Would you let your children go to Mars? 🚀
In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt uses a mission to Mars as an analogy for the risks of sending children into an unfamiliar digital world\.
It’s an extreme comparison, but it raises a useful question: do we give young people the same preparation and protection online that we would in the physical world?
I really believe that talking with young people about their digital lives makes a difference\. What they enjoy\. Who they talk to\. What makes them uncomfortable\. Whether they feel they can come to us when something goes wrong\.
We don’t need to understand every app to start those conversations\. And avoiding them because we don’t understand the technology isn’t good enough\.
AI adds another layer\. It can help young people learn, create and explore\. I used it to make this animation\. But it can also give wrong answers with complete confidence, and sounding caring isn’t the same as having the judgement of a trusted adult\.
Young people need guidance, boundaries and room to ask questions\. The companies building these spaces also have a responsibility to make them safer\.
When did you last ask a young person what’s happening in their online world?