AI Can't Do the One Thing Your Teen Needs Most

Your tween or teen is already using AI. For homework, for image generation, for drafting the text they're too nervous to send, and, more and more, for the human stuff: breakups, mental health, how to ask someone out, how to talk to you.

Dr. Sheryl sits down with Dr. Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon, professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, and the author of "Human Raised," to make sense of what kids actually need from us as AI moves into the middle of their lives.

Dana's take is refreshingly un-panicked: she's not anti-AI, and not pro-AI. She's pro-human. She implants technology for a living, she builds AI tools herself, and she's clear that the real risk is what we quietly stop practicing when everything gets easy. AI is frictionless. It never pushes back. But that messy, imperfect back-and-forth between a parent and a kid? As Dana puts it, that's not a bug in the system. It's the curriculum.

Sheryl and Dana get into the questions parents are actually asking: why teens open up to chatbots more than to people, whether that's a problem or a relief, what her waiting room going silent taught her about where we're headed, and why "good enough" parenting is exactly what kids need.

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Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Kt by Knix: Use the code GOODINSIDE for 15% off period underwear
• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more

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