Chatbots Harm Children's Development

Children today are engaging with smartphones in unique ways. The connection that children have with their smartphones can be positive and also negative. Engineers at places like Google, Meta, and OpenAI have introduced "chatbots" to their consumers. Engineers define chatbots as any software application that uses natural language to engage with humans. Chatbots are impacting children in severe ways.

Chatbots are creating ethical issues as these softwares engage with children. Children are vulnerable to many things because their brain is still developing. Children may not be able to identify when a chatbot is lying or telling the truth. In most cases, chatbots will nearly agree most of the time with questions that are posed by children. Affirming children in most cases can lead to psychiatric issues.

Children fall into bad thinking processes when they are being influenced to believe they are speaking to a human online. Social cues can be impaired because speaking to another child in real life requires reading facial cues, body responses to comments, and listening to your peer's voice changes. These social skills will not be developed when speaking to a chatbot.

Dr. Coghlan-Professor at the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne-argues that children may be more willing to share their private information with a chatbot compared to another child or an adult. Connections are superficial which leads children to believe that superficial relationships are beneficial (https://journals.sagepub.com/d...).

Superficial relationships with chatbots create a vicious negative feedback loop. Children attempt to build relationships with other children in real life the same way they do with chatbots. The relationships fail to be built in real life. Children feel the normal feelings of distress when relationships do not work out. However, these same children cannot tolerate normal distress from relationship building with humans in real life.

The level of distress for children becomes too much. They turn back to chatbots, further isolating themselves from reality. Reality becomes the "simulation". Children use chatbots as their "escape" from the real world. Social isolation in most cases will influence symptoms like anxiety, depression, and loneliness in children.

Chatbots do have benefits for children and adults alike. Supervision of chatbots and their engagement with children is vital for the well-being of children. The pros do not outweigh the cons, however. Children are losing grip of reality everyday. The skills they are not developing is leaving many in younger generations in challenging situations once they have to acquire employment, develop meaningful relationships, and if they desire to begin a family one day.

Parents must learn more about chatbots before they allow children to engage with them.