Fredericksburg Parent

16 Fredericksburg Parent and Family • February 2026 A psychologist warns that kids' reliance on AI chatbots for homework help can have lasting effects on their cognitive development. Welcome to the age of AI and "chat" "Chat" is the new big thing among teens. It's also a blanket term they use for any AI interaction — homework help, role playing, venting or even mentalhealth support. AI tools can have real benefits. They can personalize learn- ing, target gaps and meet students at their skill level. For lowresource schools, AI can feel like a lifeline. Tutor bots can offer privacy and reduce shame for students who fear revealing learning gaps. A ninthgrader told me, "No one knows I'm actually at a fourthgrade level in math when I use Chat." The bigger concern is what children lose when AI shortcuts replace effortful learning. Cognitive offloading: When thinking is outsourced Psychologists call this relief cognitive offloading. While young brains are still developing, kids hand over the hardest parts of thinking to AI chatbots. When students use AI to summarize readings, generate drafts, organize ideas or polish language, they aren't just saving time. They skip the mental work that builds com- prehension, expression, reasoning and analysis — hard but essential tasks. Removing those steps can have longterm consequences. Struggle is a feature, not a bug Challenging mental tasks expand the brain. You can't get strong by watching someone else do pushups, and you can't think deeply by outsourcing thinking to an algorithm. School is the gym for the mind. It's not just about correct answers; it's about building cognitive endurance and judg- ment through reading, writing and revision. AI offers a convenient bypass, but its seemingly harmless uses may produce the greatest harm. Thinking requires reps Summarizing, outlining and synthesizing aren't clerical chores — they're cognitive workouts. Skipping them weak- ens the "muscles" of learning. Neuroscience confirms this. Effortful think- ing strengthens neural connections. The activities children find difficult are the ones that wire academic abilities. When AI does the work, brain circuits that support reasoning and analysis can weaken through disuse. We become what we repeatedly do Long before neuroscience, Aristotle said it: We become what we repeatedly do. Habits shape both character and cognition. Neuroscientists summarize it this way: "Neurons that fire together wire together." Repetition builds pathways. If kids practice wrestling with ideas, their capacity to think deepens. If they repeatedly delegate that effort to chatbots, dependency grows. Earning grades without learning A college student recently described using AI to write humanities papers. He finished assignments in under an hour that once took eight, earning a 3.57 GPA. When asked what he learned, he admitted, "Nothing. I couldn't tell you the thesis for either paper." Efficiency was real — learning was not During a ParentEd Talks webinar, Sal Khan of Khan Academy described building guardrails into AI tutors to scaffold— not replace — student learning. Many forprofit companies, he warned, aim to monetize quickly by giving users anything they want. That's where parents should pause. AI isn't just a shortcut. It's redefin- ing "doing school." Students risk becoming managers of output rather than builders of their own minds. Because finished work often looks acceptable, adults may miss how much actual learning has thinned. AI use among teens Parents are often shocked by how common AI use has become. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that onequarter of U.S. teens use ChatGPT for schoolwork — double the previous year's rate. Teens trade strategies for prompts and undetectable responses. Much of this happens beyond parent and teacher awareness. Early warning signs Schools are scrambling to adapt. AI is available anywhere there's inter- net, and educators feel pressure to use it. It can make their work easier too. But dealing with fallout later is risky — it's how we ended up play- ing catchup on smartphones and social media. This is not a call to ban AI or pretend it does not exist. It is a call for a coordinated, col- lective pause to ask harder questions before scaling. What's Lost When Your Child's Learning Is Outsourced to Ai? WRITTEN BY LAURA KASTNER, PH.D.

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