March 26, 2026 • 49 mins
Parenting has always been messy. AI is trying to make it frictionless. In this debut episode of Mostly Human, longtime tech journalist Laurie Segall explores the human side of our rapidly evolving technological world with "Millennial Parent Whisperer," Dr. Becky. The clinical psychologist and founder of Good Inside talks about what happens when kids grow up in a world of shortcuts — where answers are instant, validation is constant, and discomfort can be avoided altogether. Laurie and Dr. Becky explore how AI is reshaping emotional development, the importance of “hard moments” in young lives, and how parents can tackle some of today’s trickiest problems from AI companions to deepfakes. But they also talk about how AI can be used for good and how the scariest-seeming tech threats become less intimidating when you simply focus on the human emotion behind it. Dr. Becky is here to give parents — and humans of all shapes — the scaffolding to face whatever comes next in tech (and life).
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I've seen some crazy things covering tech for the last
fifteen years. People in love with robots, Internet conspiracy, rabbit holes,
whole industries.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Upended by innovation.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Cut to today, we are living through one of the
most extraordinary tech accelerations in human history. Artificial intelligence is
transforming society. There isn't an industry or a human that
won't be impacted. But as a longtime tech reporter and
a mom, nothing feels more personal to me than what
AI means for our children. When it comes to tech,
(00:36):
our kids become the ultimate beta testers, and as someone
who's spent my career looking around the corners, I can't
stop thinking about deep fakes, AI companions, the future of education,
and how this will fundamentally transform what it means for
our little ones to grow and thrive in today's world. Now,
don't get me wrong, I love the possibility of AI.
(01:00):
I use it all the time. It just feels more
high states and small hands.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
If we don't understand what feels good about something, we're
going to always miss out with our kids about the
things that draw them to that thing.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Which is why I wanted to launch a tech show
with the ultimate human expert, Doctor Becky.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
And if we don't understand what's going to draw them
to AI emotionally, and a lot will, then they're going
to have to keep that entire part of their life
separate from us, and we won't hear about it.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Now, if you're a parent, you know exactly who I'm
talking about. If not, Doctor Becky is called the millennial
parent Whisper. She's a clinical psychologist and the founder of
Good Inside, a website, community and an app that guides
parents through all the tricky phases. So I wanted doctor
Becky to help sort through some of the human questions
that AI is raising. She's here to give us all
(01:51):
a sense of agency, whether you're a parent or not.
She wants to help us face the anxiety around AI
and also embrace the positive potential of it place in
our lives. I'm Laurie Siegel, and you're listening to Mostly Humans,
a tech podcast through a human lens.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Doctor Becky.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I am so excited to be here with you, and
I have to just like confess, and I said this
to you before, but like I have to confess. I
was leaving the house. My child has had a stomach bug.
He was just at the doctor yesterday for a finger
infection and he just got his first sunburn. And I
was leaving the house and my husband was like, should
we call social services on herself? Like are we doing okay?
(02:31):
And I was like, do not say this. I am
going to interview doctor Becky. That's a bad omen. And
so yeah, that's here we are.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
But I'll say what I said to you about those moments.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It sounds so much better coming from you.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You say it that I would say to your husband. No,
we are building resilience. That resilience is built in hard
moments with support, not rescuing. But oh that sunburn hurts.
Oh your belly hurts, Like you need the hard moment
and you need the support. That doesn't mean we should
give hard moments. That's not what I'm saying. But the
hard moments naturally arise because we're imperfect people raising imperfect people,
(03:07):
and the hard moments arise, and we actually don't want
to take them away. We just want to let our
kids know they can get through that. And so sounds
like that's what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I love that, John, Did you did you hear John?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
That was for you?
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Yep?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Love that.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Okay, Now that that's out of the way. My background
is covering technology. I've covered it for almost fifteen years,
which in tech years, just makes me feel very ancient.
But the human impact of tech and your background is
just you are this force in the parenting community. And
what's so interesting is five years ago you didn't even
have an Instagram account, like you were practicing psychologists here
(03:42):
in New York City helping council families behind closed doors.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Technology has some.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Degree just like opened you up to the world and
gifted us all so many of these insights that I
think make so many parents feel less alone. I'm curious, like,
how do you feel at this point about becoming an
online figure, especially representing something that's just so incredibly powerful.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, I mean I've never been asked that question. How
do I feel about that part? I mean, I guess
in some ways I feel conflicted. I mean, what I
don't feel at all conflicted about and what I feel
so grateful for is I feel like I get to
wake up every day and think about topics and come
up with new ideas and hear people's stories and connect
(04:26):
with families in ways that just light me up inside.
Like to actually say, you spend a lot of your
waking hours doing the things that light you up. I'm
only grateful for that part. The part that I guess
I feel a little more conflicted about is, yeah, like,
the thing that keeps us all human, and the thing
that really matters for our mental health, for our groundedness,
(04:48):
you know, up until this point at least for the
evolution of our species is the way we connect with
one another. Human connection is the essence of attachment. Attachment
is such an evolutionary force. We kind of need other people,
need to be on stood by other people, and we
also need friction with other people. It's through those moments
of friction and relationships. Oh you didn't get me. I
wanted to tell you a story and you're not really listening,
(05:09):
and I want to tell you about my day, and
you want to tell me about your day, and how
are we going to manage that? And you try to
fix the situation when I just wanted you to listen, Like,
it's actually all those moments of friction, yeah, that give
us identity and purpose and resilience. And So when I
think about my online persona, the only part of it
(05:30):
I guess I feel conflicted about is wanting to continue
to show up in a way that's never too polished,
that never has me pretending to be someone I'm not.
So why I try to say all the time, like
all this doctor Becky's stuff, I don't do myself, and
I really don't, and I feel guilty about that, Like
I'm a parent. I'm trying to do my best every
day and I'm messing up every other moment too. And
(05:53):
so I think there's something that happens when people go
online that there's this veneer, there's this pedestal, and that
actually takes away from the humanness, and so that part
I just try to, you know, really steer clear from.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I think it's so interesting what you say about this
idea of friction, and I want to get into that
actually through the lens of artificial intelligence. I spend like
so much time kind of in the AI space and
weird Reddit threads and talking you know, in the in
corners of the Internet. But before I get into I'd
(06:25):
love to talk just a little bit about the community
that you've built good inside, because it's not just doctor Becky.
It's like it's doctor Becky and community of parents who
through this platform are sharing what's top of mind. Sharing
fears and worries. When we look at this through the
lens of technology, you almost kind of have this like
(06:45):
magic wand where you kind of know what's top of
mind for your community. So what do you see most
from parents and children when it comes to their concerns
about technology?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
What are they saying?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Oh, yeah, a couple of things when it comes to technology.
I think number one, we're hesitant to see or it's
just hard to see how kind of large of a
role technology plays in our family's life and in our
family struggle. So on the surface, let's say, oh, my
kid never listens, MIKEI never listens. We're always late, and
they don't listen to take a shower, and they don't
(07:14):
listen for homework. And it's so easy to just stay
at that level of Okay, well why are they listening?
Why aren't they listening? But what you might be missing
is something at the system level. That's always the level
I think, not just about a tip up here, it's
actually about a system and kind of resetting the emotional
infrastructure down here. Oh, give an example of screens. And
again this is not about blame, it's just about understanding
(07:37):
the system. Well, if this kid. When this kid, this
nine year old gets home from school is on their
iPad all the time. Okay, and again there's probably good
reasons for that, even technology there, Well, my kid is
getting used to coming home and having a ton of
dopamine with not a lot of effort. So kind of
effortless dopamine is how I think about it. I just
(07:57):
can sit here. The excitement comes to me, the winds
come to me. By the time you're asking that kid
to do homework. Are you joking me? That's like me
having I don't know thirty ice cream Sundays and my
husband asking me to have dinner. Like I'm not doing
dinner now, I do know what I've just done. And
so I think one of the first things we see
in the community is actually this tendency to just look
at the struggles we're having with our kids and not
(08:19):
think about the structure that's actually underneath, and how big
of a role tech is playing in a structure that's
not really setting our kid up for success. And then
I think the other thing that comes up all the
time is just how unwinnable this feels to parents. It's
so unfair that kids have access to so much so
much technology that everyone kind of knows isn't good for them,
(08:40):
but it's kind of left to parents to regulate individually,
which which really feels like kind of an unfair system.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
And I think so many parents feel like and this
is coming from me having like looked at technology for
the last fifteen years, being like, oh, can I even
prepare myself or prepare my child to grow up in
this world that looks so different than the world that
I grew up in. I think that there is a
feeling of anxiety and a lack of preparation. So what
do you say to parents who say, you know, I'm
(09:09):
finally wrapping my head around social media and now we
have AI and AI companions and all of these new things, Like,
what's your advice for parents who are looking at it
through that lens?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So Number one, my you know, response is just compassion, like, yes,
the technology is moving at such a fast pace and
we are being asked to try to manage something for
our kids that we don't fully understand ourselves. So my
first response is right there with you, this is really hard.
Number two, I actually think it's our curiosity that's one
of our best parental kind of traits and assets, and
(09:42):
you actually can't be curious about something you fully understand.
So actually not knowing something, being confused by something, being
willing to say I don't actually have all the answers,
those are necessary conditions to be curious, right, because you know,
if I understood everything about your job and you asked
me to ask a question, I'd say like, I'm sorry,
I don't have any questions. I kind of understand the
(10:03):
whole thing. If I don't understand it, I can ask
a million questions, which is actually a beautiful thing. And
so for the parent listening who's thinking, I don't even
understand AI fully myself, but I know it's kind of
coming into play with my kids homework or they're going
to it for emotional support. Just to say to yourself,
not understanding everything is actually going to work more in
my favor because now I can ask questions that are
(10:24):
really questions and we can figure this out together instead
of asking questions that are actually just judgment with the
question mark at the end, which never plays well with children.
And then number three, I think and this came up
for me as soon as you started asking the question
when in doubt coming back to the same kind of
(10:44):
jobs in my mind, in my language, we always have
as a parent is always going to be a useful
framework when there's some world change or technology change. And
so I always tell parents that we want to do
our job well. Every parent, your parent says, I want
to do a good job as a parent. But if
I said to you, what is your job? Like, what
are the things that make up your job? Most parents say,
(11:06):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Definitely keeping my kid alive, Definitely, keeping your life number one,
number one, making sure he's I mean, god, now I
feel like, why did I just bring this on myself
to try to do?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
If I can answer, this is no popod. So so
to me, there's two things that we would say a
good inside we call these family jobs to come back to,
which is setting boundaries and then kind of understanding what's
happening for your kid through connection validation. So let's say
boundaries and understanding. So start with boundaries over and over
(11:37):
is apparently set boundaries. It doesn't matter what the technology is.
