Parenting in an AI World

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Welcome to the ParentEd podcast by Focus on the Family Singapore. In each episode, we will be speaking with everyday parents and practitioners as they share with us gems from their parenthood journey. Keep tuning in to run with us as we figure it out together.

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My name is Aaron and I'm your host for this episode. In today's episode, we are exploring a topic that's reshaping the way we live, work, and parent.

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Artificial intelligence. How do we guide our kids through a world where machines are learning alongside them?

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To help us unpack this topic is Carol Loi, a familiar voice to many of our listeners.

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Carol is a digital literacy educator and founder of village consultancy, and she is passionate about equipping families to thrive in the digital age. Welcome Carol, could you share with us what you've been up to lately, especially in the area of digital parenting?

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So I have always been running sessions for parents, young people and children on three key areas. Actually one is on digital Wellness. How do we use technology in a way that can help us and not distract us from what we need to do? Second area is on the mental toughness, mental health.

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Because how we use our technology has impact on our mental well-being as well. And the third area is about leadership and communication. How do we communicate in a way that can help us to maintain strong relationship? Of course, starting in the family. So I've been a running workshops, I've been having big groups, small group conversations.

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Because the area of technology is shifting so very quickly.

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I have been talking for the past few years about not just screen time, but also about how do we manage social media, how social media impacts us, how does social media really work? When should children have access to social media, and then moving on to talking about gaming because now there are different kinds of games.

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Some of the games might look fun, but they may not carry the right values, and in the past two years or so, since generated AI has become so popular across the world, I have find that even before I can settle on social media, even before I can talk about gaming now, I have very little trust, but really have

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to explain and explore myself first, what is the power of generative AI and more importantly, what is the implication for those of us involved in raising young children and so very excited and very happy to be able to be here to share my heart

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with everyone. Yeah. You know, for parents, for educators. We've been on this

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track of media discernment, right? What are some bigger shifts you've seen, perhaps, in children's behavior or development since AI and smart devices begin part of everyday life?

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I think over the years we have been slowly being trained in our habits of mind to be more and more self-centered.

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In the past, when we were children, we tend to focus or all have to follow a single programming by the public broadcasters where everybody will oh 9 o'clock watch news. The whole family will watch together on the same screen. Everybody laughs about the same things increasingly over time. We kind of have fragmented

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experiences in terms of media consumption and after dinner everybody will just going back to their own spaces. The kids will use technology to do their homework or chat with their friends, discuss projects, parents also will go to our devices, be entertained on various stuff. And so over time I find that that is fragment

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kind of media consumption that is less communal, media experiences that in the past we used to go to watch movies together and now you see cinemas are closing them that is so sad. Yeah. So how do we find common experiences? And why are common experiences important? It brings the family together.

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Yeah.

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Common things that we can laugh about, things that we can learn from whatever media content that we are consuming and so having.

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Common communal experiences can be a very important part of a family life, and increasingly I find that being eroded. And what does it mean to children? I find that we get fewer and fewer opportunities to

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talk about values with our children, because now we disperse to our own spaces. We don't know what the kids are watching or playing. The kids don't know what we are watching and playing. There is no commonality for us to talk about this and then we want to talk about values. The kids will say. Yeah, I know it is so boring and that is critical.

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In the current times where we are talking about generative AI.

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Because generative AI, if we do not have a strong sense of discernment, we can't really tell what is reality. What is half true, because generated AI tools tends to give us what we want, right? We ask the same things we will give us what we want to hear, but in reality, that's not what real life is. I often tell parents and the young people that I work with.

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You know, AI tools or AI companions. They call them. It may sound like a real person, but actually it's not real, because if we understand how generative AI works, it is a matter of managing data. Huge amounts of data to give us what we want.

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And when we always get what we want all the time

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It kind of frames our mind that this is what reality is. When I go to school, I need my teachers to follow what I want. I need my friends to do what I want. I need to have options that can fulfill me in my happiness is important is that reality? I think increasingly parents or even grandparents, you know, people who are involved in young people life.

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We do need to give that balance. That reality is not like that. Reality is that we need to have hard conversations. Sometimes the people who really care for you will tell you the things that you don't like to hear, which is not not generatedAI tool does.

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Yeah. So that is the trend that I am concerned with that we are being trained to always be the center of everything. And that's not reality.

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So talking about this new reality, right, our recent healthy sexuality master class showed that three out of four young people in the US are using AI.

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Companions like Replica, but we think it's a matter of time that this trend reaches Asia and Singapore. So what are your thoughts on AI companions?

