Parenting in an AI-Age
Social-emotional development for the first gen of AI-augmented kiddos.
Welcome to a regular round up of stuff related to being a parent to Gen Z and Gen A digital natives. (As if parenting wasn’t hard enough, we got hit with a pandemic…AND generative AI?) There’s stuff on social-emotional development, AI ethics, digital well-being, and education here, mostly mixed together.
Skill for an AI-Age: Conversational Ability
Conversing is something it’s easy to take for granted. We speak all the time, after all - via text, email, phone calls: but are we truly conversing, in the sense that we are gaining an understanding of other people and their interests, needs, and habits? As noted by sociologist and tech ethicist Sherry Turkle at MIT:
“…to converse you don’t just have to perform turn taking, you have to listen to someone else, to read their body, their voice, their tone, and their silences. You bring your concern and experience to bear [on the interaction] and you expect the same from others.” (1)
When children converse with their families and witness their families conversing face-to-face, they are building essential social-emotional skills to take into school, work, and personal life. Face-to-face interactions help children develop their understandings of trust, self-esteem, empathy, friendship, and intimacy (2).
Kids under the age of 14 spend more than twice as long on their devices as they do talking to their families (3), and the effects show in the classroom, as well as at home. Said a University of Chicago professor we spoke to recently, “You can see [the impact of not socialising enough] in this generation of students. They don’t know how to work together, they don’t know how to listen to each other or negotiate when they disagree” (4).
TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
Having good face-to-face conversation skills seems pretty simple, but can be extremely hard as devices increasingly distract during meals and family time.
Having regular face-to-face family conversations builds a sense of trust for a child that, in turn, supports their identity development and long term emotional ability.
What’s the secret sauce to robot-proofing your kids? (Tip: you don’t need to buy your kids fancy toys or trips overseas.) Answer: lock those iPads and phones away at designated times agreed on with your family and have regular face-to-face time with them to build their social-emotional skills. (Remember: eye contact!)
Parenting Tips & Family Activity Ideas
Quick & easy conversation starters for digital natives.
For Older Kids (Pre-Teens+)
Phone Time Audit (2 min): Everyone check their weekly screen time report (under “Settings”). Reactions are always hilarious (and eye-opening)!
For Younger Kids
“Draw Your Ideal Day” Drawing Activity (5 mins): Sit down together and each person sketch a picture of what their best / favorite day would look like. Ask them to explain what activities they chose. Which ones didn’t use tech and were fun? Why?
Bad News in a Good Voice
Why tell you the scary things about parenting in an AI-age when we can let you hear them from an upbeat AI?
Transcript: Research shows that children tend to feel that they have to compete with smartphones for their parents’ attention and that children commonly report feeling exhausted, frustrated, sad, and angry when they try to get their parents’ attention away from their smartphones.
Source: Braune-Krickau K, Schneebeli L, Pehlke-Milde J, Gemperle M, Koch R, von Wyl A. (2021) Smartphones in the nursery. National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Real-Life Tips
We ask parents and digital natives how they balance their tech usage so that you can pretend to your friends like you know exactly what you’re doing with your own kids.
Hear from a 19-year-old on how she makes sure her phone doesn’t distract her from conversations during meal times:
Hear from a 20-something on how she demonstrates active listening when she’s having a meal with friends:
Shout out to Kigumi team member Sneh for sourcing these great pieces of advice!
Sources: Kigumi interviews, 2025
We offer digital well-being and AI education services to parents’ associations, schools and families. Contact us at mila@kigumigroup.com for a chat, follow us on IG or contribute to our crowdfunding campaign to join the movement for digital well-being.
Love this. So much of what you’re describing really resonates with something I’ve been working on lately with a friend.
It’s an app called Playsense that helps parents capture everyday moments (small wins, emotional patterns, quirks, rituals) and over time helps them actually see how their child is growing emotionally, socially, and behaviorally (not just physically).
It’s been really interesting to see how much those tiny observations can help parents feel more intentional (and less overwhelmed) in guiding kids through exactly these new challenges of post-pandemic development.
If you ever want to see a peek at it, happy to share!