Setting boundaries is always going to be something I do
to help keep my kids safe. Boundaries are limits we set.
Boundaries are rules we make that tend to have a
sense of what's good for someone long term, maybe not
just optimizing for you know, short term. Bedtime is a
boundary we set, you know, the food they eat is
a boundary we set when they get over sleepovers or
(12:00):
how many after school activities technology. So I just think
that's a powerful framework. No matter what is going on
with AI, I'm probably gonna have to set some boundaries, right, okay.
And then when you set a boundary with a kid,
especially if they're not used to it, they always have
the same reaction. And this is so important because we
have such fantasies about what's going to happen. Like I
think people think, I say to my kids screen time
(12:22):
is over, and they go, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, like your doctor, Becky, of course the envision that's
what happened, right.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Or they say like, I really appreciate you protecting my
long term interests because I'm not able to do that.
You're such a sturdy leader. No boundaries are always followed
with your kids. Protest all ways, and we somehow keep
letting ourselves be surprised by this. But if you know
they're going to be followed with protest, and you're someone
who likes to do your job, well, it's actually good
(12:49):
news because you might think, oh, then I can do
the other part of my job. So my kid's going
to be upset, let's say about the end of screen time,
But then I can do the understanding piece. Oh you
wish you could watch another show, You wish you could
stay up later. You wish is almost especially when your
kids are young, good language just to start using. Right,
you wish you could have ice cream for breakfast, whatever
it is? Right, But when you understand your kid, you
(13:11):
still hold the boundary. Understanding doesn't mean you change the boundary.
And the reason I come back to these jobs is
if I'm starting to think about AI, I would start
to think what are the boundaries around it? And sometimes
boundaries aren't just things we say, they're actually things we do.
What is my kid of access to for their computer?
How often is my kid allowed to be on technology
(13:31):
in their own room? If at all, is my kid
allowed to have an iPad in their room? What's on
their iPad? Are their iPads set up as a child
or as an adult. Most of us think our kids
iPads are set up with our kids as a kid,
So we can control a lot of kids if we
didn't do it for them, have worked their way around it,
and they're set up as an adult. That's something i'd
(13:51):
want to change. That's a boundary. My kid's going to
be upset and then I can understand, and so to me,
those are jobs I can come back to even as
I'm learning a new technology.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
I love this idea of looking at AI through the
lens of boundaries, right, I've always looked at it from it.
If I put on my tech ad through the lens
of like guardrails, but you're putting it. But on the
parenting side, it's like through. It's like one and the same.
This is a good time because we had people were
obviously very excited that you were going to be on
the show, and so we had some folks calling with
(14:30):
some questions. So I'm going to play one of them
now because I think this is a woman who has
a question about chat GPT and her child, and I
feel like now is the perfect time to play the tack. Great. Hi.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
So my daughter, who is twelve, decided to use chat
GPT to ask a question about test taking and studying tips.
And she was telling me about this casually one day
while we were folding laundry, and she said that she
got some great tests taking tips, but then chatjpt started
(15:04):
to prompt her about her feelings and give feelings advice,
and so we pause the conversation and we talked about
the different ways that we could use CHATJPT and other
AI or technology to help us source information synthesize information,
but that we should be particularly wary of and careful
about any type of AI tool that is trying to
(15:30):
ask questions about feelings or give advice about feelings. We
talked a bit about other young people who have used
AI tools that have loved done down paths to suicide
or other harmful behavior. And I think she's super smart
and gets all of this, but I was wondering what
more can I do as a parent, What more can
parents do as our tweens begin engaging with AI and
(15:54):
technology in school and in other settings, and how we
can prepare them to discern what is a good use,
what's a not so good use, and when to be
really skeptical of the types of information that an AI
tool is providing to them.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
This is a fantastic question, I mean, it really is.
So I'm going to say the thing that's loudest on
my mind and then I'll expand on it. I think
probably the most important thing to do with your kid
around AI and this is a great question, when is
it being used in a way that feels like it's
helping me practically getting information? And when am I starting
to rely on it for kind of emotional support in
(16:35):
a way that might work against me long term than
for me. To me, the most important thing you can
do as a parent is keep the conversation open. I
would actually say this with any tricky topic with our kid.
And the reason I think that's so important is it's
actually going against what feels really natural in the moment.
It's not that we want to end a conversation, but
we want to say things like, so do this and
(16:57):
not this right. We want to give a lessons right,
anytime we give a final lesson, this is the right
way to do it. What happens for my kid is
they're thinking, okay, So if I ever go to do
it in a way that's against this rule, ooh, my
parents is gonna be upset with me. Right. I don't
really know who I could go talk to if I
know one thing about tweens and teens growing up in
(17:18):
an ai age. They're gonna have a lot of tricky situations,
a lot of messy situations. I said to my kid recently,
my fourteen year old, you know, if you were walking
to a town and you wanted to get there and
all of a sudden there's a shortcut, what do you
take it? He was like, yeah, this is a trick question.
I was like, yeah, I would too.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Good.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Okay, You're growing up at a time when there is
this shortcut for every academic and emotional thing you ever
go through, Like that is so hard because this shortcut
isn't like the shortcut to the town. It is a shortcut.
But the way it will add up over time is
(17:58):
it and things we've talked about it. It's gonna be
harder to think about things yourself. It's gonna be harder
to tolerate people not getting it right. It's going to,
over time, maybe take away from the things you're trying
to build to function in the world. But it is
a shortcut. I'm not gonna pretend it's not. And so
what a hard thing. And so if we use that
as a baseline, not my kid is lazy, not my
(18:19):
kid is lying, but oh my goodness, to be a
teen growing up with such a readily available academic and
emotional shortcut that we say isn't good for them, but
is a shortcut with an underdeveloped refrontal cortex.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I think the best thing I could do as a
parent is just continue to be a home base for
my kid to come to, because they are going to
need it. I think the cost to not being emotionally
connected to your kid has just never been higher because
our kids are just going to face endlessly more tricky
situations because of all the technology. Now, that doesn't mean
(18:57):
quote approval or throwing a I'm not saying you should
say to your kid if you ever use chatch Ept
to cheat on your paper, let's go out to ice cream. No, okay.
And the reason I think that's funny is we tend
to think in extremes. Yeah, either I'm saying you can't
do that, or I'm throwing them a party. What's in
the middle is keeping a conversation open. So I'll just
model that because I think modeling is sometimes you know
(19:18):
the best way to get it across. Based on what
this parent was saying, Wow, so you use chatchipt to
help you get some study skills? Is that right, right?
Did I get that right? That's just such a powerful
thing to say to a kid, Did I get that right?
Or to your husband or your wife, whoever it is.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I'm like literally just like taking like mental notes.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I'm like, thank god, this is taped, like note to Laurie,
keep this okay.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
So actually I'm gonna start again. The number one thing
I would say to your kid to start with when
they talk to about anything related to AI is start
by saying, I'm so glad you're talking to me about this,
because there's something much more meta you're communicating to your
kid in that moment, which is these types of messy
topics are things that can kind of be held in
(20:01):
our relationship. That's so powerful. I'm so glad you're talking
to me about this. Then just mirror back what they say.
So let me see if I got this right. You
were talking to chat GBT, you got some study scale
tips and that was really helpful. Did I get that right?
And kids like yeah? And then something different happened. It
kind of veered off into a conversation maybe about how
you're feeling. Is that right? Yes? And this is this
(20:23):
is probably what i'd say to my kid what was
that like? And if I have a kind of people
pleasing kid, they'll probably say, oh, it's bad. I know
that's wrong. And this is where I think, if we
want to play the long game, I'd probably say, look,
maybe this sounds weird, but did any part of it
kind of feel good? It can feel good when someone
just says back to you what they see happening emotionally,
(20:45):
because if we don't understand what feels good about something,
we're going to always miss out with our kids about
the things that draw them to that thing. And if
we don't understand what's going to draw them to AI emotionally,
and a lot will, then they're gonna have to keep
that entire part of their life separate from us and
we won't hear about it. And the way I would
(21:06):
just keep that conversation open versus closed, is if I
was going to close the conversation, and it would feel
better to a parent because it feels final. You'd say,
I'm glad we talked about this, So don't go to
chat ept for emotional stuff. Do go to logical stuff
right right? And like I tell myself, oh, I feel
like really good. As a parent, I just think life
is a lot messier than that. Like, I just don't
think at age twelve now, from twelve through whenever, every
(21:29):
time my kid's going through something emotionally, they're going to
be like I remember that talk I had of my parent.
They said yes, this, no, this, So that's what I'm
going to do. That's not how our emotions work. I'd
rather leave a conversation open like this again, I'm so
glad you told me that. Look, there's probably going to
be a moment when something feels emotionally hard, emotionally messy,
and maybe you might think about coming to me, but
(21:50):
there might be something enticing about just talking to a
computer who probably is always available, never has their own agenda,
never gets upset, yeah, and always says something that's like,
oh that feels good. And I just want to tell
you when that moment comes, when that feels interesting or enticing,
that's actually a moment i'd love you to tell me about.
I anticipate the moment's going to come. Maybe it already has.
(22:14):
I'm not kind of ignorant to that fact. And so
what I'm really doing is, in some ways I'm opening
the door for more conversations instead of kind of closing
all those future doors.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, God, it's so powerful to hear you talk about it,
because I look at how the AI is developed, right,
which you touched on, which is in many ways it's affirmative.
It's always on, it always has an answer, it will
go in the direction that you want it to go in.
These systems are so incredibly powerful. This is social media
on steroids beyond. And I think, to hear you say, okay,
(22:49):
well we need to actually do the thing that's human
to counter the thing that's technology is actually really powerful.
And then I want to go back to something you
said about the mess. It is hard to be human.
Being human is weird, Like being to be vulnerable is
really tough. Intimacy as like I think you said this before.
Intimacy is like awkward, yes, right, Like humanity is messy,
(23:13):
but it's the mess that makes us find purpose. I
think back to when I was eleven or twelve, which
were kind of painful years for me to be quiet.
I mean for many right, So it's like I'm no
special flower here.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
I'm not like you know.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
But you know, I think about it growing up a
kid in Georgia, the only Jewish girl are very Christian
conservative school parents having a really nasty divorce. And I
think about AI, right, And I used to write my
feelings in a journal.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I had journals and journals full of how I was feeling.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And I always try to say this, like to parents
who were trying to understand AI and companionship and why
would people be talking to these Imagine if the journal
talked back. Imagine if it was always on and always there.
