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Vox
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vox
This is the future kids want
is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of four novels, including the forthcoming Bog Queen, which you can preorder here This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox's newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. Earlier this year, I went to Career Day at my older kid's school. The experience was sometimes humbling — at an elementary school career fair, no one can compete with the firefighters — but it was also incredibly joyful. Hearing from kids about what they want to be when they grow up can be a balm for anxious times. Adults may be fearful for the future, kids are still dreaming and planning, figuring out the place they're going to inhabit in a world that's constantly changing. Yes, kids today will come of age in a time of climate change, war, and democratic backsliding — but they're also going to create new art, invent new technologies, and pioneer new policies that will make the world better and richer in ways we can't even imagine yet. With all this in mind, I asked a few kids — including some of the Scholastic Kid Reporters who have helped me out in the past — to tell me what they want to be when they grow up, and what changes they hope to see in the world. A selection of their responses, which have been condensed and edited, are below. If the kids in your life would like to weigh in too, you can reach me at I want to be a gymnastics teacher. I want to get married and have kids, maybe five. I want to go to France. I want to do ballet in France. I want to do anything I want. I want more kittens on the planet. I want everyone to have their own house with their own family. I want self-driving lawnmowers. I don't want people to eat chickens, who should be treated like a princess. —Mairead, age 8 During Covid, our math and science teacher would show us these videos about space. Those videos really inspired me. The idea that there might be life other than planet Earth was just really cool to me. Our universe is so big, there's so many places to explore, so many new things to learn. [As a Scholastic Kid Reporter, I wrote a story] about the total solar eclipse. I remember interviewing Mr. James Tralie. That was really cool, because he worked at NASA, but he was also an animator, and I also love art and drawing. From that experience, I learned being part of NASA and learning about space is not only about being a scientist or being an engineer, it's also about doing art, doing music, and just doing what you truly love related to space. When I was younger, I loved playing with Legos. I love building new things. I've learned a lot about being an aerospace technician or an engineer: building rockets, fixing issues related to space technology. I also love exploring. So being an astronomer is one of my dreams. I just don't think it makes sense that there's only one planet in our entire universe where there's life. I hope to find life on other planets in the future. —Aiden, age 13 I want to be a teacher because I see in my class a lot of different faces and colors of everyone, and I think it's going to be important to help other people grow like I grow in my school. In my class, I have people who are shy, people who need extra help, and people who are really smart, so I feel like getting education for everybody to reach the same [level] is going to be hard. —Kimaaya, age 8 I would like to taxidermy a lamprey eel. —Eleanor, age 6 Interviewing ukulelist James Hill as a Scholastic Kid Reporter and talking to him about music showed me that there are many different ways to play an instrument. On his ukulele, he doesn't just play a couple of chords — he makes creative musical sounds, even drumbeats. Talking with him inspired me to become a performer on the ukulele and guitar. Not to brag, but I feel like I'm very skilled with ukulele. I feel like if someone gave me a sheet of music, I could learn it and play it for them maybe the next day perfectly. My biggest goal is to experiment more with the notes and strings, learn some more tricks on it, and maybe someday make my own album. —Owen, age 12 I want to do research in politics or economics that could bring about real changes in our world. Growing up during the Covid pandemic, we were all stuck online. I was seeing a lot of stuff about the Black Lives Matter movement, lots of Instagram stuff about LGBT rights, there was the Trump administration, and it really got me curious about politics and social justice. I'm from Hong Kong as well, and in 2019 there were the protests that occurred about democracy. I'm really obsessed with the idea of preserving democracy, so I think that just pushed me further into reading more about politics. I think you could use the quantitative bit of economics and tie it into the qualitative bit of politics, and use data, like observing patterns and everything, and apply that to something that could cause change in the world. I think I would be studying politics and economics so that I could keep both doors open, depending on what I want to pursue in the future. Because I'm still 17. I'm not set yet, but I think both of these paths offer me the education, the knowledge to potentially bring impact. —Macy, age 17 Watching the Olympics, hearing about doing archery, and seeing pictures [inspired me to want to be an Olympic archer]. Last year, I started saving up for an archery bow, and now I have one. We go to archery club every Sunday. [I also want to be] a bat scientist. A few days ago, we went on a bat watch in the middle of the night. Have you heard of something called a bat detector? It's a little device, and it can intercept different kinds