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AI companions firstly, as I mentioned earlier, I think the recognition is that it is not real, does it need a purpose. I think for some people, including adults, it does because if you really want to talk to someone late at night and your friends or your parents are sick, but you really need to get something out and process it, some people do turn to AI companion.

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Because the air companion.

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And it's always there for you, 24 by 7. It can be a very attractive option. The concern would be that if a person chooses to use AI companion to replace real-world friendship or relationship, that becomes potentially problematic. I think that is a place for air companion, but it really comes back to the individual.

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Am I able to discern right what is real and what is not real? Is it giving me information that is true?

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Because it is not that I need to reject. It is true that I can take it as knowledge, and I process it to get wiser. But this skill of what is real and what is not real, it is not so straightforward, right? For very young kids, for example, in primary school, they need time. Their brains need time to mature. We adults need

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time to be able to engage them.

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Talk about values.

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But are very busy family life, everybody having fragmented media consumption patterns that becomes increasingly complex and difficult. So that is my concern.

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I hear concerns about young children not being able to discern because their minds are not really their experiences are not rich enough. So then how can we as parents?

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Help our children reap the benefits of AI while managing all these pitfalls and risks and exposures to negative kind of things, yeah.

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I want to qualify, though, that children when we talk about children, it's not just like very young children, toddlers or primary.

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Schoolers, if we.

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Explore or read more about neuroscience how children's.

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To develop the brain fully matures only in mid 20s so which means that young people, secondary school children, young people as in like, even young adults, their brains are still very much in development. So how do we by right, those of us with more mature brain come alongside them? I find that what is important is to give them a strong anchor.

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What is the basis of deciding what is right and wrong and that has to be based on your value, your character, and how do we build values and character?

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It has to first come from family in our opinion. If the family is unable to provide that in a consistent way to the children, then how can we and by extended family or society as a whole or maybe at the school level? If you see your child's classmate maybe having an issue, would we be willing to come alongside and support the family?

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And I think in an increasingly complex world like this, we need to look out for one another more first, of course, holding on to the young people in our own lives. Secondly, look out for their generation and look out for their friends if they come and tell us about certain issues, how can we support their family?

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So one of our speakers and a masterclass clinical psychologist, Dr. Tsao I Ting also shared that the boundaries parents must give right must be specific for it to work. So what are some examples of?

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Parents giving specific boundaries. What does that look like?

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Boundaries could have, I think, different aspects or boundaries. Boundaries could be in the area of time. So earlier this year, in 2025, the Health Promotion Board, for example, they have given us a set of guidelines, right, certain age. There are certain screen time limits. There are certain recommendations. So for example avoid.

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Background noise screens before bedtime, and I think they're also boundaries relating to discerning.

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So for example, boundaries relating to you know what kind of friends, how do you define friends? How close would you allow somebody to come very close to your heart on the deepest issue, and how do you decide whether this friend should be the friend at a very deep level?

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Or maybe his friend is not so good. It's getting a little bit more toxic for you, and it's OK to take a step back. Teaching young people boundaries in that way, starting from discerning friendship, it is another way of setting boundaries, so it's not just in terms of screen time per se, but also understanding friendship level.

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And then, increasingly, now in Gen AI is a voice that you're hearing a real friend? Is a real friend, really always telling you what you want to hear. Or would a friend that really cares for you will challenge your thinking, will call out what is not good in your life and try to work towards what is good for you.

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Of course, people will say that I can train my companion right, but ultimately it is not real. It is just a bunch of data. Is that what we want out of a friend? Is that the best friend that we can have? I think these are boundaries in terms of humanity, I feel that I think even adults we need to think.

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Because it can sound very well, I don't hear even adults saying I don't need to see a counsellor anymore because now I have somebody who is 24 by 7 and it's.

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free. I think it's really good insights because even it's adults, right? We sometimes don't set boundaries for ourselves, right? And so what does that look like for our children and for them this is a new world. They've never been there before.

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Even for adults who have not been there before, fully new territory for us to explore.

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So quoting I Ting again from the masterclass, she said that if parents themselves are confused about what's going on in the digital world, we can only expect that our children are also going to be confused about navigating the digital world. So, Carol, how can parents help their children build discernment skills, especially when AI generated content can be so personalized, persuasive.

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So, so real, right?

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Yeah, yeah. I think the first step is to overcome our own fear. Sometimes we think that things are moving so fast I cannot catch up, never mind the school will teach them.

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My encouragement for parents we do need to get our hands wet we don't need to know every single generative AI tool very well. But we need to know how it works. We need to know, like at least what is ChatGPT. How does ChatGPT work? It may not be like a particular tool, but in terms of like, what is generative AI?

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Similar to gamming, for example, right, they don't need to play every single game that the children are playing but understand why their children are interested in that game. What is the motivation or even social media, right? They need to know like what platforms their children are on, what kind of things usually they see and.