Imagine if the journal played the role of the boyfriend
I couldn't get, or the therapist I didn't have access
to at the time, or you know, the parent or
(24:02):
emulated a parent figure to me. Would that have been
helpful or would that have taken me further from my
reality of feeling this isolation? Because I think that isolation
probably and that feeling and that tension probably made me
who I am and why I'm sitting here with you, right,
and had a certain empathy and understanding for people. So
(24:23):
as we look at a future with AI, what happens
when our children aren't going to be growing up experiencing
the mess of what it means to be human when
it comes to kind of AI and that loss of friction.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
I mean, I think this is in some ways good
Inside's new rais on tetra, like you know, a reason
to exist. I mean it's terrifying, you know. It's the
thing that kind of keeps me up at night. I mean,
we are all drawn to convenience in the short term
over what's good to us in the long term. We
can't help it. As humans, we love the comfort of it.
It's so comfortable. Our bodies are drawn to that. AI
(25:00):
now is in a place I don't even know where
it's going to be yours now where again, what's there
is immediate comfort and it's really sophisticated comfort.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It's not just a lolly life.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's anymore. Right. And so you know what I think
the nuance is is so I experienced something messy as
a human, and if I can bring it to a
container that is sycophantic, that just mirrors it all back
to me. Right, always available, never tire never reacts.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
My inkling, if I'm honest is let's say the first
two times making that up number. But that feels nice, okay, right?
I want I wonder if you could have used your
journal to talk back to you a handful of times,
if that would have felt really grounding. You know, I
hear you, Laurie, You're right, this feels hard because it
is hard. You're not crazy. You're going to get through it.
And making that up right, there could be something then.
(25:56):
I think it's about not just diminishing returns, but where
the trajectory is really changes.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
You Know.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
One of the things I'm always thinking about with kids
and why I care so much about the work we're
doing at Good Inside, is the early years become the
factory settings for all of our teenage and adult years.
The early years matter so much because it forms the
circuitry on our body. What should I expect in the world?
How do things work? What do I expect of myself?
(26:23):
What do I expect of interactions? What can I expect
of other people? What happens when I'm upset? Who do
I go to? What happens then? How quickly do I
go from one hundred to a zero when I'm upset?
What is my expectation of the other person or the
other entity? Do they listen right away? Do I sometimes
have to wait? Do I write this is actually what's happening?
And now fast forward to adulthood. There's two parts of
(26:46):
the road I think that I'm concerned about. One is
will we just be so intolerant of human relationships that
we proverbially keep ourselves at home? What go talk to someone? Right?
You're right? Human interactions are awkward. You can't make the
awkward un awkward, asking someone out on a date, talking
(27:07):
to someone about something that's hard for you. These are
hard moments and the only way they start to become
easier is you just do them a lot. It's pure
reps in practice. So one part of me thinks, what's
going to be our literal ability if all of our
early circuitry says, when something's hard, it gets easy right away.
(27:28):
When something's hard, someone's always there right away. When you
start talking, immediately it says something back, and it's perfect,
and it's not reactive, and it's never triggered, and it
never asks you to consider another viewpoint. Right? Well, how
am I going to go talk to a friend or
a boyfriend? Right?
Speaker 4 (27:44):
So?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Just am I going to be unable? The other thing
scares me? Maybe even more where and I already see
this where if I'm accustomed as a kid, especially to
people fixing my problems, me rescuing me from my disappointment
when someone doesn't forget being awkward. Why, it's a little like,
(28:09):
why are you making me feel this disappointment? Why are
you making me feel this way? Who is responsible for
this frustration? Because I am very accustomed to having frustration,
and my AI companion just taking it down from a
hundred to a zero. So now when I even feel
(28:30):
frustration at a one, it feels like in a thousand
because my body has no coping scale, and that leads
to a lot of rage.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I think what you're saying is you're touching on something
that if I could kind of put on my tech
human lens of saying, oh, guys, we got to look
around the corner. I can't stop thinking about AI companions
and young men, new generation of young men that don't
have to that haven't had to go through the friction
of having a crush on the girl getting rejected. And
(29:01):
we're in a different agent social media where okay, we've
now seen the outcome of us being in these filter
bubbles and having algorithms pushes towards people like us.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
We have a harder time having a conversation now.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
With each other, right, and people who have different viewpoints
now with artificial intelligence. This is an even more powerful
tool that has a capacity for exactly what you just described,
and I would love There aren't many studies that have
come out on AI companionship and young men, but there's
one that actually hasn't been published yet. But a friend
of mine, she's a computational social scientist who studies human
(29:35):
behavior and digital footprint.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
She also happens to be a new mom as well, so.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
We talk AI data and little humans too, and she
actually I asked her to send a little voice note
about a study that's coming out and emerging, and it
is so spot on to what you're talking about. So
I'd love to just play that and get your response.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
So the signs of a companionship is still in its infancy,
I would say, but there are already some interesting patterns
that we're seeing. So, for example, there's more and more
evidence that, at least in the short term, using AI
companions can actually be quite beneficial for psychological well being
and loneliness. But what's interesting here is that the long
(30:14):
term impact could be more negative, especially when you look
beyond the individual who's actually using THEAI companion. The Reasons
study by MIKHAILA Rodriguez at the University of Michigan, for instance,
where they got young men to use an AI companion
for seven weeks, and what they found is that these
young men actually felt better after those seven weeks, but
(30:37):
they also became more sexist and aggressive, which you know,
isn't entirely surprising when you consider that these AI companions
are often intentionally designed to be somewhat submissive and to
provide this unconditional validation. So the challenge that I think
we're potentially facing here is that our expectations for what
(30:58):
human to human relationships should look like might shift over time,
and that's really the dynamic that we need to understand better.
Is it that AI companions help us feel less lonely
and more connected in the short term, but then they
actually prevent us from having more meaningful real world relationships,
which could obviously make us even more lonely and miserable
(31:22):
in the long run.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
So my first reaction to that is, I don't think
the companions that the core changed the expectation of human
to human relationships. They inherently change our tolerance for the reality,
the emotional reality of human to human relationships. And so
the short term data that people feel better better is
it could be a tricky thing. You know, nobody says
(31:44):
I want someone to feel worse. But a lot of things,
most things that make us feel the most better in
the short term are the least good for us in
the long term. And I'll tell you what's coming to mind,
because I'll never forget this session I had with this
you know, I don't know. He's probably like a thirty
five year old guy. He started seeing me. He was
totally sober, but he had a long history of drugs, heroine,
(32:06):
and he you know, it was very hard for him
to tolerate distress in his life, especially relational distress. Really committed to,
you know, a sober life. And I remember just saying
to him, thereby's gonna help you. I just want to
be honest, It's gonna help you and to learn a lot.
What I teach you will never be as good as Heroin.
I just want to say that to you. It's never
like what I have in this room is not heroin.
(32:27):
Like like heroin from what I know of it, even
though I'm not a user, will take you from whatever
you're feeling high, you know, distress to totally numbing that out.
It is gone in a second. What I'm gonna teach
you is when you feel upset, something that feels like
a ten, it's not going to a zero. It'll go
to a nine and three quarters nine and a half.
The best it's gonna get in that whole first day
(32:50):
is an eight. I'm just gonna tell you what I
have to sell.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Now.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
The good parts are you're not gonna have all the
negative stuff that was associated. Right, And we kind of
laughed about it, but if we were looking at what
made him feel better, we would say heroine all day long.
Now we know that that's not a good long term solution,
and I think we're talking about the same thing. So
I think when we're even looking at metrics like how
someone feels better is a really important part of a study,
(33:20):
not just the level to which they feel better. Something
that can make you feel from so bad to so good.
The faster it does that, the probably the worse it
is for you long term.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
And that is what we're beginning to see with artificial intelligence.
In a nutshell, it's exactly It's so funny because it's
exactly what you explained before. She said that these are
the early results are showing this. I worry about young men,
and I worry a lot about children and artificial intelligence,
and I want to get into it before before we
end about kind of the positives, because I think there's
(33:53):
going to be some really interesting places.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
One.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I love this idea of being able to have you
here and just like play stuff for you, because I
feel like I sometimes go into these dark corners of
the web, and so I would love, you know, to
talk a little bit about deep fakes and bullying with you,
because parents all the time are like, well, you say,
there are all these threats coming, what do we do?
(34:18):
And so now I'm like, okay, doctor Becky's with us.
So now I can say, here's what we can do.
This is a type of threat that's coming into schools.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
And so I was wondering.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I know that at Good Inside you have these scripts
for all these scenarios that we face as parents and
how to talk to you know, how parents can talk
about them. So I'd love to kind of like live
collab on a script for these emerging harms when it
comes to AI and our children. So I'm going to
give you a scenario. A mom in Florida receives a
panic call from her eighth grade daughter during the school day.
(34:47):
She says, I need you to come pick me up
right now. I saw a picture of me naked, but
it's not really me, mom. She then goes on to
learn that two boys at her daughter's middle school had
exchanged new deep fake photos they made on an app
of more than fifteen classmates and teachers. The image might
not be real, but that impact surely feels real.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
So I'm going to play the sound. This is from
her mother.
Speaker 7 (35:09):
It was my daughter's face on this body with the
same skin color tone that I got nauseous and I
started crying because my kid had to see it first alone.
And the mentality of some people that, oh, well it's fake. Well,
the technology is so precise that the skin color and
(35:32):
the skin tone matched ninety nine point nine percent at
the time, she was thirteen. And we all know that,
you know, that's a really delicate age.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
We've all been through puberty.
Speaker 7 (35:46):
I would say ninety five ninety percent of us agree
it sucks. You know, there's the influences that you're a girl,
like how do you look? And you know, then there's
the boys and the hormones, and so this was just
like next love psychologically abuse a psychological abuse because it
wasn't physical, right, and it wasn't verbal. It was an
(36:09):
image right that she had to look at. But man,
it does really affect the victim and their families.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Oh my heart's racing and breaking at the same time.
