Picture it: my living room, 2026. As we’re watching a football game, my child says they want the weaker team to win so when we play them we’ll have a better chance of winning.
10 seconds later I hear: “Alexa, who’s worse: the Rams or the 49ers?”. Not surprisingly, Alexa didn’t know the answer to this question.
But what happened next DID surprise me. My child’s first reaction was to assume there was NO answer to that question.
My reaction? Let’s use this as a teaching moment!
Most digital literacy skills are actually just applying one of four underlying skills to technology: fluency (basic understanding), critical thinking, risk assessment, and safety.
If you notice your child is asking subjective questions to an AI tool like Alexa or genAI like ChatGPT, use it as an opportunity to discuss how people form opinions.
That might mean asking:
What is Alexa/ChatGPT basing this answer on?
Is there only one answer to this question or could there be more than one answer?
What do we need to know to answer this question?
What questions should we ask to figure that out?
Sure enough, after asking Alexa just 2 questions, my kiddo felt they had enough info to form an opinion. And next time they have a subjective question, we can review the skill of knowing how to form an opinion and how technology fits into that equation.
