Is AI Helping Children Learn—or Doing the Thinking for Them?

Adults bring experience to AI. Children are still building theirs. A mum and founder explores the difference, the research and practical habits for families.

By Nino Dvalidze, Founder of Young Minds App

I use AI every day. As a founder, I can see how much it helps me do with limited time and resources.

But when people say, “Children need to use AI because it’s the future,” I feel we are missing something.

I bring years of experience to the conversation. I have worked in education, built businesses, made mistakes and had to deal with the consequences of my decisions.

When AI gives me an answer, I have something to compare it with. I can disagree. I can recognise when a suggestion sounds impressive but would make no sense for my business.

That is where the magic happens: your knowledge, experience and judgement, combined with what AI can help you do.

But children are still building those foundations. In subjects they are only beginning to learn, they may meet AI’s answer before they have developed a view of their own.

That is a very different starting point.

The work we want to finish may be the work they need to practise

If I ask AI to help organise ideas I already understand, my aim is often to save time.

When a child is learning to organise an argument, that process is part of the lesson. Choosing a point, finding evidence, realising it does not quite fit and trying again all give them something to learn from.

The same applies to working through a maths problem or writing the first paragraph of a story.

This is what concerns me as a mum: we can look at a polished piece of homework and feel reassured without knowing how much of it the child understands.

A finished task is easy to see. Learning takes more effort to check.

What one study found when the AI was taken away

A study published in PNAS in 2025 tested GPT-4-based tools with nearly 1,000 high school maths students in Turkey.

Students using a standard-style AI assistant scored 48% higher during assisted practice than the comparison group. But on a subsequent exam without assistance, their grades were 17% lower than those of students who had practised without AI.

A separate group used an AI tutor with teacher-informed safeguards, including hints rather than direct answers. Those safeguards largely removed the negative effect on subsequent exam performance, although the researchers did not find a positive exam effect. ^[1]

This was one study in a particular school setting. It does not prove that every use of AI harms learning, or tell us what will happen across every age and subject.

For me, it raises a practical question: what can the child do when the tool is no longer there?

Being an adult does not automatically make you an expert

I need to apply this question to myself too.

My experience helps me assess some answers. It does not make me qualified to judge everything AI produces. If I ask about a subject I know little about, a confident explanation can still mislead me.

And children have knowledge and interests of their own. A young person who has spent years coding or playing an instrument may be able to question an answer in that area more effectively than an adult beginner.

The distinction I care about is how much understanding someone brings to the task, and whether using AI helps them develop more.

How I would approach AI at home

I want my children to learn how these tools work. I also want them to have opportunities to think before an answer appears.

For families choosing to use age-appropriate AI tools, within school rules, these are the habits I would encourage.

1. Give your own thinking a chance first

Before opening a chatbot, write down what you know, make a first attempt or explain where you are stuck.

That gives you something to bring to the conversation. It also helps a parent or teacher see what support would actually be useful.

2. Ask for help with the next step

“Give me one hint” or “Ask me a question that helps me work it out” is a useful starting point.

An ordinary chatbot may still give away too much or get something wrong. A prompt is not a guarantee of a well-designed tutor. Parents and teachers still need to pay attention to the help being given.

3. Close the chat and try again

After getting help, try a similar problem independently. Explain the idea in your own words. Write a fresh paragraph without copying the one on screen.

If that is difficult, it tells us where more teaching or practice is needed.

4. Make checking part of the task

Choose a claim in the answer and look for evidence in a textbook, a reliable original source or with a teacher.

Asking the chatbot whether it is sure is not an independent check. I want my children to get used to asking what supports an answer, including an answer that sounds convincing.

5. Keep space for work without AI

Reading, writing, discussion and solving problems independently deserve time too. I want my children to know what they can do on their own and feel proud of developing that ability.

The question I want us to ask

I understand the excitement. I feel it in my own work.

But I do not want us to confuse being able to produce an answer with being able to understand it.

The experience I bring to AI took years to build. Our children deserve the time, teaching and practice to build their own.

When we introduce a tool, I want us to ask: after using this, what has my child learned to do?

Source

[1] Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakcı, Ö., and Mariman, R. (2025). Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(26), e2422633122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2422633122 (full text)