She Is Not Just Using AI For Homework – Jennifer Oaten
Most of us feel a small uncertainty about how our daughters are using artificial intelligence, even as we watch them use it for schoolwork. A summary of a chapter, a starting point for an essay, a maths problem explained in a different way. That is the use we expect, and it is the one we tend to ask about. The research released this month says we may be asking about the wrong thing.
In early August, the eSafety Commissioner published Talking to Machines, a study of nearly 2,000 Australian children aged 10 to 17. It found that 78% have used an AI assistant. That figure did not surprise me. What followed did.
More than half use it for personal reasons. Of the children who have used AI, 54% have used it for personal or social reasons, not only for schoolwork. Younger children use it for entertainment, curiosity and conversation. Teenagers use it to ask about life situations, about physical health and about their mental health.
One in five of them has had a harmful interaction. Among children who have used these tools, 20% reported an exchange that was potentially inappropriate or harmful, including controlling behaviour, harmful advice, bullying or exposure to inappropriate content.
Nearly one in three has shared something private. Of those who have used AI, 32% shared personal or sensitive information, including photographs.
The Commissioner’s warning is important. An AI assistant is not a trusted adult, and it cannot replace the people a child turns to when she needs real help.
It is easy to read a figure like 54% and move past it; however, at some point, 54% of our students may have asked an AI tool something they were not asking a person. Some of those questions will have been small. Others will have been the kind we would want to know about. The number does not tell us which girl asked what, and neither will she, unless the conditions are there for her to tell us. That is the part we can do something about.
Why She Might Ask AI
It is worth understanding the appeal before we respond to it, because the appeal is real. AI is available at two in the morning. It does not look disappointed, carry a history with her or tell anyone, so she can ask the question she would find hard to say out loud. For a girl working out how she feels about a friendship, or a body that is changing, or a worry she has not put into words yet, that is a genuinely low-risk place to start.
A daughter who has always come to a parent with her questions is now checking something with a chatbot first, and the parent is not quite sure when that shift happened. I understand the unease. It can feel as though something has been placed between you and her. The pull toward the machine is real, and it is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. What matters is less whether she asks it things. It is whether she still has somewhere better to turn when the question is one that needs a person. Our task as parents is to make sure that somewhere is us.
What AI Cannot Do
AI cannot see that she has been quieter for a fortnight, or that she has stopped mentioning a particular friend, or that she is not eating much at breakfast. It cannot tell when a small question is really a bigger one underneath. A girl who types a question about how to lose weight quickly is answered as though that is all she asked. A person who loves her hears the same question and wonders what is behind it.
AI is also designed to be agreeable. It will tend to confirm the framing it is given. A young person who describes a friendship in a way that casts her as entirely wronged, or entirely at fault, will often find AI simply agrees rather than testing the picture. A trusted adult does something different. When a daughter says a friend has been unkind, the adult asks what happened before that, or how the friend might have seen it, or what she wants to do next. That second question is what moves her past her first version of events, and it is the one thing that AI is least able to offer.
What We Are Doing at the College
The skills our daughters will need in ten years are not yet clear to any of us. What is clear is that they will grow up alongside these tools, and that learning to use them well is now part of an education, not separate from it. We need students to make decisions about when AI is helpful and when it is not.
Our Year 7 students recently had an AI Literacy session. The focus was on AI, Effort, and the Brain. They were exploring how AI can affect learning and thinking, and using real-world learning scenarios to decide when AI use might be helpful or unhelpful. While we hope they have limited use of AI, if they have a smartphone, they are likely to be using AI.
What Families Can Do
No parent can supervise every conversation their daughter has. What families can do is make sure AI is not the easiest place to turn. Some practical ways families can help include:
- Ask what she uses it for, not whether she uses it. The first question invites an honest answer, and the second invites a short one. If she tells you she has asked it something personal, the most useful response is curiosity rather than alarm. What she learns from that moment is whether it is safe to tell you the next thing.
- Agree on what never goes in. Full names, the school, addresses, photographs and other people’s private information. Children in the study shared photographs and personal details. This is worth naming explicitly rather than assuming it is obvious.
- Protect the ordinary times when talking happens. Shared family meals, the drive to training and the last ten minutes before bed. These are unremarkable, and they are where most of what matters gets said. A period of time each day when devices are away, for the adults as well, does more than any single conversation about technology.
- Ask the second question. When she brings you a problem, resist solving it. Ask questions instead, listen carefully, make suggestions and encourage her to make decisions for herself. This is the thing AI tools do not do. It is also how she learns that you are a better place to bring the hard questions than a screen.
If your daughter’s use of AI seems to be replacing her friendships or if you notice withdrawal, persistent low mood or anxiety, please make contact with her Dean, our College counsellors or your general practitioner.
None of this requires you to understand the technology better than she does. You will not, and you do not need to. What she needs from you is what AI cannot offer, someone who knows her, notices when something has shifted and asks the second question. That has not changed, and I do not believe it will.
If she is using it for homework, ask her what else she has been asking AI.
- AI literacy for girls, AI safety for families, digital wellbeing for girls, Featured, parent guidance on AI, responsible AI use, Santa Maria College AI literacy, student wellbeing and AI, teenage girls and AI
Author: Santa Maria College
Santa Maria College is a vibrant girls school with a growing local presence and reputation. Our Mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world. Santa Maria College is located in Attadale in Western Australia, 16 km from the Perth CBD. We offer a Catholic education for girls in Years 5 – 12 and have 1300 students, including 152 boarders.
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