The New Babysitter Nobody Vetted

When I was a child, I was fortunate to be born into a well-to-do family. My dad was a successful businessman, always busy with work. My mom helped with the business while raising us at home.

We were a big family — eight children, which wasn’t unusual in Vietnam’s post-war era. We had nannies, but childhood wasn’t carefully curated. A babysitter was there to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself, but otherwise you were free to roam, explore, and get into trouble.

In our whole neighborhood, we were the only family with a television. A big black-and-white box that looked more like a mini theater than a home appliance. After each program, you’d close the curtain on the screen like it was a performance that had ended. That TV was my babysitter. Later came the Nintendo in the 80s. Then the first PlayStation in the 90s. I was a lucky kid — lucky enough to experience the joy and distraction of technology before the world started worrying too much about screen time.

Looking back, that kind of childhood wasn’t too bad. You had distractions, but they were limited. A TV show ended. A game cartridge ran out of novelty. You went outside. You got bored — and boredom forced you to invent something new.

Today’s children don’t live in that world. Their distractions are endless, frictionless, and engineered to be addictive. The iPad is bottomless. TikTok has no “off.” And now, on top of that, we’re adding generative AI into the mix.

This is the babysitter we never vetted. Parents are already handing ChatGPT to their kids like it’s just another tool for homework. But unlike a TV, AI doesn’t just broadcast entertainment. Unlike a game, it doesn’t just occupy time. AI gives you answers. It writes your essays. It solves your problems for you.

And that’s where the danger lies. Childhood is supposed to be full of struggle. Learning to write a paragraph that makes sense, fighting with a math problem until it clicks, arguing your point in a debate — all of that friction is where critical thinking is built. When AI removes the struggle, it also removes the chance to build the mental muscle kids need for the future.

The irony is that parents think they’re helping. “Why not give them the best tools?” they ask. But you wouldn’t give a child a calculator before they knew how to add. Some tools make sense later — but if you hand them over too soon, they don’t enhance learning. They replace it.

The “I Want It Now” Mindset

Here’s the thing: parents aren’t immune to this either. We’ve been conditioned into the same instant-gratification loop. Look at Amazon Prime.

Amazon didn’t build a trillion-dollar business by selling books. It built it by rewiring our patience. Today, more than 240 million people worldwide — nearly 185 million in the U.S. alone — pay for Prime. Why? Not because we need another subscription, but because we can’t stand paying for shipping or waiting for delivery.

Prime is brilliant psychology. It promises free shipping and, in some cities, even two-hour delivery. We happily pay $139 a year not to feel the friction of waiting. A J.P. Morgan study estimated the full “value” of Prime’s perks at more than $1,400 annually. The math almost doesn’t matter. What matters is the feeling: I get what I want, when I want it, without extra cost or delay.

That’s the hook. Once you remove friction, consumption soars. A calculator takes away the friction of arithmetic. Prime takes away the friction of delayed gratification. And AI takes away the friction of thinking.

So when parents hand ChatGPT to their kids, it’s not just about homework. It’s teaching the same behavior adults have internalized with Amazon: don’t wait, don’t struggle, don’t think harder — just get it now.

The Unsupervised Danger

And this is where my opinion may be unpopular: kids should not be allowed to use AI unsupervised.

This is not just about generative AI or ChatGPT helping with homework. It’s about unleashing children into a world of AI-powered tools that have no ethical guardrails, no regulation, and no built-in way to separate truth from lies.

Handing a child unsupervised access to AI is no different from letting them binge endless TikTok videos. The algorithm doesn’t care whether what they see is factual, distorted, or outright harmful. Kids don’t yet have the filters to tell the difference. To them, everything feels equally credible — and equally addictive.

That’s the real danger. AI doesn’t just risk replacing a child’s thinking. It risks shaping their worldview before they’re ready to question it. A middle schooler who can’t yet defend an opinion, weigh evidence, or separate fact from misinformation shouldn’t be left alone with AI any more than they should be left alone with a bottomless stream of TikTok videos.

If parents don’t set boundaries, the machine won’t do it for us.

Friction Is the Point

In learning, friction is not the enemy. Friction is the point.

Struggling through a math problem isn’t just about getting the answer. It’s about building patience, resilience, and the ability to hold competing ideas in your head. Writing an essay isn’t about word count. It’s about the discipline of shaping thoughts into something coherent. These moments are uncomfortable — and that’s exactly why they matter.

When AI steps in too soon, the struggle disappears. And so does the growth.

The risk isn’t that kids will grow up using AI. They will — and they should. The risk is that they’ll grow up never learning to think without it. And if that happens, we won’t just have a generation addicted to screens. We’ll have a generation addicted to instant answers — unable to struggle, imagine, or think for themselves.

The Hard Question

The next generation is watching us closely. If adults can’t resist one-click shopping and two-hour delivery, how do we expect our children to resist one-click answers and instant essays?

Before we let AI become the new babysitter, maybe we should ask the question my parents never had to ask with TV or Nintendo:

Are we raising children who know how to think — or are we raising consumers of answers?

Ironically, this article was drafted with AI. But the difference is, I didn’t outsource the thinking. I used the machine as a tool — and fought with it until the words were mine.

Next in this series: Creativity on Autopilot

When AI does the first draft of our ideas, what happens to the human spark that makes them worth reading?