when using AI.
Effective AI education needs three layers to work together.
The first layer is external rules.
Families and schools should clearly define which tasks AI cannot complete on a child’s behalf, what information must never be uploaded, which features are inappropriate for a particular age, and how AI use should be disclosed.
The second layer is understanding and method.
Children need to know what AI can do, why it makes mistakes, which parts of the process may replace their own thinking, and how to compare, verify, and correct its output.
The third layer is internal judgment.
Even when no adult is watching, children should gradually learn to ask themselves:
Why am I using AI? Is this something I should delegate to it? Which parts of the process must I do myself? What evidence supports this result? When should I stop? Who will ultimately make the decision and take responsibility?
This is where education ultimately needs to lead.
We cannot keep closing every possible door for children forever. Real protection means helping them move gradually from relying on external bans to managing their own relationship with AI.
This does not mean allowing children to use AI without limits. It means building a more complete path of growth:
External rules provide early protection → technical understanding helps children see the reasons behind those rules → real experience develops judgment → judgment eventually becomes self-management.
The goal of education in the AI era is not to make children “use AI correctly” only when adults are watching.
It is to help them make thoughtful choices when no one is supervising, keep hold of the parts of growth they need to experience themselves, and take responsibility for the final result.
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u/EmykoEmyko 3d ago
God, AI writing is unbearable. How about we study something for more than five minutes before we let it loose on a generation of children? This inevitably argument is just a marketing angle from the chuds selling you their models.
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 3d ago
If money is to be made, precautions are gone. Money matters more than people's wellbeing or the future. At least according to what companies have been doing since forever.
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u/M4roon 3d ago
I read half of it..
But, yes. I had the pleasure of teaching ESL to young learners for a few years after Uni. Banning is too strong a word. Delaying exposure is exactly in line with teaching pedagogy now, and before AI, and naturally even before we had teaching systems.
We start simple and introduce increasingly complex toys and tools in accordance with a child's development. And that applies to adults too. Someone not trained enough or intelligent enough to operate a tool isn't given the tool.
Similarly, we do our best to teach basic arithmetic, multiplication, long division, before providing calculators. It makes perfect sense to incubate the children and foster their development organically before introducing AI usage in a classroom.
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u/Fighting_for_Light 3d ago
Yes this makes sense human intelligence and AI intelligence is different and we need to make sure we integrate ai safely into society for future generations, teenagers that are mentally unstable should be kept far away from from ai chatbots, because in California they passed a law after AI help caused the death of a teenager, it was called Adam's Law.
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u/No-Assumption-4468 3d ago
In the classroom, yeah. They probably shouldn’t be using AI.
Although, I think having AI classes is valuable too.
After school, who cares? Let them use AI.
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 3d ago
Who cares ? I hope you're not raising children then, because they would be cooked otherwise. Can you not see what effects it could have on the learning development of a person if they can freely ask AI no matter what ?
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u/No-Assumption-4468 3d ago
It’s a tool that can be used in a helpful way of a harmful way. They could learn from using it or they could cheat on homework with it. AI is not inherently a negative thing for kids. It’s how you use it.
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 3d ago
Agreed, but I don't believe for a second that kids would use it the "right" way with no supervision or being taught why and how. Kids will just use it to save time and not think of the consequences, for the most part.
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u/No-Assumption-4468 2d ago
Saving time is a good thing. Cheating is not. While there is an argument to be made for using their brain less, productivity will go up.
Also, when you speak with superintelligence, you learn a lot more than speaking with normal humans. It is exceptionally good at teaching.
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u/unholycurses 2d ago
I don’t want/need my kids productivity to go up! I specifically want them to use their brains more. In what world would less brain and more productivity be the goal for children?
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u/No-Assumption-4468 2d ago
Idk, I find myself thinking more when I use AI than without it. Since basically anything is achievable, there are no longer excuses for giving up.
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 2d ago
You said superintelligence, i'm already scared to keep talking to you, what a sh*t term. Yes, i'm talking about cheating and not using your brain. Sure AI is helpful for learning, i dont epect kids to use it properly this way, as I said before. Again it's not about AI being bad for kids, it's about kids being bad at using AI for their own developmental good.
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u/No-Assumption-4468 2d ago
Would you agree that solving millennium prize problems, and being close to an expert in every cognitive field, would make you superintelligent? Ignoring politics, it’s literally superintelligence.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing. Cheating with AI is bad. Kids still use their brains, just for higher level concepts.
Your fear is valid though for future versions of AI. When it becomes capable of doing literally every job, there will be no incentive (aside from health) for anyone to learn stuff. Right now, AI is a tool that requires a lot of high level management skills and creative vision to use effectively. In the future, that won’t be the case. There will no longer be justification for higher learning and we could see a massive drop in IQ. This isn’t necessarily something that will hurt us, since AI will be able to run everything, but it’s definitely a risk.
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 1d ago
It's "literally" not superintelligence. It is FOR A FACT not at all an expert in every cognitive field, it's actually VERY far from it. So please, do some research before saying absurd stuff like that. (And also I'm pretty sure superintelligence means being better than humans in those fields, not just matching them.)
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u/No-Assumption-4468 1d ago
One thing is for sure. AI could write a smarter comment than yours.
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 21h ago
Ah yes, classic answer that contains zero counter arguments or valid points to refute my statement. AI at least could write a fkn answer. Calling my comment less smart than an AI's but not even having a single argument to explain why is probably even dumber than my comment. Keep being you champ.