of bat calls with this little dial, and you turn it [to] different levels, and you can listen for bats. We were at this wood cabin, and there was a big light for the bugs, and the bats would quickly go for them. So we didn't really see them clearly, but we heard them very loud. [I want to] study about bats: what they eat, what size they are, and where they like to go and everything. —Flower, age 8 Your mom says you want to be an owl scientist. What makes you want to study owls? They're so pretty. What's your favorite owl? What do owls eat? Mice, rabbits, bugs, bats. … If I have a pet owl, and Flower has a pet bat… [trails off] —Tabby, age 4, Flower's sister What I'm reading A 4-year-old girl came to the US legally in 2023 to get treatment for a severe medical condition called short bowel syndrome. Now her family's legal status has been terminated, and she could die without access to care. Kids with autism can be at heightened risk of drowning, and traditional swim classes aren't always accessible to them. Now some nonprofits are stepping in to help. My older kid and I have been reading Hooky, a graphic novel about twin witches who miss the school bus one day and become embroiled in a variety of hijinks. Fair warning: Hooky was originally serialized and there is a lot going on. I have repeatedly had to admit to my kid that I am confused. This week I was on one of my favorite parenting podcasts, The Longest Shortest Time, talking about my experience getting a salpingectomy, a form of permanent birth control that can reduce your risk of ovarian cancer. You can listen here! From my inbox Two weeks ago, I wrote about 'dry texting' and how teens use their phones to avoid in-person conflict with one another. Young people had a lot to tell me about this phenomenon, more than I could include in the original story. So I wanted to share what Gracelynn, age 12 and a Scholastic Kid Reporter, told me in an email: Gracelynn said online arguments can be more complex than in-person confrontation because 'when you are chatting online, they could copy and paste the text or media image and use it against you.' With in-person arguments, it's also easier for adults to overhear and intervene. Gracelynn also noted that even though her school uses GoGuardian software to keep kids off certain websites during the day, 'they still manage to pull off crazy things.' Thank you again to Gracelynn and everyone who talked to me for that story, and as always, you can reach me with comments or questions at
Vox
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
Should I teach my kids to use AI?
is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of four novels, including the forthcoming Bog Queen, which you can preorder here This week, for the respective editions of their newsletters, Kids Today and User Friendly, senior correspondents Anna North and Adam Clark Estes have a chat about something that's occupying both of them as journalists and as parents of young kids: How AI will shape the lives of the next generation? Anna North: Hi Adam! Excited to chat about AI and kids! In addition to reporting on kids for work, I also have a 7-year-old (who is home sick today and watching Amphibia right now, so might interrupt), and a 2-year-old (who is not currently home sick, yay!). Adam Clark Estes: Hey Anna! My kid is not yet 2, but as they say, the days are long, but the years are short. I feel like I'll be meeting her AI friends in no time. Anna: Ha! So speaking of which, should we kick this off by talking a little bit about our hopes and fears for our kids growing up in the age of AI? I do feel like there's a lot to be hopeful about: I'm excited that my kids will grow up in a time when we can use AI to develop new drugs and decode elephant language (although maybe some of those AI tools are more properly called machine learning?). My biggest fear is that my kids won't see the point of learning certain skills, like writing and math, because AI can do those tasks for them. I certainly worry about AI taking jobs, too, but that's a ways away for my kids. Adam: I'm actually not that worried about my kid having AI friends. She probably will! I just hope that she doesn't spend too much time with them or too much time with AI-powered technology in general. I hope we enter this new AI era together and learn how these tools can make our lives better, richer, and more interesting. It reminds me of how the internet came of age around the same time I did, but my parents seemed too afraid to figure it out at the time. I hope I can be brave. Anna: My dad was actually an internet early adopter, and so we did enter that era together, which was sweet. We used to go to Doctor Who chatrooms — I remember once listing 'our' age as '43 and 12.' That was nice for me because 1) I learned to use a computer and 2) I learned to be curious and not fearful around new technologies. Except I am a little fearful around AI! Maybe I have to channel that spirit of curiosity a little more when I'm with my kids. A friend of mine was telling me her district is rolling out AI tools potentially in kindergarten, so it starts young. Adam: And I keep seeing ads for AI-equipped stuffed animals. AI is still such a buzzword, but I do think we're starting to see how it really will take over technology as we know it. I always say that it's just the next iteration of the software that's already in everything. So, of course, it's going to be in classrooms — not just for cheating purposes, either. Anna: Cheating using AI is less of an issue for little kids because they're not doing much of their work on computers yet. The AI tools I've seen proposed for K-6 are like this AI-powered reading coach, which seems less vulnerable to cheating than, say, ChatGPT. I've definitely