Vibe-coding with the kids

In the midst of an anti-tech backlash, some parents want to raise their children to be "AI natives," writes Evan Gardner in The Free Press.

Jason Scharf banned social media, TikTok and YouTube for his three children, who are 7, 10 and 12, and is about to ban Roblox. But he thinks AI can make his children smarter.

The 12-year-old is teaching himself Spanish via AI and "building an online model that will comb through his great-grandfather’s collection of 10,000 antique stamps, to figure out their history," writes Gardner. The middle child coded a dancing game. "As a family, they use AI to generate bespoke bedtime stories for one another and to make portraits of their pets."

Venture capitalist Anish Acharya encourages his children to use AI to design their own coloring books: “Let’s figure out the very coolest thing that you can imagine, and generate it as a coloring page book. Let’s print it and then color that in.”

Tarun Sachdeva — a start-up founder from Toronto — has become “creative partners” with his twin 7-year-old daughters, helping them build an animated universe around a character they generated and vibe coding a KPop Demon Hunters game with them on weekends.

Techno-pessimists want to "future-proof" their children, Gardner writes.

T. Matthew Chase, an AI researcher in Nashville, taught his son to vibe code when he was 10. Two years later, he’s built an app that scans collectible baseball cards to verify their authenticity.

Chase also makes sure to expose his children to the world, writes Gardner. "That means taking them to the park, and to the theater; it means encouraging them to study where they came from and to read old books. But, most importantly, it means developing a sense of self that transcends this world — which is why he leads them in daily prayer."

To give your kids a screen-free summer, hide the devices and give your kids fun offline activities to do instead, writes Michaeleen Doucleff, author of  Dopamine Kids, in The Free Press.

When her daughter was 8, she kicked off screen-free summer by showing her how to ride her bicycle to grocery store and run errands. She ordered a crochet kit and stocked up on art supplies, and bought her a CD player and audiobooks for screen-free storytelling.

In the second summer, her daughter started a dog-walking business and enjoyed making money. She made friends with two screen-free girls.

The third summer without screens “just feels like a normal summer,” she told her mother. “But I don’t want to sit around all day. I want to find a job.”

Perhaps the key is doing something -- or just sitting around.