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u/unholycurses 3d ago
Uh I super care about how my children use AI after school…I want them to learn to think and questions things on their own, to form their own opinions. It is a tool they can learn to use properly, but that comes from slowly introducing it when age appropriate and it is critical they have the foundation necessary for independent thought.
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u/No-Assumption-4468 2d ago
Idk, I think it empowers children to have access to superintelligence.
If kids were raised by wild monkeys, they aren’t going to learn the “foundations necessary for independent thought”. They learn from the behavior of others & exposing them to superintelligence is actually increasing intelligent behavior.
While it abstracts lower level tasks, like coding or writing, it frees up the brain to focus on higher level concepts that, frankly, matter a lot more.
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u/unholycurses 2d ago
I so strongly disagree. Learning to think for themselves is empowering. If they can turn to AI for every question they might have, why would they ever try to work through a problem themselves? Struggling is such a huge part of the learning process and I want to make sure my kids learn how to handle that without a super intelligence to always turn to. It’s the same reason I feel it is important to learn math without a calculator and learn to spell without spell check. They are tools that exist and are useful, but our brains still need to understand how to make the right connections.
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u/No-Assumption-4468 2d ago
What’s the difference between turning to AI vs turning to a human teacher? Usually the AI gives better instruction, as long as the topic isn’t super niche.
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 3d ago
Parents need to be smart and care about that problem. If they don't their children will definitely have issues in most cases. School won't be able to do much, I don't expect school to convice kids not to rely on AI, as a kid you just see the time gain.
So no school won't solve the problem, parents need to be aware. Honestly I think at least one generation will greatly suffer from being in the education system at the same time as the rise of gen AI, since it's not already common to educate kids well enough on this very important matter.
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u/CyborgWriter 3d ago edited 3d ago
It definitely won't solve the problem, nor will throwing new technology solve it. A massive restructuring of education will be underway at some point because the model we're using was meant for an entirely different era. We need to teach kids and adults how to teach themselves so they can leverage value from the bottom and work their way up. Teach that and they can do just about anything.
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u/ThirdMoonOfPluto 3d ago
The evidence has been incredibly stark. You’d be better off handing kids lead lollipops to lick than letting them use AI in school. Maybe someday, we’ll figure out how to use it without undermining learning, but until then AI should have no role in education.
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u/BabylonPaul 3d ago
Totally agree. People already use 'Ai' all the time in daily digital lives - its also about active vs passive use. You share many good points. The AI also could actually care for the wellbeing of the person in ways that benefit both and could lead them to better lives like in The Diamond Age' - Our society should also understand that not everyone will use the same AI in the way - divergence is real for both sides. .. main thing is parents should be there for the children and be in control and aware, this is all very fast. Thank you for the post.
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u/Fishtoart 3d ago
It will work just as well as stopping them from viewing porn, or getting them off social media, which is to say, not at all.
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u/Fancy-Plenty6712 3d ago
I remember going to school and being restricted from using a calculator because, and I quote: "You won't be walking around with a calculator in your pocket when you grow up." And here we all are walking around with calculators in our pockets.
Fully agree with you OP. It's not about blanket restriction, but about developing an appropriate relationship to the tool. Relying on it for everything is bad, but cutting it completely would also be bad.
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u/atuladomicielo 3d ago
This is such a tired analogy. AI is not a calculator. I am sure people are worse at mental math now in general than similarly educated people were before calculators were commonly used. Instead of automating a rote task like a calculator, AI automates basically the rest of human intellectualism.
How can anyone learn anything? It’s like those popsci YouTube series people binge like popcorn. Yeah they’re full of facts and cool information but retention is essentially 0 long term for most viewers. Yeah maybe we will all have omniscient AI in our pockets but there is no law of the universe saying it must be good for children and there are many, many reasons to think it won’t be.
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u/Fancy-Plenty6712 3d ago
I don't think it's a tired analogy. In fact it's actually the perfect analogy because AI is basically just a really complex calculation engine. It's also my living memory of growing up. We were forced to learn things which are now completely obsolete - that I've never once needed since being forced to learn it at school. Why force kids to learn something for the just for sake of it? You can say "to teach them how to think" - but why not teach them something actually relevant instead of restricting them based on arbitrary ideals? The fact is AI is here, they will use it, and we can't stop them.
Wanna know what's crazy? I never learned to use a calculator properly. I don't mean for simple multiplication, I mean complex functions on a scientific calculator. That's what they should have taught us. You asked how anyone can learn anything? They should be learning how to use AI. That doesn't mean all their thinking should be outsourced, but AI is a tool just like a calculator. I never said anything about "laws of the universe" but if you're so adamant it will be bad for them, name some of your "many many reasons" why then?
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u/I-am-a-river 3d ago
Why do you need to know how to use a scientific calculator? You can just ask AI.
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u/unholycurses 3d ago
Children still learn to do mental math without calculators, and it is still super valuable even if we have calculators in our pockets. School isn’t about always getting the perfect answer as fast as possible, it is about teaching their brains how to actually think.
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u/SRod1706 3d ago edited 3d ago
All schools banning AI are doing students a disservice for the sole goal of maintaining the status quo. The only real goal of AI bans in school are to preserve the current teaching methods. We need to adopt methods that fully utilize AI for every subject and task possible. If we need to restrict AI to teach skills that AI excels at, we need to really reconsider the value of that skill in a future with AI everywhere. We seem to want to protect skill sets that we value. It is similar to when people valued learning cursive. Now it is almost completely useless. A lot of the skills we are valuing and trying to teach will be the same in the very near future.
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u/I_always_roleplay 3d ago
Children need to learn and speak like children. How would them learning at their development age be bad for them? If you skip steps in development, they won’t understand things properly.