Parenting Teens in the Age of AI Means Choosing Trust Over Control

A universal truth about parenting is that the second you think you’ve got a handle on a difficult stage in your child’s development — sleepless nights, the terrible twos, puberty — everything changes. For parents of teens, nothing captures that constant scramble more than trying to keep up with technology. First the worry was phones, then wave after wave of social media. Now? Artificial intelligence.

AI is suddenly omnipresent in teens’ lives, unleashed on their devices without any real guardrails. We are, in effect, running a full-scale experiment on teens’ social, emotional and cognitive development, and parents are the main backstop for their safety. That’s a daunting role when so many parents (myself included) don’t fully understand AI.