heard people say that AI could potentially offer more personalized tutoring one day, which could be positive since individual instruction is really beneficial, but public school classes are often too large to offer much of it. That idea doesn't freak me out too much, although, of course, there are questions around how reliable and accurate AI tools are. My older kid is in first grade, and at his school, there's a lot of talk about the role of AI in math. The argument I've heard is very similar to what we were taught about calculators, honestly: that these tools will be able to do a lot of simple operations for us, so kids should be able to think intuitively about numbers. I don't really think we'll return to oral exams, but we will have to reconsider what education looks like in a world that runs on AI. Adam: I'm also curious about how AI simply changes how schools work. Like, if AI makes it too easy to cheat when essay-writing, what will teachers assign instead? And what will they grade? I don't really think we'll return to oral exams, but we will have to reconsider what education looks like in a world that runs on AI. Anna: I do think there's a shift to more in-class tests and assignments, which can cause its own stress. I also wonder if there's just going to be a shift toward developing a different set of skills, if writing just becomes less important. We already see kids and young people consuming less text — I wouldn't be shocked if there was more emphasis in the coming years on oral presentation or audio and visual production skills. That bums me out as a writer, but maybe it's what Plato would've wanted? I do try to remember that people have always been skeptical of new technology (even written language), and some of the anxieties we're experiencing now are thousands of years old. I wouldn't be shocked if there was more emphasis in the coming years on oral presentation or audio and visual production skills. Adam: And some look like instant replays of anxieties from just a decade or two ago. Every time a new technology or medium comes along, there's a collective freakout that it's destroying the youth. This is just as true for social media as it was for TV, video games, comic books, and even radio. I think this will be true of AI in social settings, too. It's already possible to have an AI friend through apps like Replika or Kindroid. I wasn't kidding about the AI stuffed animals, either. There's one called Grok that's designed — by Grimes of all people — for ages 3 and up. Kids can ask it questions, and the AI will tell them things, like a futuristic Teddy Ruxpin, except Teddy Ruxpin had a cassette tape in his belly that parents could listen to and know what the stuffed bear would say. I have no idea what AI will be telling our kids! I've seen people call this the end of the imaginary friend. I actually think it's just the beginning of something new. What that is, I can't imagine. At least not yet. Anna: It's funny to me because Teddy Ruxpin was famously creepy! The social/play aspect of AI is super-interesting. I'm not worried about AI killing imaginary friends — kids will make friends with a can of tomato paste, and I don't think you can destroy their social creativity that easily. My biggest concern around AI friends right now is safety — there are already lawsuits alleging that chatbots nudged kids toward violence or self-harm. Do you know what guardrails there are in place? Adam: My general feeling about guardrails is that, no matter how many there are, technology finds a way to leap over them. YouTube, for instance, has long struggled with how to make sure parents can steer their children to safe, age-appropriate content, but kids inevitably find themselves sucked down a rabbit hole of uncanny algorithmically generated videos. Throwing an infinite supply of AI-generated content into the mix won't help, so I think parents will have to be vigilant about triple-checking what their kids are watching or playing with. There was a Pew study earlier this year that said about a quarter of all teens had tried ChatGPT for schoolwork. That number had doubled in a year. So if you assume that guardrails aren't there or won't work and that kids are going to try some kind of AI tool eventually, where does that leave parents? To be honest, I think we should all do what your dad did with you: Hang out in the proverbial chatrooms together. Talk to the chatbots together. Play with the AI toys together. Learn about this new technology along with your kids and help them learn when to put them away. I think we should all do what your dad did with you: Hang out in the proverbial chatrooms together. Talk to the chatbots together. Play with the AI toys together. Anna: I'm sure my dad will appreciate this endorsement of his parenting! You're not alone, though. Andrew Przybylski, an Oxford professor I think we've talked about who studies phones and kids, talks about introducing his children to smartphones the way you would teach a kid to ride a bike: It's a tool. It has hazards but also uses. It can be fun, and it's a basic part of life. Maybe the same is true of AI? This conversation is sort of making me think I need to use AI more with my kids, which is not where I expected to end up. Adam: It's important to point out that we're mostly talking about generative AI here, and chatbots. There are also image and video generators. These all have obvious applications for kids in schools, for cheating and learning. But we haven't even gotten into what the next generation of AI will impact our kids' lives — things like AI agents that can use computers themselves or the much feared artificial general intelligence that can theoretically do anything. That future is a lot harder for me to comprehend right now.
