AI is not social media. I keep sensing that much of the angst comes from the comparison, and I worry it may lead us to the wrong lessons and wrong actions. The anger at the arrogance of the tech bros is obvious and justified, and I share some of it. But the technology underneath works differently in ways that educators and Ed policymakers need to understand.
Social media has a main use and a main abuse. It captures attention and does not let go. Facebook decides what shows up in my feed. When I open ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, I bring the question, and I pick the task. That structure leaves agency with the user, and agency is at the center of what we try to build in students. We can take charge (though it has its agency traps) of AI, and we can teach our students to do it. We spent two decades watching attention platforms pull kids away from reading, sleep, and each other. A tool that helps a teacher differentiate a text, or helps a student get unstuck on a draft, runs on a different logic. A tool that helps students make, inquire, and design has potential.
The cost of running these models has also kept companies from chasing engagement the way social platforms did, at least so far. But the danger is still lurking in developing relationships with bots. Much like social media replacing human connections with synthetic ones at critical moments in development can have very harmful effects on kids. But unlike social media, AI offers a complete set of affordances unrelated to synthetic relationships. Moreover, you can realize the benefits without a unique login.
I am not saying the tech bros turned good. I am saying the technology is different, and our response in education should reflect that. Schools that treat AI as another attention trap will ban it and give up the chance to teach students to use it well. At the same time, the real lessons from social media, about business models and about protecting kids, still apply, and we should carry them forward. Nuance takes more effort. In classrooms, we cannot afford to skip it.
My proposition for education is to avoid a blanket ban on screens (though no phones in school sounds reasonable to me). Teach students about their own cognition and about AI. Then use AI to augment and enrich their education while emphasizing agency.
I am not saying the tech bros turned good. I am saying the technology is different, and our response in education should reflect that. Schools that treat AI as another attention trap will ban it and give up the chance to teach students to use it well. At the same time, the real lessons from social media, about business models and about protecting kids, still apply, and we should carry them forward. Nuance takes more effort. In classrooms, we cannot afford to skip it.
My proposition for education is to avoid a blanket ban on screens (though no phones in school sounds reasonable to me). Teach students about their own cognition and about AI. Then use AI to augment and enrich their education while emphasizing agency.
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