It's horrible. Before I launched into like how I would respond,
I just always want a caveat, like I'm here in
a studio with you, like if this you know any
of us in these moments, like, yeah, none of us
are doing any of this quote perfectly, but I'll try
to respond just from like a framework. I think the
first thing I'd want to say to my daughter is
(36:42):
I will be right there, like you go pick your
daughter up from that school immediately. Again, I'm going back
to like I'm so glad she called her mom. That
says a lot about the relationship. When the hard things happen,
I can go toward, not away, and I would just
have her in the car and I would like drive
just far enough that like no one else can see
(37:03):
you mean, it's the side of the road, somewhere in private,
and park the car and saying, I am so glad
you called me. I'm here for you, we're gonna get
through this together, and then like shut your mouth. Shut
your mouth. I actually think like that's probably my number
one script for parents these days is stop talking. Stop talking.
And because I'm a visual person, like when your kid's
(37:26):
going through anything hard, they're kind of like this egg
without a shell. I find that like this very evocative image.
They're just that's how they feel. They're spread out all
over and what they need you to be is like
shell energy, but more than that, like a container. And
that's often what we are for our kids. We are
their container so they can have feelings and the awful experience.
(37:49):
There's no advice, Like what advice am I giving to
my kid right now? Like it's all gonna be empty,
and right now my kid is just probably hollowed out
there this egg without a shell, what's the crack in
the shell? Like this just they were just completely violated.
The way they thought the world works was just violated
in front of them, because it's like that's not even me,
by the way, and now it's all over and people
think it's me, and it's just such a violation of
(38:11):
expectations that your kid's gonna have, yeah, really big reaction
and feelings and this is not logical. It's not illogical.
People always say that emotions. Just because emotions aren't logical,
that doesn't mean they're illogical. Like Mandarin is not ill English,
it's just not English. There are two different systems, and
when your kid is in a big emotional state, that's
(38:31):
what you are. You are a container, so your words
serve to establish that container. I'm so glad you called
I am right here. We are going to get through
this together. That's kind of like I am that edge.
And then I'm just gonna let my kid freaking collapse
into me and say all the things and get it
all out, and I'm gonna hug her and I'm gonna
be there. I'm gonna stop myself from saying I'm calling
the school right away. Maybe I am later, but right
(38:52):
now my kid needs me to just really be with her.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
It's so interesting because all of these scenarios that I
say to you, you have the most human advice for
And it's like me, as like a technology person, I'm like,
oh yeah, like people need to know the images aren't real,
but the impact is real. And oh, by the way,
when it comes to artificial intelligence, these are they mirror you,
and I almost want to explain this from a product
(39:27):
standpoint to help validate the child's feelings. And what I
love is that I am totally one hundred percent wrong
here and hearing you talk about it, you're like, you
deal with these new tech threats with the most important thing,
which is the container that makes us human.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, and look, I think, you know, I think that
I just have to say this because it's coming up
more and more. You're like, I'm just gonna say it
head on, Doctor Pecky. Do you ever worry that all
this parenting advice makes people just more anxious? This is
like my favorite question and min number one pet peeve.
Having a manager at work is helpful. Having fifty managers
(40:05):
at work would be very overwhelming. We live in a
world of fifty million parenting advice managers, right, And I
think the thing I just want to establish about what
I do and what we do a good inside. And
it is so important to make sure people know this
is not advice, it's not tips. It's actually the same foundations.
There's like nine foundations. We teach people how to apply
it to a million things. So when I hear deep
(40:26):
fakes honestly, it's it's this might sound weird, it's no
different than when your kid doesn't make the soccer team.
I'm not saying the situation is no different, but actually,
if we're always trying to learn a new system, when
every parenting situation changes, we are just adding our chaos
to our kids. Like, no one does that at work.
When you're in a job in your senior you're like,
hold on, let me come back to what I know.
(40:47):
How do I tend to work through projects? You're not
learning on the job every hour. And so the reason
I think it sounds human is actually what we're saying,
at least in the moment, has nothing to do with
deep fakes. It has to do with something violated happening.
My kid didn't think this was going to happen. It
was a huge surprise. It's awful. It's exposing when you
don't want to. That's actually probably in your body, a
(41:10):
more extreme version of what happens when a kid thinks
are getting the lead in the play at age five
and they go to the list and their name's not there.
And if we can see it through that lens, you're right,
not only is it human, but it actually feels a
little easier. You're like, oh, I kind of did that
when my kid was five for the play, and then
when my kid was eight for soccer, and I guess
now I'm doing it with the deep fake thing. But
kind of my approach is remarkably consistent.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
I actually feel like it's the most comforting thing I've
heard in a long time of looking through these threats,
kind of these like cutting edge threats of AI companions
and deep fakes. Like just this idea that like, oh,
this thing we can apply is like really the scaffolding
of what it's scaffolding, you know, And it's such a
beautiful sentiment. I think a lot of parents would breathe
a little bit of a sigh of relief. I know,
(41:53):
we kind of we have to ensue, and I really
want to get to some of the positives about artificial
intelligence because I think we're similar and that we both
can look at the concerns around technology. But also you
have Gigi, which is like an AI app modeled after you, right,
and so much of the advice because I genuinely believe
AI can be so powerful. So I'm going to play
(42:15):
one last sound from a friend of mine about AI
and parenting, and so we can hopefully end on a
note of how we can actually see promise in this.
Speaker 6 (42:27):
Hi, doctor Becky, I am so excited that I get
to ask you this question. I'm very grateful that my
dear friend Laurie provided me with this opportunity. I admire
the work that you do, and to be quite honest,
my therapist and I reference you frequently when we are
discussing motherhood and parenting. I know that there is a
lot of scary stuff out there for children in regards
to technology and AI, but my question comes from looking
(42:50):
at the positive side of it. I am a stay
at home mom and being a good mother is one
of the most important things in my life, so I'm
always looking to grow in it. How do you see
or technology and AI as a tool to better myself
as a mother to my child and for that matter,
as a family that includes my husband, daughter, and myself
and obviously our dog too. Thank you so much love
(43:12):
from Atlanta from Jackie.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Look, I actually think this is similar to how we
were talking about the other question with AI. When is
it helpful? When are their diminishing returns? And when does
something start to work more against you? Than for you.
So AI is great. You have a quick question, what
do I say when my kid gets off the bus
and this thing happens? Right, whether you go to CHATCHYBT
or Claude or you're in our app like you know,
(43:37):
and with our AI, you're gonna get a helpful answer,
and that can be so grounding. You're kind of running around,
You're like, wait, this thing just helped me have this
moment when I felt like a million bucks right to me.
The image I think about a lot with parenting. This
to me is when it stops being helpful and starts
being harmful is we're living in this world now with
like a million tips or a million CHATCHYBT answers, and
(43:59):
I picture them all flags. Flags don't get you far
if you don't have a ground to put them in.
You just have a lot of flags. And you're like,
I'm gonna try this thing, and my kid's not sleeping,
so I'm gonna say this thing, and I'm gonna do
this thing, and you don't, like, you don't have a why,
You don't actually understand if it helps, why it helped. Again,
(44:22):
you don't have a way of saying, I know why
this helped, and this is actually something I can repeat
as my kid's life changes, and so I can become
more and more dependent on an AI, which actually can
lead me not in one moment, but as a pattern
of moment. Not way to feel frantic, but to me,
this is the worst part of parenting. I just feel
like I've lost myself. We have all built up so
(44:44):
much from an adaptive place in our childhood, but it's
a lot of stuff in our adulthood that makes us
doubt ourselves, that makes us think, oh, someone else knows better, right.
I actually think so much of parenthood is like finding
the right guide to like kind of clear that out
and return to yourself where you're not just going to
a chat all the time saying what do I do?
(45:05):
When we're able to kind of say in a moment, okay,
I kind of understand what's going on, right, or if
you are even going, it's to help you think through
how to understand something, which is almost the opposite of
just collecting hundreds of flags and not having the ground
to plant them in. And so I guess my barometer
and what we always talk about a good inside is
I'm just gonna say this here I've been talking about
(45:26):
this term a lot, but I've never said it out
loud to anyone else. Now's the time, Okay, is called MVA.
Minimum viable advice. Uh huh, that's what we give people.
Everyone needs a little bit of advice or information. But
most of what's happening in a parenting situation that's hard
isn't the moment. It's our fear about what the moment means.
It's the way we take a moment and fast forward
(45:47):
our kid's life twenty years. And that's actually what we're
thinking about. And it's why a typical chat doesn't even
make us feel better over time, because we're not actually
looking for the thing to do in the moment. We're
actually scared of what it means. We're scared of the
story we're telling ourselves about what it means, and we're
scared about who our kid is going to be in
twenty years. And someone just saying what to say when
your kids get off the bus, we're like, Okay, I
(46:08):
did that, but why because that's not actually the core thing.
So when I think about minimum viable advice, sure we
all need a little guidance here there, but actually we
need to better understand what is really happening. What are
my frameworks like, what's actually going on for my kid?
What am I actually worried about? How can I understand that?
When we unpack that, that's what helps us feel more
grounded and steadier. And I think the ultimate measure in
(46:29):
parenting is saying I can handle anything that comes my way.
I'm not scared of the grocery store meltdown. I'm not
scared of the lie. I'm not scared of the time
my kid says I'm not listening to anymore. I'm too big.
I don't care. You know, I don't have to. I
know what those moments are about. That's the biggest flex
is not that everything is smooth and not that you
always have the answer, but you're not actually scared of
the thing around the corner. And none of that will
(46:51):
come from a lot of tips. I actually think tip
after tip after tip without a foundation probably gets this
further away from that, And so to me, that's the
way I would kind of use a barameter about whether
something is helpful long term.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
First of all, I love hearing how you talk about
like MVA. You're speaking tech terms in myg but in
apparenting scaffolding, which I just love you talked about like foundation.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
I know we have to end.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
I just want to say so much of launching the show,
which is about tech in humans. I've spent my career
interviewing folks in Silicon Valley and I am so excited
to launch this by talking to someone about humanity through
the lens of tech.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
That's just always kind of been the goal.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
And I think our children, in the world they grow
up in with AI is going to be one of
the most important questions that we answer. And so my
last question to you, I know it's personal to me.
I've always just kind of wanted to make the world
feel a little bit less alone, and I feel like you.
I feel that from you as well. But why is
this mission personal to you?
Speaker 3 (47:51):
I mean, I guess at the end of the day,
the world is is just a collection of humans doing
the best they can with the resources they have available
and as impacted by the health of the connections and
relationships they have. And you know, I'm probably a short
term pessimist and long term optimist and think that as
(48:12):
parents have more resources, as parents return to themselves, as
we can show up for our kids in a way
we're proud of more often and repair the other times.
That's that's the only way that we can actually leave
the next generation in a better place than ours, and
nothing better more than that.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Amazing, great, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Mostly Human is a production of iHeart Podcasts and mostly
human Media. It's produced and edited by Lori Siegel, Lauren Hanson,
and Nicole Bouchet. Sound design and mixing by Derek Clements.
