It’s always been important for parents to talk to kids about sexual health. As companies push AI into education, health, and social media, kids need to be able to trust that the adults in their life can handle not just their sexual health questions, but also their questions about technology.
Here are some tips on how to do that, adapted from MediaSmarts’ Talking to Kids About AI: Tips for Parents resource:
Using AI Technologies
- Try to start the conversation first. Sometimes kids turn to online resources because they feel like parents can’t or won’t talk about sexual health with them. Talk to your kids about healthy sexuality and relationships, and make sure they know they can come to you for questions or support.
- Explore AI together. If kids are using AI chat tools or voice bots (Siri, Alexa, etc.), sit with them to learn how to use it and so you can evaluate its responses. Even if the technology seems reliable, try to keep a conversation going about what they’re learning and how they’re making sense of it. Make sure they know to come to you if a chatbot ever says anything confusing, inappropriate, or upsetting.
- Make sure kids understand their school or classroom’s rules about which uses of AI are acceptable and which aren’t. Let them know that it’s more important to work hard, master skills, and learn from your mistakes than to always get good grades.
Check out MediaSmarts’ What is AI? resource for more.
Sexual Health and Media Literacy
- Help kids understand that chatbots are toys, not a replacement for real-life friends or for qualified health professionals. AI should not be the only place anyone goes to for information about health, bodies, or relationships. Make sure kids know about verified and qualified sources, including local sexual health clinics and resources.
- Teach kids to be curious about what they see or hear online. Media literacy skills are helpful when evaluating if something is true, useful, or safe. Teach kids about trustworthy sources of information, and how to verify whether AI answers are accurate.
Check Action Canada’s Media Literacy and Sexual Health resource or MediaSmarts’ Break the Fake resource for more.
AI and Digital Safety
- Check the settings. Go into an app or program’s settings to see if you can control age limits on content, privacy setting, or even opt-in/outs for AI data collection and usage. This can help parents have some additional supervision on what kids are exposed to.
- Talk to kids about how to keep their data safe. Everything that gets put online has the potential to be scraped, stored, or repurposed by AI. It can be helpful for kids to know what the risks are when sharing photos or identifying information about themselves (like their full name, address, phone number, etc).
- Remind kids that what happens online can have real world impacts. Deepfakes, online harassment, or misinformation can hurt people. Conversations about consent, digital safety, and good boundaries can help protect kids, but also help them avoid harmful behaviours.
Check our MediaSmarts’ Spotting Deepfakes and Talking to youth about forwarding sexts resources to learn more.
In today’s digital landscape, even as AI has a massive influence on the development of different platforms and technologies, we can always choose to digital tools it safely and responsibly. Learning about how AI works and the role it can play in sexual health education will help parents play a key role in helping kids make good choices as they learn about consent, puberty, relationship, and more.
Q&A w/ MediaSmarts
What new skills do you think parents are having to develop to keep up with AI?
Three things that have become more important in the age of AI:
Helping kids understand how we can form parasocial relationships with people we only know from media - or who aren't really "people" at all, like AI chatbots. Kids need to know that chatbots are designed to make you like them, so while it can feel good to vent to them sometimes, they're not reliable sources of advice.
Showing kids that the work we put into things is more important than the grades or praise we get for them. AI makes it easier than ever to take shortcuts with our schoolwork or our own art and learning, but those shortcuts can keep us from learning and practicing what we need to know.
Following facts and claims to their sources. Chatbots sound convincing when they answer our questions, but they may mix facts good and bad quality sources (or just make things up.) Treat an AI answer like Wikipedia: follow the link to the sources it used to make sure that they're real, that they're reliable, and that the answer represented them accurately.
Beyond there just being more AI tools in everything, what are some ways that parents and kids are using technology differently than they were 5-10 years ago?
Parents and kids are much more likely to use mobile devices, voice commands and natural-language interfaces (like chatbots) than they used to be. All of those make it harder to remember that everything we see and interact with in media is a construction, not reality, and to recognize how the features and defaults of the tools we're using influence how we use them.
Do you have any favourite tools or technologies you use when looking for accurate sexual health information?
There's no replacement for good-quality sources of sexual health like Sex and U (run by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada). For specialized topics like sexual health, it's almost always faster and more effective to go straight to a source you know is reliable instead of using a search engine or a chatbot.
