Why should we as parents be cautious about our children using AI in schools?
Since LLMs (Large Language Models) exploded in popularity in 2023, “AI” has become a multi-billion dollar industry, making up most of the stock market growth in 2025, despite doubts about its usefulness.
Companies like Microsoft and SchoolAI are aggressively targeting teachers and schools in North America. As of 2025, around 80% of educators say they use AI in the classroom in some form.
The hype around AI, and millions of dollars in advertising mean that the negative effects of AI on children have been ignored.
AI harms learning
AI-use is correlated with worse learning outcomes (Kosmyna 2025, Lehmann 2025), poorer critical thinking (Lee 2025), and makes users unable to accurately judge their own performance (Fernandes 2025).
Students that use AI perform worse than those that never used it (Bastani 2024) once the AI crutch is taken away.
A paper from Cambridge University and Microsoft found that students that used generative AI as a study aid performed worse than students that just took notes (Kreijkes 2025).
AI chatbots agree with the user even if the user is factually incorrect (Nature 2025).
The majority of students use it to solve problems for them, rather than learn from it (Anthropic 2025).
AI harms children’s mental health
By using chat-bots in the classroom, children begin to form social bonds with technology, rather than each other and their teachers.
By the time they are teens, most children regularly using chat-bots for personal advice (Common Sense Media 2025).
Chat-bots have encouraged children to commit suicide and talked to young children about sexual topics.
In adults “chat-bot psychosis“, caused by prolonged interaction with chat-bots, has affected many and has prompted a class-action lawsuit.
Further Reading
If you are based in Vancouver, learn how the Vancouver School Board is planning to make Microsoft Copilot AI available in classrooms.
People’s AI Consultation has a list of technologies that are all described as “AI” and the effects that they have on people.