Special thanks to Mark Weinhaus. Find us on all socials
at mostly human Media. You can also watch mostly Human
on our YouTube page. If you want to get in touch,
email comments at mostly human dot com. And if you
(48:58):
like what you hear, please raise, interview the show, and
share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
See you next week.
I've seen some crazy things covering tech for the last
fifteen years. People in love with robots, Internet conspiracy, rabbit holes,
whole industries.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Upended by innovation.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Cut to today, we are living through one of the
most extraordinary tech accelerations in human history. Artificial intelligence is
transforming society. There isn't an industry or a human that
won't be impacted. But as a longtime tech reporter and
a mom, nothing feels more personal to me than what
AI means for our children. When it comes to tech,
(00:36):
our kids become the ultimate beta testers, and as someone
who's spent my career looking around the corners, I can't
stop thinking about deep fakes, AI companions, the future of education,
and how this will fundamentally transform what it means for
our little ones to grow and thrive in today's world. Now,
don't get me wrong, I love the possibility of AI.
(01:00):
I use it all the time. It just feels more
high states and small hands.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
If we don't understand what feels good about something, we're
going to always miss out with our kids about the
things that draw them to that thing.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Which is why I wanted to launch a tech show
with the ultimate human expert, Doctor Becky.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
And if we don't understand what's going to draw them
to AI emotionally, and a lot will, then they're going
to have to keep that entire part of their life
separate from us, and we won't hear about it.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Now, if you're a parent, you know exactly who I'm
talking about. If not, Doctor Becky is called the millennial
parent Whisper. She's a clinical psychologist and the founder of
Good Inside, a website, community and an app that guides
parents through all the tricky phases. So I wanted doctor
Becky to help sort through some of the human questions
that AI is raising. She's here to give us all
(01:51):
a sense of agency, whether you're a parent or not.
She wants to help us face the anxiety around AI
and also embrace the positive potential of it place in
our lives. I'm Laurie Siegel, and you're listening to Mostly Humans,
a tech podcast through a human lens.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Doctor Becky.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I am so excited to be here with you, and
I have to just like confess, and I said this
to you before, but like I have to confess. I
was leaving the house. My child has had a stomach bug.
He was just at the doctor yesterday for a finger
infection and he just got his first sunburn. And I
was leaving the house and my husband was like, should
we call social services on herself? Like are we doing okay?
(02:31):
And I was like, do not say this. I am
going to interview doctor Becky. That's a bad omen. And
so yeah, that's here we are.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
But I'll say what I said to you about those moments.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
It sounds so much better coming from you.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You say it that I would say to your husband. No,
we are building resilience. That resilience is built in hard
moments with support, not rescuing. But oh that sunburn hurts.
Oh your belly hurts, Like you need the hard moment
and you need the support. That doesn't mean we should
give hard moments. That's not what I'm saying. But the
hard moments naturally arise because we're imperfect people raising imperfect people,
(03:07):
and the hard moments arise, and we actually don't want
to take them away. We just want to let our
kids know they can get through that. And so sounds
like that's what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I love that, John, Did you did you hear John?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
That was for you?
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Yep?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Love that.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Okay, Now that that's out of the way. My background
is covering technology. I've covered it for almost fifteen years,
which in tech years, just makes me feel very ancient.
But the human impact of tech and your background is
just you are this force in the parenting community. And
what's so interesting is five years ago you didn't even
have an Instagram account, like you were practicing psychologists here
(03:42):
in New York City helping council families behind closed doors.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Technology has some.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Degree just like opened you up to the world and
gifted us all so many of these insights that I
think make so many parents feel less alone. I'm curious, like,
how do you feel at this point about becoming an
online figure, especially representing something that's just so incredibly powerful.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, I mean I've never been asked that question. How
do I feel about that part? I mean, I guess
in some ways I feel conflicted. I mean, what I
don't feel at all conflicted about and what I feel
so grateful for is I feel like I get to
wake up every day and think about topics and come
up with new ideas and hear people's stories and connect
(04:26):
with families in ways that just light me up inside.
Like to actually say, you spend a lot of your
waking hours doing the things that light you up. I'm
only grateful for that part. The part that I guess
I feel a little more conflicted about is, yeah, like,
the thing that keeps us all human, and the thing
that really matters for our mental health, for our groundedness,
(04:48):
you know, up until this point at least for the
evolution of our species is the way we connect with
one another. Human connection is the essence of attachment. Attachment
is such an evolutionary force. We kind of need other people,
need to be on stood by other people, and we
also need friction with other people. It's through those moments
of friction and relationships. Oh you didn't get me. I
wanted to tell you a story and you're not really listening,
(05:09):
and I want to tell you about my day, and
you want to tell me about your day, and how
are we going to manage that? And you try to
fix the situation when I just wanted you to listen, Like,
it's actually all those moments of friction, yeah, that give
us identity and purpose and resilience. And So when I
think about my online persona, the only part of it
(05:30):
I guess I feel conflicted about is wanting to continue
to show up in a way that's never too polished,
that never has me pretending to be someone I'm not.
So why I try to say all the time, like
all this doctor Becky's stuff, I don't do myself, and
I really don't, and I feel guilty about that, Like
I'm a parent. I'm trying to do my best every
day and I'm messing up every other moment too. And
(05:53):
so I think there's something that happens when people go
online that there's this veneer, there's this pedestal, and that
actually takes away from the humanness, and so that part
I just try to, you know, really steer clear from.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I think it's so interesting what you say about this
idea of friction, and I want to get into that
actually through the lens of artificial intelligence. I spend like
so much time kind of in the AI space and
weird Reddit threads and talking you know, in the in
corners of the Internet. But before I get into I'd
(06:25):
love to talk just a little bit about the community
that you've built good inside, because it's not just doctor Becky.
It's like it's doctor Becky and community of parents who
through this platform are sharing what's top of mind. Sharing
fears and worries. When we look at this through the
lens of technology, you almost kind of have this like
(06:45):
magic wand where you kind of know what's top of
mind for your community. So what do you see most
from parents and children when it comes to their concerns
about technology?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
What are they saying?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Oh, yeah, a couple of things when it comes to technology.
I think number one, we're hesitant to see or it's
just hard to see how kind of large of a
role technology plays in our family's life and in our
family struggle. So on the surface, let's say, oh, my
kid never listens, MIKEI never listens. We're always late, and
they don't listen to take a shower, and they don't
(07:14):
listen for homework. And it's so easy to just stay
at that level of Okay, well why are they listening?
Why aren't they listening? But what you might be missing
is something at the system level. That's always the level
I think, not just about a tip up here, it's
actually about a system and kind of resetting the emotional
infrastructure down here. Oh, give an example of screens. And
again this is not about blame, it's just about understanding
(07:37):
the system. Well, if this kid. When this kid, this
nine year old gets home from school is on their
iPad all the time. Okay, and again there's probably good
reasons for that, even technology there, Well, my kid is
getting used to coming home and having a ton of
dopamine with not a lot of effort. So kind of
effortless dopamine is how I think about it. I just
(07:57):
can sit here. The excitement comes to me, the winds
come to me. By the time you're asking that kid
to do homework. Are you joking me? That's like me
having I don't know thirty ice cream Sundays and my
husband asking me to have dinner. Like I'm not doing
dinner now, I do know what I've just done. And
so I think one of the first things we see
in the community is actually this tendency to just look
at the struggles we're having with our kids and not
(08:19):
think about the structure that's actually underneath, and how big
of a role tech is playing in a structure that's
not really setting our kid up for success. And then
I think the other thing that comes up all the
time is just how unwinnable this feels to parents. It's
so unfair that kids have access to so much so
much technology that everyone kind of knows isn't good for them,
(08:40):
but it's kind of left to parents to regulate individually,
which which really feels like kind of an unfair system.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
And I think so many parents feel like and this
is coming from me having like looked at technology for
the last fifteen years, being like, oh, can I even
prepare myself or prepare my child to grow up in
this world that looks so different than the world that
I grew up in. I think that there is a
feeling of anxiety and a lack of preparation. So what
do you say to parents who say, you know, I'm
(09:09):
finally wrapping my head around social media and now we
have AI and AI companions and all of these new things, Like,
what's your advice for parents who are looking at it
through that lens?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So Number one, my you know, response is just compassion, like, yes,
the technology is moving at such a fast pace and
we are being asked to try to manage something for
our kids that we don't fully understand ourselves. So my
first response is right there with you, this is really hard.
Number two, I actually think it's our curiosity that's one
of our best parental kind of traits and assets, and
(09:42):
you actually can't be curious about something you fully understand.
So actually not knowing something, being confused by something, being
willing to say I don't actually have all the answers,
those are necessary conditions to be curious, right, because you know,
if I understood everything about your job and you asked
me to ask a question, I'd say like, I'm sorry,
I don't have any questions. I kind of understand the
(10:03):
whole thing. If I don't understand it, I can ask
a million questions, which is actually a beautiful thing. And
so for the parent listening who's thinking, I don't even
understand AI fully myself, but I know it's kind of
coming into play with my kids homework or they're going
to it for emotional support. Just to say to yourself,
not understanding everything is actually going to work more in
my favor because now I can ask questions that are
(10:24):
really questions and we can figure this out together instead
of asking questions that are actually just judgment with the
question mark at the end, which never plays well with children.
And then number three, I think and this came up
for me as soon as you started asking the question
when in doubt coming back to the same kind of
(10:44):
jobs in my mind, in my language, we always have
as a parent is always going to be a useful
framework when there's some world change or technology change. And
so I always tell parents that we want to do
our job well. Every parent, your parent says, I want
to do a good job as a parent. But if
I said to you, what is your job? Like, what
are the things that make up your job? Most parents say,
(11:06):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Definitely keeping my kid alive, Definitely, keeping your life number one,
number one, making sure he's I mean, god, now I
feel like, why did I just bring this on myself
to try to do?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
If I can answer, this is no popod. So so
to me, there's two things that we would say a
good inside we call these family jobs to come back to,
which is setting boundaries and then kind of understanding what's
happening for your kid through connection validation. So let's say
boundaries and understanding. So start with boundaries over and over
(11:37):
is apparently set boundaries. It doesn't matter what the technology is.
Setting boundaries is always going to be something I do
to help keep my kids safe. Boundaries are limits we set.
