The age of artificial intelligence is fueling a generation of fragile, developmentally stunted and gender-dysphoric children, two analysts warned parents.
Classroom devices, smartphones and, increasingly, AI chatbots are stunting children’s cognitive and emotional development and driving a youth mental-health crisis, Michael Marinacio, executive director of the Center for Responsible Technology, and Nicole Runyon, a former child psychotherapist and parent coach, said during an online event hosted by parental rights group Moms for Liberty.
“[W]e’re creating mental illness,” Runyon said. “[Children] don’t feel like they can trust themselves or that they’re capable of doing really anything.”
Runyon recalled that, as a counselor, young people told her “they didn’t want to get married … They didn’t want to bring kids into this world … They feel like they’re this victim in a world that is falling apart.”
In the US, 67% of 12th graders said they were “most likely to choose to get married in the long run,” according to a 2023 Pew Research poll. This is down from 80% in 1993.
Runyon left the child psychotherapy field for parent coaching because she concluded screens and AI were creating the mental health problems that would not otherwise exist and the real work was upstream with parents.
“[AI]’s magnifying what we already were seeing with the screens,” Runyon told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “[W]ith AI, it’s actually talks back to them and validates everything they say. So it’s that much worse and that much more magnified,” compared to social media use.
The result is that children “don’t have to ever have a relationship,” according to Runyon.