Vox
15-05-2025
- General
- Vox
'Dry texting,' explained
is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of four novels, including the forthcoming Bog Queen, which you can preorder here This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox's newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. A few days ago, a group of teenagers taught me the term 'dry texting.' It's anything that indicates 'a change in the vibe of the conversation,' Tanisha, 18, told me. Someone who usually texts in all caps could revert to lowercase. They could text back only short replies, or comments that don't invite a response — a 'conversation ender,' as Joanne, 18, put it. Dry texting is the most common way kids at her school find out someone is mad at them, Akshaya, also 18, told me. I was talking with the three teens — co-hosts of the podcast Behind the Screens — about something that came up on a recent episode that intrigued me. They argued that phones, texting, and social media could make it easier for teenagers to avoid conflict with each other, by providing them with numerous passive-aggressive methods of showing disapproval. The teens' comments stuck out to me because adults typically think of phones as igniting confrontation between young people, not the other way around. One Ohio school district, for example, banned phones in schools over concerns that students were using social media to orchestrate fights. But as much as texting and social media can amplify disputes among teens, they can also transform these disputes into something quieter, more confusing, and sometimes harder to deal with. 'Tech creates these subtle fault lines in communication,' Emily Weinstein, executive director of Harvard's Center for Digital Thriving, told me. Behaviors like leaving someone on read, half-swiping on Snapchat, or turning off location sharing are 'ambiguous signals,' Weinstein said. They could be innocent, or they could mean the sender is actually mad, an uncertainty that has teens 'worrying, wondering, second- or even third-guessing what is meant.' These ambiguities aren't unique to teens — who among us has not sent or received the dreaded 'ok' text? But today's tweens and teens have also grown up enmeshed with devices in a way their elders didn't. Their formative years have been marked by lockdowns and school closures, periods when, as podcast co-host Joanne put it, 'the only type of interactions we could have had were behind a screen.' What happens when a machine for sending ambiguous signals becomes an integral part of your social life? Why ambiguous texting hurts For answers, I turned to Scholastic's Kid Reporters, a group of 10–14-year-olds who cover 'news for kids, by kids.' The young journalists went to work in their respective schools, and came back with much the same observation the Behind the Screens co-hosts shared with me: phones definitely make it easier to ignore someone you don't want to talk to. 'Sometimes it's just easier to leave someone on read or not respond right away instead of talking face to face,' one 13-year-old told Scholastic reporter Aiden. 'I've definitely avoided talking to someone in person and just showed I was mad by muting them for a bit. It's kinda petty but it's also how a lot of people deal with stuff now.' 'In real life you can't ghost somebody,' Scholastic reporter Xander Dorsey told me in an email. 'In texting you could say 'oh, I'll be right back.' It's much more awkward to walk off in real life.' Teens can also express their displeasure with someone by taking them off their close friends list on Instagram, or — a more extreme step — unfollowing them entirely, Akshaya said. Online communication 'makes it a lot easier to be passive-aggressive,' she explained. But being on the receiving end of such passive aggression, whether it's a 'dry' text or message hanging there on the screen without a response, kids and experts agree: 'It will trigger this anxious thinking spiral where they see that they've been left on read, and you start to wonder, are they mad at me?' Weinstein told me. 'Do they hate me? Do they think I'm an idiot? Did I say the wrong thing?' When the meaning does become clear, ambiguous signals can be even more painful than a more direct confrontation, teens say. 'I got removed from a group chat and found out they were talking about me behind my back,' the same 13-year-old told Aiden. 'I felt confused and like I wasn't even worth a real explanation.' 'It hurt even more that they didn't just come talk to me,' she added. Phones are shaping how kids navigate conflict Passive-aggressive phone behavior is far from unique to kids. But because they're at a developmental stage in which they're extremely sensitive to what their peers are thinking and feeling about them, 'they're more likely to be scrutinizing these ambiguous signals,' Weinstein said. Adolescence is also a time when conflict resolution skills are still developing, Weinstein said. We all need those skills because 'life is full of conflict,' said Darja Djordjevic, a psychiatrist who works with Stanford Brainstorm, a lab focused on mental health and digital well-being. Dealing with people who disagree with us is a crucial part of growing up. Some fear that phones could disrupt that process. 