Her daughter was unraveling, and she didnโ€™t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs.

Gift Link: https://wapo.st/4scolDU (Washington Post)

@lauren

The 5 mins I've spent on character.ai was enough to creep me out.

But seems like the lede should be "11 year old given unmonitored smartphone." If it wasn't AI it would be any of the other evils a kid can encounter. I notice they didn't consider taking the phone away.

@TheServitor Sorry, so very wrong. Studies show if you try take the phone away the kids get access to other phones. This is 100% on the evil AI companies, 0% on parents. Parents cannot be expected to deal with this. Do not drink the Kook-Aid.
@lauren @TheServitor plus, taking phones away from kids, if normalised, will just lead to parents having even more control over their kids and treating them even more like property, and that's bad enough as it is

@lauren @freya @TheServitor

Where is there a study on point here?

And the rest of this argument is facile. 100% on AI companies? Ok, now what?

In the meantime while we're waiting for the corporations who don't answer to you to I guess decide to stop making money or something parents are in fact responsible for some aspects of their children's behavior.

These aren't hammers. They're computers. If you don't know how to use them safely, put them down and walk away.

@adelie @lauren @TheServitor parents are responsible, yes, but that requires teaching your kids, not taking their phones away, I think

@freya @lauren @TheServitor

It _absolutely_ does. Part of that though is being involved enough to know when your kid isn't safe. Sometimes that means taking away the phone or better, controlling how it can be used.

It's exceedingly hard, fwiw

@adelie @lauren @TheServitor perhaps. but I've seen that go horribly wrong too many times to count. parents assuming they have unilateral rights
@lauren @TheServitor Fighting tech can be lost cause. I tried to block YouTube (via DNS) during COVID so my kids would pay attention to on-line school. When I finally succeeded, my kids told me they couldn't reach Google drive for school. Ugh.
@WildEyedBoyFromFreecloud @TheServitor You blocked it wrong. Just sayin'.
@lauren @TheServitor For sure, but I couldn't find another way at the time.

@WildEyedBoyFromFreecloud @lauren @TheServitor accounts.youtube.com must be whitelisted. Total malicious cross contamination.

The rest can be null routed.

@lauren @TheServitor

same for heroin? just let them have it?

if i was raising a kid rn they would have a dumb phone.