Do you use ChatGPT for medical advice, to research trips, or to help you write a work email? If so, you’re definitely not alone. ChatGPT.com gets approximately 4.61 billion visits per month (as of this writing). But what about your kids? Forty-five percent of ChatGPT’s users are under the age of 25. While you’ve probably heard of the fear that AI will help kids cheat in school, there’s something else, possibly more concerning: ChatGPT could make people dumber.
According to this study by researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon, the more people trust AI to do a job well, the less effort they put into thinking it through themselves. And this MIT study found that those who used ChatGPT to help write essays developed weaker thinking muscles than those who didn’t. Does ChatGPT make you dumber? It could! Not something I want to happen to my kids! So, what can we do about it? Here are 5 practical tips to keep your child’s brain sharp in a world with AI.
1. Have kids do the heavy lifting without AI.
AI has been shown to work well for educators and students in the classroom. It’s when kids use a chatbot as a shortcut that it becomes a problem. They need to do the actual thinking part and not let AI do it for them. It’s during the struggle that the brain fires on all cylinders and grows. If a child skips this part and lets ChatGPT write the topic sentence, solve the math problem, or analyze the paragraph, learning doesn’t happen. And the brain doesn’t get smarter.
Use ChatGPT to make your child smarter: The night before a math test, have your child ask it to give her 10 problems on the topic she’s learning so she can get extra practice. For example: Please give me 10 long-division problems for a fourth grader. Include questions that need remainders.
2. Stress the importance of taking more time to think and work.
Good work takes time. For kids growing up in an age of instant gratification, this can be tough. But “[w]hen students engage in productive struggle, their brains are creating and strengthening neural pathways,” says The Goyen Foundation. “Every time a student figures out a difficult word or deciphers a confusing sentence, their brain is making those connections stronger, which leads to better retention and understanding in the long run.” ChatGPT is great for efficiency, but it bypasses learning and critical thinking that kids need to grow smarter.
Use ChatGPT to make your child smarter: If your child doesn’t understand an assignment, have him ask ChatGPT to explain it in “simple terms” or in “everyday language.” Once he says he understands, have him explain it to you so you know he’s on the right track.
3. Place value on independent thinking skills.
We don’t want ChatGPT to steal our kids’ brain power by doing the work for them. As this Forbes article puts it, ChatGPT “could be dulling your mental edge” and making users “less intelligent.” When a kid gets stuck, does he sit and think? Or go straight to asking ChatGPT? The more he uses AI, the more his “willpower to keep thinking diminishes,” and his brain gives up. The satisfaction of reaching a conclusion on his own never comes. Let’s not allow that to happen. Explain to your child how much his brain will benefit from thinking on his own.
Use ChatGPT to make your child smarter: Ask ChatGPT to give your child a study schedule for the week. Have it break down the assignment into smaller chunks and provide tips on what to focus on each day.
4. Make problem-solving a desirable skill.
“Do you have a textbook to help you find the answers?” It took a while, but my daughter went back and re-read sections of a unit her teacher covered in class (instead of looking up answers on ChatGPT). Later, she remembered the material because the process of looking up information took time and made her think. End result: a better understanding of the subject and a good quiz grade.
Use ChatGPT to make your child smarter: Once your child has completed her homework, take a photo of the work, paste it into ChatGPT, and ask it to give feedback on her answers.
5. Encourage memory challenges offline.
Mental muscles, like biceps, need to be worked to stay strong and powerful. ChatGPT can provide fast answers, but unfortunately, it can make you dumber. Have your kids remember information they’ve heard before, like phone numbers and birth dates. Have your kids practice mental math. “The skill of information recall slowly fades as you outsource more mental tasks to artificial assistance,” according to Forbes. Don’t let AI prevent your kids from developing strong memory pathways.
Use ChatGPT to make your child smarter: Copy and paste some notes into ChatGPT and have it create a study guide for your child’s upcoming test.
What do you think? Does ChatGPT make you dumber?