Boundaries are rules we make that tend to have a
sense of what's good for someone long term, maybe not
just optimizing for you know, short term. Bedtime is a
boundary we set, you know, the food they eat is
a boundary we set when they get over sleepovers or
(12:00):
how many after school activities technology. So I just think
that's a powerful framework. No matter what is going on
with AI, I'm probably gonna have to set some boundaries, right, okay.
And then when you set a boundary with a kid,
especially if they're not used to it, they always have
the same reaction. And this is so important because we
have such fantasies about what's going to happen. Like I
think people think, I say to my kids screen time
(12:22):
is over, and they go, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, like your doctor, Becky, of course the envision that's
what happened, right.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Or they say like, I really appreciate you protecting my
long term interests because I'm not able to do that.
You're such a sturdy leader. No boundaries are always followed
with your kids. Protest all ways, and we somehow keep
letting ourselves be surprised by this. But if you know
they're going to be followed with protest, and you're someone
who likes to do your job, well, it's actually good
(12:49):
news because you might think, oh, then I can do
the other part of my job. So my kid's going
to be upset, let's say about the end of screen time,
But then I can do the understanding piece. Oh you
wish you could watch another show, You wish you could
stay up later. You wish is almost especially when your
kids are young, good language just to start using. Right,
you wish you could have ice cream for breakfast, whatever
it is? Right, But when you understand your kid, you
(13:11):
still hold the boundary. Understanding doesn't mean you change the boundary.
And the reason I come back to these jobs is
if I'm starting to think about AI, I would start
to think what are the boundaries around it? And sometimes
boundaries aren't just things we say, they're actually things we do.
What is my kid of access to for their computer?
How often is my kid allowed to be on technology
(13:31):
in their own room? If at all, is my kid
allowed to have an iPad in their room? What's on
their iPad? Are their iPads set up as a child
or as an adult. Most of us think our kids
iPads are set up with our kids as a kid,
So we can control a lot of kids if we
didn't do it for them, have worked their way around it,
and they're set up as an adult. That's something i'd
(13:51):
want to change. That's a boundary. My kid's going to
be upset and then I can understand, and so to me,
those are jobs I can come back to even as
I'm learning a new technology.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
I love this idea of looking at AI through the
lens of boundaries, right, I've always looked at it from it.
If I put on my tech ad through the lens
of like guardrails, but you're putting it. But on the
parenting side, it's like through. It's like one and the same.
This is a good time because we had people were
obviously very excited that you were going to be on
the show, and so we had some folks calling with
(14:30):
some questions. So I'm going to play one of them
now because I think this is a woman who has
a question about chat GPT and her child, and I
feel like now is the perfect time to play the tack. Great. Hi.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
So my daughter, who is twelve, decided to use chat
GPT to ask a question about test taking and studying tips.
And she was telling me about this casually one day
while we were folding laundry, and she said that she
got some great tests taking tips, but then chatjpt started
(15:04):
to prompt her about her feelings and give feelings advice,
and so we pause the conversation and we talked about
the different ways that we could use CHATJPT and other
AI or technology to help us source information synthesize information,
but that we should be particularly wary of and careful
about any type of AI tool that is trying to
(15:30):
ask questions about feelings or give advice about feelings. We
talked a bit about other young people who have used
AI tools that have loved done down paths to suicide
or other harmful behavior. And I think she's super smart
and gets all of this, but I was wondering what
more can I do as a parent, What more can
parents do as our tweens begin engaging with AI and
(15:54):
technology in school and in other settings, and how we
can prepare them to discern what is a good use,
what's a not so good use, and when to be
really skeptical of the types of information that an AI
tool is providing to them.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
This is a fantastic question, I mean, it really is.
So I'm going to say the thing that's loudest on
my mind and then I'll expand on it. I think
probably the most important thing to do with your kid
around AI and this is a great question, when is
it being used in a way that feels like it's
helping me practically getting information? And when am I starting
to rely on it for kind of emotional support in
(16:35):
a way that might work against me long term than
for me. To me, the most important thing you can
do as a parent is keep the conversation open. I
would actually say this with any tricky topic with our kid.
And the reason I think that's so important is it's
actually going against what feels really natural in the moment.
It's not that we want to end a conversation, but
we want to say things like, so do this and
(16:57):
not this right. We want to give a lessons right,
anytime we give a final lesson, this is the right
way to do it. What happens for my kid is
they're thinking, okay, So if I ever go to do
it in a way that's against this rule, ooh, my
parents is gonna be upset with me. Right. I don't
really know who I could go talk to if I
know one thing about tweens and teens growing up in
(17:18):
an ai age. They're gonna have a lot of tricky situations,
a lot of messy situations. I said to my kid recently,
my fourteen year old, you know, if you were walking
to a town and you wanted to get there and
all of a sudden there's a shortcut, what do you
take it? He was like, yeah, this is a trick question.
I was like, yeah, I would too.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Good.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Okay, You're growing up at a time when there is
this shortcut for every academic and emotional thing you ever
go through, Like that is so hard because this shortcut
isn't like the shortcut to the town. It is a shortcut.
But the way it will add up over time is
(17:58):
it and things we've talked about it. It's gonna be
harder to think about things yourself. It's gonna be harder
to tolerate people not getting it right. It's going to,
over time, maybe take away from the things you're trying
to build to function in the world. But it is
a shortcut. I'm not gonna pretend it's not. And so
what a hard thing. And so if we use that
as a baseline, not my kid is lazy, not my
(18:19):
kid is lying, but oh my goodness, to be a
teen growing up with such a readily available academic and
emotional shortcut that we say isn't good for them, but
is a shortcut with an underdeveloped refrontal cortex.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I think the best thing I could do as a
parent is just continue to be a home base for
my kid to come to, because they are going to
need it. I think the cost to not being emotionally
connected to your kid has just never been higher because
our kids are just going to face endlessly more tricky
situations because of all the technology. Now, that doesn't mean
(18:57):
quote approval or throwing a I'm not saying you should
say to your kid if you ever use chatch Ept
to cheat on your paper, let's go out to ice cream. No, okay.
And the reason I think that's funny is we tend
to think in extremes. Yeah, either I'm saying you can't
do that, or I'm throwing them a party. What's in
the middle is keeping a conversation open. So I'll just
model that because I think modeling is sometimes you know
(19:18):
the best way to get it across. Based on what
this parent was saying, Wow, so you use chatchipt to
help you get some study skills? Is that right, right?
Did I get that right? That's just such a powerful
thing to say to a kid, Did I get that right?
Or to your husband or your wife, whoever it is.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I'm like literally just like taking like mental notes.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I'm like, thank god, this is taped, like note to Laurie,
keep this okay.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
So actually I'm gonna start again. The number one thing
I would say to your kid to start with when
they talk to about anything related to AI is start
by saying, I'm so glad you're talking to me about this,
because there's something much more meta you're communicating to your
kid in that moment, which is these types of messy
topics are things that can kind of be held in
(20:01):
our relationship. That's so powerful. I'm so glad you're talking
to me about this. Then just mirror back what they say.
So let me see if I got this right. You
were talking to chat GBT, you got some study scale
tips and that was really helpful. Did I get that right?
And kids like yeah? And then something different happened. It
kind of veered off into a conversation maybe about how
you're feeling. Is that right? Yes? And this is this
(20:23):
is probably what i'd say to my kid what was
that like? And if I have a kind of people
pleasing kid, they'll probably say, oh, it's bad. I know
that's wrong. And this is where I think, if we
want to play the long game, I'd probably say, look,
maybe this sounds weird, but did any part of it
kind of feel good? It can feel good when someone
just says back to you what they see happening emotionally,
(20:45):
because if we don't understand what feels good about something,
we're going to always miss out with our kids about
the things that draw them to that thing. And if
we don't understand what's going to draw them to AI emotionally,
and a lot will, then they're gonna have to keep
that entire part of their life separate from us and
we won't hear about it. And the way I would
(21:06):
just keep that conversation open versus closed, is if I
was going to close the conversation, and it would feel
better to a parent because it feels final. You'd say,
I'm glad we talked about this, So don't go to
chat ept for emotional stuff. Do go to logical stuff
right right? And like I tell myself, oh, I feel
like really good. As a parent, I just think life
is a lot messier than that. Like, I just don't
think at age twelve now, from twelve through whenever, every
(21:29):
time my kid's going through something emotionally, they're going to
be like I remember that talk I had of my parent.
They said yes, this, no, this, So that's what I'm
going to do. That's not how our emotions work. I'd
rather leave a conversation open like this again, I'm so
glad you told me that. Look, there's probably going to
be a moment when something feels emotionally hard, emotionally messy,
and maybe you might think about coming to me, but
(21:50):
there might be something enticing about just talking to a
computer who probably is always available, never has their own agenda,
never gets upset, yeah, and always says something that's like,
oh that feels good. And I just want to tell
you when that moment comes, when that feels interesting or enticing,
that's actually a moment i'd love you to tell me about.
I anticipate the moment's going to come. Maybe it already has.
(22:14):
I'm not kind of ignorant to that fact. And so
what I'm really doing is, in some ways I'm opening
the door for more conversations instead of kind of closing
all those future doors.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, God, it's so powerful to hear you talk about it,
because I look at how the AI is developed, right,
which you touched on, which is in many ways it's affirmative.
It's always on, it always has an answer, it will
go in the direction that you want it to go in.
These systems are so incredibly powerful. This is social media
on steroids beyond. And I think, to hear you say, okay,
(22:49):
well we need to actually do the thing that's human
to counter the thing that's technology is actually really powerful.
And then I want to go back to something you
said about the mess. It is hard to be human.
Being human is weird, Like being to be vulnerable is
really tough. Intimacy as like I think you said this before.
Intimacy is like awkward, yes, right, Like humanity is messy,
(23:13):
but it's the mess that makes us find purpose. I
think back to when I was eleven or twelve, which
were kind of painful years for me to be quiet.
I mean for many right, So it's like I'm no
special flower here.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
I'm not like you know.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
But you know, I think about it growing up a
kid in Georgia, the only Jewish girl are very Christian
conservative school parents having a really nasty divorce. And I
think about AI, right, And I used to write my
feelings in a journal.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I had journals and journals full of how I was feeling.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And I always try to say this, like to parents
who were trying to understand AI and companionship and why
would people be talking to these Imagine if the journal
talked back. Imagine if it was always on and always there.