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Have create space to discuss what they are consuming, who they are interacting with in those platforms. So I think first thing to overcome our own fear for me when this thing first brought two years ago, I do feel overwhelmed actually. Even now when the monitor the situation because things are moving so fast and we do hear a lot of.

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Yes, we get a lot of good things that are happening through those developments, but there are also things that are quite concerning. You know how it's impacting young peoples view of relationship even caused some of them to have suicide ideation and things like that. This is a time that we cannot

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just assume that things are going to be okay because things are moving much faster than the past 15, 20 years. To me I feel like we are in an inflection similar to how Internet first came about. I have been old enough to see different technological waves. You know, when Internet first came out, people were like what? What is this thing you

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know but it really change the way that we work, but is it doing us really that well as humanity? What are some of the things that we should learn from the past 15, 20 years? You know, now that is a new wave. I believe that generative AI is going to be like a new wave as much as how internet

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came out 20 years ago. What can we learn from history so that we know what we need to do moving forward especially for?

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The young people.

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So, that's for the parents, right?

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So, are there small daily habits or conversations that we can make with our children that can you know give us probably the the greatest difference over time. Like the little things like what can we do to just shift that behavior we mentioned about how our habits are formed now and what are some things we can do.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. So while technology is changing very fast, right, there are still many things that actually can remain untreated should remain unchanged. And that includes connection with our children. So every day find the pockets of time.

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For example, mealtime to me now increasingly that needs to be sacred, well protected with boundries. Just now we talk about boundaries. New time need to be boundary. You need to make sure that we dedicate time for it. Make sure that as much as possible. Especially when the children are young, have the whole family sit down together and build that into a family rhythm and routine.

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My children are now 23 and 20, even though maybe not every night we can have dinner together.

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But over the weekend, we will try to make sure we schedule time together, even on weekdays when we can't, we will try to still make sure that we have some time together even in the day. So it's prioritizing and having that habit of mind that family time is important. Why is family time important? Because that's where we can build the values and the character.

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That we talked about that needs to be the anchor for them to discern the different things that they are seeing whether through generate AI or gaming on social media.

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Yeah. So the little things can include very small things in your normal family life. How do we start your morning? Is your morning always very hurry or is it a peaceful start? Do we encourage our children to face the day? You know, how do we end the day? What are your bedtime routines? What is the last thing that you touch? Is it your child's hand or is it a phone? So these are small, small things.

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Might seem small things, but it builds the foundation for our children to be human, human beings, you know that can touch their heart and their mind.

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So what are some practical tools that you give to parents out there who are struggling to balance tech use with offline experiences so you know, without having to constantly fight over that tension, right. And perhaps you can differentiate your advice for those with younger children versus those with teens?

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Yeah. Must continue to listen to Focus on the Family podcast. Got very good tips. And I believe you all will also have some articles right on digital parenting. So the practical thing for parents is to stay one step ahead of the children. You may not know exactly everything, but just one step ahead. You know, if your child is in preschool.

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What's the next step? You know, in primary school, how do you withhold technology, for example?

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If your child comes to you and say, everybody has a smartphone. Does it mean that you have to give a smartphone? So it's first to prepare ourselves, have that conversation with your spouse if possible, so that you have a common position when it comes to your child so that your child won't come to daddy for one thing, and then go to mummy for one thing. And so staying one step ahead.

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Through learning being in community.

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And as I said, follow Focus on the Family.

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Thank you so much for sharing your practical wisdom and passion for intentional parenting. Carol, I'm really inspired by your commitment to speak in this area right. So are there any last words of encouragement for parents who may feel overwhelmed or unsure about how to guide their children in this generative AI age?

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Take one day at a time. Just really one day at a time. Get plugged in to a healthy community.

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Be part of organizations like Focus on the Family when they have workshops. You know it is not a waste of time. I grew up as a beneficiary. I attended a lot from Focus on the Family workshops over the years when my children were younger and gives me some handles and in an increasingly complex world we parents need to first have the handles. How do we get the handles?

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Is when we interact with parents who have gone through the parenting journey, maybe also one step ahead of us.

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That can help us and give us the experiences and the wisdom that we need to survive that one day, no matter how much our children will eyeball at us thought would be at us tomorrow can be a fresh start. Yeah. So it's to stay in community that is hope raising children. It is not.

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A bed of roses that are highs and lows, but it is a very rewarding journey when we are in a healthy community.

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It's clear that parenting in an AI world isn't just about managing devices or setting limits, but it's about nurturing values, discernment and connection. So thank you, Carol once again for being here with us.

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