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Thanks to Siri and Alexa, kids are clocking their parents’ lies and returning with the facts.
During the show’s Jan. 5 episode, The Talk‘s co-hosts laughed about how technology’s advances have made kids wiser and more aware of the world’s truths. The show’s faces — Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O’Connell and Sheryl Underwood — had lighthearted reactions to a young girl proving to her mother that Chuck E. Cheese was open.
The child had the digital assistant rattle off a Chuck E. Cheese location’s hours of operation for the day in front of her mother. The young girl innocently looked at her parent as the facts were listed.
“The AI has messed up everything for parents. Parents used to tell us lies all the time, and we used to believe it,” said Gbajabiamila.
A former football player, the co-host, noted that parents commonly tell children that they can’t have coffee because it’ll stunt the kid’s growth. Gbajabiamila laughed as he mentioned that now, all children have to do is ask Siri to find out their parents are lying.
Co-host Kloots shared that she’s at the “Ask Siri” age with her 4-year-old son, Elvis.
“I can’t get away with anything anymore. It’s like he knows everything,” Kloots admitted. “They know more than we do.”
There are conflicting expert opinions regarding the impacts of digital assistants like Siri and Alexa on childhood development.
Work published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood in 2022 claimed that reliance on the digital voice respondents could hinder a child’s ability to empathize and flex their critical thinking skills. As The Swaddle highlighted, “The link to social development is threatened because the interaction with technology is almost always devoid of any stimulation and critical thought.” Moreover, the child’s long-term privacy is at risk, considering the data pulled from their interactions with modern technologies.
Amy Orben, an experimental psychologist and researcher of adolescent mental health at Cambridge University, negated the publishing above while speaking with Daily Mail. She said, “Scientifically, little is known about the impact of voice assistants on children… The impacts of voice assistants are probably mixed and very dependent on how they are used by children.”
Additionally, it’s suggested that interacting with digital assistants could be positive, particularly for neurodivergent children.
Siri and Alexa can help with parenting, such as reading a child a book or reminding them to use the potty. That said, digital assistants are generally not specialized enough to modify their direct responses to children based on age, ability, and personal stage of cognitive and social development.
How do you feel about children using digital assistants? Has Siri helped a child call you out on a lie? Comment down below.
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