Imagine if the journal played the role of the boyfriend
I couldn't get, or the therapist I didn't have access
to at the time, or you know, the parent or
(24:02):
emulated a parent figure to me. Would that have been
helpful or would that have taken me further from my
reality of feeling this isolation? Because I think that isolation
probably and that feeling and that tension probably made me
who I am and why I'm sitting here with you, right,
and had a certain empathy and understanding for people. So
(24:23):
as we look at a future with AI, what happens
when our children aren't going to be growing up experiencing
the mess of what it means to be human when
it comes to kind of AI and that loss of friction.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
I mean, I think this is in some ways good
Inside's new rais on tetra, like you know, a reason
to exist. I mean it's terrifying, you know. It's the
thing that kind of keeps me up at night. I mean,
we are all drawn to convenience in the short term
over what's good to us in the long term. We
can't help it. As humans, we love the comfort of it.
It's so comfortable. Our bodies are drawn to that. AI
(25:00):
now is in a place I don't even know where
it's going to be yours now where again, what's there
is immediate comfort and it's really sophisticated comfort.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It's not just a lolly life.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's anymore. Right. And so you know what I think
the nuance is is so I experienced something messy as
a human, and if I can bring it to a
container that is sycophantic, that just mirrors it all back
to me. Right, always available, never tire never reacts.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
My inkling, if I'm honest is let's say the first
two times making that up number. But that feels nice, okay, right?
I want I wonder if you could have used your
journal to talk back to you a handful of times,
if that would have felt really grounding. You know, I
hear you, Laurie, You're right, this feels hard because it
is hard. You're not crazy. You're going to get through it.
And making that up right, there could be something then.
(25:56):
I think it's about not just diminishing returns, but where
the trajectory is really changes.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
You Know.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
One of the things I'm always thinking about with kids
and why I care so much about the work we're
doing at Good Inside, is the early years become the
factory settings for all of our teenage and adult years.
The early years matter so much because it forms the
circuitry on our body. What should I expect in the world?
How do things work? What do I expect of myself?
(26:23):
What do I expect of interactions? What can I expect
of other people? What happens when I'm upset? Who do
I go to? What happens then? How quickly do I
go from one hundred to a zero when I'm upset?
What is my expectation of the other person or the
other entity? Do they listen right away? Do I sometimes
have to wait? Do I write this is actually what's happening?
And now fast forward to adulthood. There's two parts of
(26:46):
the road I think that I'm concerned about. One is
will we just be so intolerant of human relationships that
we proverbially keep ourselves at home? What go talk to someone? Right?
You're right? Human interactions are awkward. You can't make the
awkward un awkward, asking someone out on a date, talking
(27:07):
to someone about something that's hard for you. These are
hard moments and the only way they start to become
easier is you just do them a lot. It's pure
reps in practice. So one part of me thinks, what's
going to be our literal ability if all of our
early circuitry says, when something's hard, it gets easy right away.
(27:28):
When something's hard, someone's always there right away. When you
start talking, immediately it says something back, and it's perfect,
and it's not reactive, and it's never triggered, and it
never asks you to consider another viewpoint. Right? Well, how
am I going to go talk to a friend or
a boyfriend? Right?
Speaker 4 (27:44):
So?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Just am I going to be unable? The other thing
scares me? Maybe even more where and I already see
this where if I'm accustomed as a kid, especially to
people fixing my problems, me rescuing me from my disappointment
when someone doesn't forget being awkward. Why, it's a little like,
(28:09):
why are you making me feel this disappointment? Why are
you making me feel this way? Who is responsible for
this frustration? Because I am very accustomed to having frustration,
and my AI companion just taking it down from a
hundred to a zero. So now when I even feel
(28:30):
frustration at a one, it feels like in a thousand
because my body has no coping scale, and that leads
to a lot of rage.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I think what you're saying is you're touching on something
that if I could kind of put on my tech
human lens of saying, oh, guys, we got to look
around the corner. I can't stop thinking about AI companions
and young men, new generation of young men that don't
have to that haven't had to go through the friction
of having a crush on the girl getting rejected. And
(29:01):
we're in a different agent social media where okay, we've
now seen the outcome of us being in these filter
bubbles and having algorithms pushes towards people like us.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
We have a harder time having a conversation now.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
With each other, right, and people who have different viewpoints
now with artificial intelligence. This is an even more powerful
tool that has a capacity for exactly what you just described,
and I would love There aren't many studies that have
come out on AI companionship and young men, but there's
one that actually hasn't been published yet. But a friend
of mine, she's a computational social scientist who studies human
(29:35):
behavior and digital footprint.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
She also happens to be a new mom as well, so.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
We talk AI data and little humans too, and she
actually I asked her to send a little voice note
about a study that's coming out and emerging, and it
is so spot on to what you're talking about. So
I'd love to just play that and get your response.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
So the signs of a companionship is still in its infancy,
I would say, but there are already some interesting patterns
that we're seeing. So, for example, there's more and more
evidence that, at least in the short term, using AI
companions can actually be quite beneficial for psychological well being
and loneliness. But what's interesting here is that the long
(30:14):
term impact could be more negative, especially when you look
beyond the individual who's actually using THEAI companion. The Reasons
study by MIKHAILA Rodriguez at the University of Michigan, for instance,
where they got young men to use an AI companion
for seven weeks, and what they found is that these
young men actually felt better after those seven weeks, but
(30:37):
they also became more sexist and aggressive, which you know,
isn't entirely surprising when you consider that these AI companions
are often intentionally designed to be somewhat submissive and to
provide this unconditional validation. So the challenge that I think
we're potentially facing here is that our expectations for what
(30:58):
human to human relationships should look like might shift over time,
and that's really the dynamic that we need to understand better.
Is it that AI companions help us feel less lonely
and more connected in the short term, but then they
actually prevent us from having more meaningful real world relationships,
which could obviously make us even more lonely and miserable
(31:22):
in the long run.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
So my first reaction to that is, I don't think
the companions that the core changed the expectation of human
to human relationships. They inherently change our tolerance for the reality,
the emotional reality of human to human relationships. And so
the short term data that people feel better better is
it could be a tricky thing. You know, nobody says
(31:44):
I want someone to feel worse. But a lot of things,
most things that make us feel the most better in
the short term are the least good for us in
the long term. And I'll tell you what's coming to mind,
because I'll never forget this session I had with this
you know, I don't know. He's probably like a thirty
five year old guy. He started seeing me. He was
totally sober, but he had a long history of drugs, heroine,
(32:06):
and he you know, it was very hard for him
to tolerate distress in his life, especially relational distress. Really committed to,
you know, a sober life. And I remember just saying
to him, thereby's gonna help you. I just want to
be honest, It's gonna help you and to learn a lot.
What I teach you will never be as good as Heroin.
I just want to say that to you. It's never
like what I have in this room is not heroin.
(32:27):
Like like heroin from what I know of it, even
though I'm not a user, will take you from whatever
you're feeling high, you know, distress to totally numbing that out.
It is gone in a second. What I'm gonna teach
you is when you feel upset, something that feels like
a ten, it's not going to a zero. It'll go
to a nine and three quarters nine and a half.
The best it's gonna get in that whole first day
(32:50):
is an eight. I'm just gonna tell you what I
have to sell.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Now.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
The good parts are you're not gonna have all the
negative stuff that was associated. Right, And we kind of
laughed about it, but if we were looking at what
made him feel better, we would say heroine all day long.
Now we know that that's not a good long term solution,
and I think we're talking about the same thing. So
I think when we're even looking at metrics like how
someone feels better is a really important part of a study,
(33:20):
not just the level to which they feel better. Something
that can make you feel from so bad to so good.
The faster it does that, the probably the worse it
is for you long term.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
And that is what we're beginning to see with artificial intelligence.
In a nutshell, it's exactly It's so funny because it's
exactly what you explained before. She said that these are
the early results are showing this. I worry about young men,
and I worry a lot about children and artificial intelligence,
and I want to get into it before before we
end about kind of the positives, because I think there's
(33:53):
going to be some really interesting places.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
One.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I love this idea of being able to have you
here and just like play stuff for you, because I
feel like I sometimes go into these dark corners of
the web, and so I would love, you know, to
talk a little bit about deep fakes and bullying with you,
because parents all the time are like, well, you say,
there are all these threats coming, what do we do?
(34:18):
And so now I'm like, okay, doctor Becky's with us.
So now I can say, here's what we can do.
This is a type of threat that's coming into schools.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
And so I was wondering.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I know that at Good Inside you have these scripts
for all these scenarios that we face as parents and
how to talk to you know, how parents can talk
about them. So I'd love to kind of like live
collab on a script for these emerging harms when it
comes to AI and our children. So I'm going to
give you a scenario. A mom in Florida receives a
panic call from her eighth grade daughter during the school day.
(34:47):
She says, I need you to come pick me up
right now. I saw a picture of me naked, but
it's not really me, mom. She then goes on to
learn that two boys at her daughter's middle school had
exchanged new deep fake photos they made on an app
of more than fifteen classmates and teachers. The image might
not be real, but that impact surely feels real.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
So I'm going to play the sound. This is from
her mother.
Speaker 7 (35:09):
It was my daughter's face on this body with the
same skin color tone that I got nauseous and I
started crying because my kid had to see it first alone.
And the mentality of some people that, oh, well it's fake. Well,
the technology is so precise that the skin color and
(35:32):
the skin tone matched ninety nine point nine percent at
the time, she was thirteen. And we all know that,
you know, that's a really delicate age.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
We've all been through puberty.
Speaker 7 (35:46):
I would say ninety five ninety percent of us agree
it sucks. You know, there's the influences that you're a girl,
like how do you look? And you know, then there's
the boys and the hormones, and so this was just
like next love psychologically abuse a psychological abuse because it
wasn't physical, right, and it wasn't verbal. It was an
(36:09):
image right that she had to look at. But man,
it does really affect the victim and their families.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Oh my heart's racing and breaking at the same time.
It's horrible. Before I launched into like how I would respond,
I just always want a caveat, like I'm here in
a studio with you, like if this you know any
of us in these moments, like, yeah, none of us
are doing any of this quote perfectly, but I'll try
to respond just from like a framework. I think the
first thing I'd want to say to my daughter is
(36:42):
I will be right there, like you go pick your
daughter up from that school immediately. Again, I'm going back
to like I'm so glad she called her mom. That
says a lot about the relationship. When the hard things happen,
I can go toward, not away, and I would just
have her in the car and I would like drive
just far enough that like no one else can see
(37:03):
you mean, it's the side of the road, somewhere in private,
and park the car and saying, I am so glad
you called me. I'm here for you, we're gonna get
through this together, and then like shut your mouth. Shut
your mouth. I actually think like that's probably my number
one script for parents these days is stop talking. Stop talking.