'We learn how to argue and fight productively in person,' Djordjevic said. Sending ambiguous signals over text or social media could represent 'a lost opportunity for confronting things' in real life. There's a lot of concern among adults about how phones affect social skills more generally, and while I don't always share that concern, I think it's reasonable to ask whether new forms of communication will change how teens handle (or don't handle) confrontation as they mature. The older teens I spoke with allayed these concerns somewhat. Akshaya told me that when she and her friends were younger, 'we would start removing each other from our followings if there was a big falling-out, or getting dry and stuff to avoid talking to each other.' Now that they're about to graduate from high school, though, 'I don't see it as much.' Kids also pointed out that phones can sometimes actually help them resolve a conflict. Texting 'gives me time to think before responding and helps me express my thoughts more clearly,' one 12-year-old told Aiden. 'Sometimes it's less intimidating to start a difficult conversation through messages, and that can help us work out the problem later.' Teens will also often show a draft text to multiple friends before hitting send, Tanisha told me. That way, 'you're more confident that that text isn't going to be something bad or anything like that, because you have other people's approval.' (With workshopping texts, however, there is a risk that 'your voice kind of gets lost,' she noted.) And avoiding confrontation isn't always the worst thing. If, for example, a kid lives in a community or goes to a school where physical fights are common, 'the stakes of certain kinds of online conflict are very different than a teen who's in a context where all that might happen is someone's gonna be mad at them,' Weinstein said. For some teens, ambiguous signals could actually be a way to stay safe. Still, just as teenagers might need tools for responding to big, loud problems like bullying, they need help dealing with the subtle fault lines their phones create as well. It starts with listening to young people about the role tech plays in their lives, Weinstein said. Some app features that may seem benign to adults (Instagram close friends or location sharing come to mind) can feel very different for teens, Weinstein explained. 'So often, adults miss or misunderstand aspects of what teens are experiencing behind their screens.' The kids I talked to also had advice for their peers dealing with dry texting and other ambiguous phone behaviors, much of it strikingly low-tech. Scholastic reporter Evy, 12, recommends hashing things out in person whenever possible. 'Having a real conversation with them and laughing with them — that makes it so much better,' she said. What I'm reading PowerSchool, a company that makes software parents and teachers use to track students' grades, was hacked last year. Now several schools have received extortion notes threatening to release private student data. The FDA is moving to pull prescription fluoride drops and tablets off the market. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has repeatedly criticized the mineral, but experts say many of his claims are misleading, and dentists are worried that getting rid of fluoride will increase kids' risk of tooth decay. Amid the culture wars surrounding America's schools, politicians are no longer talking about children's actual learning, writes Dana Goldstein at the New York Times. Both my children have been demanding repeat readings of Chloe and Maude, a picture book about what to do when a) your drawings don't look realistic, b) your friend tries to reinvent herself and you're not sure you like it, or c) you're trying to fall asleep but that one crack on the ceiling looks like a mouth. From my inbox A reader recently reached out to tell me she received an email from Google notifying her that the company's Gemini AI apps would soon be available for kids, allowing them to 'create stories, songs, and poetry,' and 'get homework help.' The reader found the Google email 'off-putting and disturbing,' she said, 'as if they are saying it's inevitable that kids will be relying heavily on AI in the future, so here's a guide on how to get them started young.' Next week, I'll be talking with Vox senior tech correspondent — and User Friendly newsletter author — Adam Clark Estes about the role of AI in kids' lives. If you, like the reader above, have thoughts about how the kids you know use (or don't use) AI — or questions for me and Adam as we chat — let me know at
