Is your teenager actually learning?

The grades might look fine, but the skills may not be there. I help students learn to use AI as a tool that builds their capabilities, not one that bypasses them.

Increasing use of AI by students is genuinely cause for concern. According to the Pew Research Center, more than half of American teens now use AI chatbots for schoolwork, and a majority say AI-assisted cheating is a regular occurrence at their school—and the tools are only getting better.

Even purpose-built AI tutoring tools have stumbled. Sal Khan, whose Khanmigo reached nearly a million students, recently called the rollout “a non-event for many kids” — not because the technology failed, but because students didn’t engage with it. Anderson and Goldstein, writing in The Atlantic, identify this as a central problem: “a tool designed to respond to questions and ask follow-ups can’t help a student who doesn’t engage or know what to ask.” Research suggests only about 5% of students use ed-tech tools enough to see any learning gains — meaning these tools risk widening the gap between already-motivated students and everyone else, rather than closing it.

The solution isn’t to pretend AI doesn’t exist

These tools are going to be part of your child’s professional life. The students who will thrive are the ones who understand AI’s utility and limitations and can use it to extend their own productivity and thinking—not replace it. That’s a learnable skill, and it requires exactly the things I work on with students: metacognition (thinking about their own thinking), judgment, intellectual honesty, and a sufficiently solid foundation in a subject to evaluate what AI produces and know when it’s wrong.

I’ve been working with AI tools in my sessions almost since they first were released to the public, and I think carefully about what these tools mean for learning. I can help your teenager develop a genuinely healthy relationship with AI—one that makes them more capable, not less.

If you’ve been wondering whether your child is actually building skills or just getting through, that question is worth taking seriously—and I’m glad to talk about it.