And because I'm a visual person, like when your kid's
(37:26):
going through anything hard, they're kind of like this egg
without a shell. I find that like this very evocative image.
They're just that's how they feel. They're spread out all
over and what they need you to be is like
shell energy, but more than that, like a container. And
that's often what we are for our kids. We are
their container so they can have feelings and the awful experience.
(37:49):
There's no advice, Like what advice am I giving to
my kid right now? Like it's all gonna be empty,
and right now my kid is just probably hollowed out
there this egg without a shell, what's the crack in
the shell? Like this just they were just completely violated.
The way they thought the world works was just violated
in front of them, because it's like that's not even me,
by the way, and now it's all over and people
think it's me, and it's just such a violation of
(38:11):
expectations that your kid's gonna have, yeah, really big reaction
and feelings and this is not logical. It's not illogical.
People always say that emotions. Just because emotions aren't logical,
that doesn't mean they're illogical. Like Mandarin is not ill English,
it's just not English. There are two different systems, and
when your kid is in a big emotional state, that's
(38:31):
what you are. You are a container, so your words
serve to establish that container. I'm so glad you called
I am right here. We are going to get through
this together. That's kind of like I am that edge.
And then I'm just gonna let my kid freaking collapse
into me and say all the things and get it
all out, and I'm gonna hug her and I'm gonna
be there. I'm gonna stop myself from saying I'm calling
the school right away. Maybe I am later, but right
(38:52):
now my kid needs me to just really be with her.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
It's so interesting because all of these scenarios that I
say to you, you have the most human advice for
And it's like me, as like a technology person, I'm like,
oh yeah, like people need to know the images aren't real,
but the impact is real. And oh, by the way,
when it comes to artificial intelligence, these are they mirror you,
and I almost want to explain this from a product
(39:27):
standpoint to help validate the child's feelings. And what I
love is that I am totally one hundred percent wrong
here and hearing you talk about it, you're like, you
deal with these new tech threats with the most important thing,
which is the container that makes us human.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, and look, I think, you know, I think that
I just have to say this because it's coming up
more and more. You're like, I'm just gonna say it
head on, Doctor Pecky. Do you ever worry that all
this parenting advice makes people just more anxious? This is
like my favorite question and min number one pet peeve.
Having a manager at work is helpful. Having fifty managers
(40:05):
at work would be very overwhelming. We live in a
world of fifty million parenting advice managers, right, And I
think the thing I just want to establish about what
I do and what we do a good inside. And
it is so important to make sure people know this
is not advice, it's not tips. It's actually the same foundations.
There's like nine foundations. We teach people how to apply
it to a million things. So when I hear deep
(40:26):
fakes honestly, it's it's this might sound weird, it's no
different than when your kid doesn't make the soccer team.
I'm not saying the situation is no different, but actually,
if we're always trying to learn a new system, when
every parenting situation changes, we are just adding our chaos
to our kids. Like, no one does that at work.
When you're in a job in your senior you're like,
hold on, let me come back to what I know.
(40:47):
How do I tend to work through projects? You're not
learning on the job every hour. And so the reason
I think it sounds human is actually what we're saying,
at least in the moment, has nothing to do with
deep fakes. It has to do with something violated happening.
My kid didn't think this was going to happen. It
was a huge surprise. It's awful. It's exposing when you
don't want to. That's actually probably in your body, a
(41:10):
more extreme version of what happens when a kid thinks
are getting the lead in the play at age five
and they go to the list and their name's not there.
And if we can see it through that lens, you're right,
not only is it human, but it actually feels a
little easier. You're like, oh, I kind of did that
when my kid was five for the play, and then
when my kid was eight for soccer, and I guess
now I'm doing it with the deep fake thing. But
kind of my approach is remarkably consistent.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
I actually feel like it's the most comforting thing I've
heard in a long time of looking through these threats,
kind of these like cutting edge threats of AI companions
and deep fakes. Like just this idea that like, oh,
this thing we can apply is like really the scaffolding
of what it's scaffolding, you know, And it's such a
beautiful sentiment. I think a lot of parents would breathe
a little bit of a sigh of relief. I know,
(41:53):
we kind of we have to ensue, and I really
want to get to some of the positives about artificial
intelligence because I think we're similar and that we both
can look at the concerns around technology. But also you
have Gigi, which is like an AI app modeled after you, right,
and so much of the advice because I genuinely believe
AI can be so powerful. So I'm going to play
(42:15):
one last sound from a friend of mine about AI
and parenting, and so we can hopefully end on a
note of how we can actually see promise in this.
Speaker 6 (42:27):
Hi, doctor Becky, I am so excited that I get
to ask you this question. I'm very grateful that my
dear friend Laurie provided me with this opportunity. I admire
the work that you do, and to be quite honest,
my therapist and I reference you frequently when we are
discussing motherhood and parenting. I know that there is a
lot of scary stuff out there for children in regards
to technology and AI, but my question comes from looking
(42:50):
at the positive side of it. I am a stay
at home mom and being a good mother is one
of the most important things in my life, so I'm
always looking to grow in it. How do you see
or technology and AI as a tool to better myself
as a mother to my child and for that matter,
as a family that includes my husband, daughter, and myself
and obviously our dog too. Thank you so much love
(43:12):
from Atlanta from Jackie.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Look, I actually think this is similar to how we
were talking about the other question with AI. When is
it helpful? When are their diminishing returns? And when does
something start to work more against you? Than for you.
So AI is great. You have a quick question, what
do I say when my kid gets off the bus
and this thing happens? Right, whether you go to CHATCHYBT
or Claude or you're in our app like you know,
(43:37):
and with our AI, you're gonna get a helpful answer,
and that can be so grounding. You're kind of running around,
You're like, wait, this thing just helped me have this
moment when I felt like a million bucks right to me.
The image I think about a lot with parenting. This
to me is when it stops being helpful and starts
being harmful is we're living in this world now with
like a million tips or a million CHATCHYBT answers, and
(43:59):
I picture them all flags. Flags don't get you far
if you don't have a ground to put them in.
You just have a lot of flags. And you're like,
I'm gonna try this thing, and my kid's not sleeping,
so I'm gonna say this thing, and I'm gonna do
this thing, and you don't, like, you don't have a why,
You don't actually understand if it helps, why it helped. Again,
(44:22):
you don't have a way of saying, I know why
this helped, and this is actually something I can repeat
as my kid's life changes, and so I can become
more and more dependent on an AI, which actually can
lead me not in one moment, but as a pattern
of moment. Not way to feel frantic, but to me,
this is the worst part of parenting. I just feel
like I've lost myself. We have all built up so
(44:44):
much from an adaptive place in our childhood, but it's
a lot of stuff in our adulthood that makes us
doubt ourselves, that makes us think, oh, someone else knows better, right.
I actually think so much of parenthood is like finding
the right guide to like kind of clear that out
and return to yourself where you're not just going to
a chat all the time saying what do I do?
(45:05):
When we're able to kind of say in a moment, okay,
I kind of understand what's going on, right, or if
you are even going, it's to help you think through
how to understand something, which is almost the opposite of
just collecting hundreds of flags and not having the ground
to plant them in. And so I guess my barometer
and what we always talk about a good inside is
I'm just gonna say this here I've been talking about
(45:26):
this term a lot, but I've never said it out
loud to anyone else. Now's the time, Okay, is called MVA.
Minimum viable advice. Uh huh, that's what we give people.
Everyone needs a little bit of advice or information. But
most of what's happening in a parenting situation that's hard
isn't the moment. It's our fear about what the moment means.
It's the way we take a moment and fast forward
(45:47):
our kid's life twenty years. And that's actually what we're
thinking about. And it's why a typical chat doesn't even
make us feel better over time, because we're not actually
looking for the thing to do in the moment. We're
actually scared of what it means. We're scared of the
story we're telling ourselves about what it means, and we're
scared about who our kid is going to be in
twenty years. And someone just saying what to say when
your kids get off the bus, we're like, Okay, I
(46:08):
did that, but why because that's not actually the core thing.
So when I think about minimum viable advice, sure we
all need a little guidance here there, but actually we
need to better understand what is really happening. What are
my frameworks like, what's actually going on for my kid?
What am I actually worried about? How can I understand that?
When we unpack that, that's what helps us feel more
grounded and steadier. And I think the ultimate measure in
(46:29):
parenting is saying I can handle anything that comes my way.
I'm not scared of the grocery store meltdown. I'm not
scared of the lie. I'm not scared of the time
my kid says I'm not listening to anymore. I'm too big.
I don't care. You know, I don't have to. I
know what those moments are about. That's the biggest flex
is not that everything is smooth and not that you
always have the answer, but you're not actually scared of
the thing around the corner. And none of that will
(46:51):
come from a lot of tips. I actually think tip
after tip after tip without a foundation probably gets this
further away from that, And so to me, that's the
way I would kind of use a barameter about whether
something is helpful long term.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
First of all, I love hearing how you talk about
like MVA. You're speaking tech terms in myg but in
apparenting scaffolding, which I just love you talked about like foundation.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
I know we have to end.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
I just want to say so much of launching the show,
which is about tech in humans. I've spent my career
interviewing folks in Silicon Valley and I am so excited
to launch this by talking to someone about humanity through
the lens of tech.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
That's just always kind of been the goal.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
And I think our children, in the world they grow
up in with AI is going to be one of
the most important questions that we answer. And so my
last question to you, I know it's personal to me.
I've always just kind of wanted to make the world
feel a little bit less alone, and I feel like you.
I feel that from you as well. But why is
this mission personal to you?
Speaker 3 (47:51):
I mean, I guess at the end of the day,
the world is is just a collection of humans doing
the best they can with the resources they have available
and as impacted by the health of the connections and
relationships they have. And you know, I'm probably a short
term pessimist and long term optimist and think that as
(48:12):
parents have more resources, as parents return to themselves, as
we can show up for our kids in a way
we're proud of more often and repair the other times.
That's that's the only way that we can actually leave
the next generation in a better place than ours, and
nothing better more than that.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Amazing, great, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Mostly Human is a production of iHeart Podcasts and mostly
human Media. It's produced and edited by Lori Siegel, Lauren Hanson,
and Nicole Bouchet. Sound design and mixing by Derek Clements.
Special thanks to Mark Weinhaus. Find us on all socials
at mostly human Media. You can also watch mostly Human
on our YouTube page. If you want to get in touch,
email comments at mostly human dot com. And if you
(48:58):
like what you hear, please raise, interview the show, and
share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
See you next week.
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