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slash kid news news. Welcome to kid news convos. I'm Tori. Today we're talking about teens and

their use of tech, everything from newfangled artificial intelligence to what now seems like

old-fashioned smartphones. Our guests today are Leslie Tyler, an ed tech leader and director of

parent education at Pinwheel and mom of two teens, as well as Jennifer Kelman, a licensed therapist,

parenting expert on Just Answer, and her 16-year-old twins, Jordan and Kyle, join us as well.

We start with a new concern about AI. For the last few years, the main worry was that kids might use

it to cheat in school. But a new study from Common Sense Media is sounding another alarm. It says a third of

teens are using or have used AI companions as pseudo friends.

Leslie, you see all sorts of red flags with these platforms. Tell us why. I'm personally skeptical

about those because one of the things that AI does is it tries to make you happy. So in order for you to keep using it,

it's trying to give you the answer that you want so that you'll keep using it. Now, on the

opportunity side, you know, you could use it to have a difficult conversation with someone

ahead of time to role play. And that's a very constructive use because you can tell AI,

you are my friend and here's the situation and here's our whole background and here's the whole drama.

And I want to do this and I want to communicate this to you.

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