今年早些时候，Meta 与州检察长达成了一项具有里程碑意义的和解协议，同意在获得法院批准的前提下支付最高 171 亿美元，并对 Facebook 和 Instagram 面向年轻用户的运营方式进行广泛改革。该和解协议是在多年累积的证据、举报人披露、诉讼以及家庭关于社交媒体对儿童影响的证词之后达成的。Meta 同意实施的改革包括限制无尽滚动、夜间使用和通知，以及加强年龄验证和家长控制功能。
Earlier this year, Meta reached a landmark settlement with state attorneys general, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion, subject to court approval, and make sweeping changes to how Facebook and Instagram operate for young users. The settlement followed years of mounting evidence, whistleblower disclosures, lawsuits and testimony from families about the effects social media can have on children. Among the changes Meta agreed to make are restrictions on endless scrolling, nighttime use and notifications, along with stronger age verification and parental controls.
人们很容易将此视为进步。它确实是进步。但它也揭露了我们是如何走到今天这一步的。多年来，儿童一直在使用被设计用来捕捉和保持他们注意力的产品，而研究人员则在努力了解这些产品对睡眠、心理健康、人际关系、学习和发展造成了什么影响。家庭反复被告知要自行管理风险。科学家们积累了证据。家长们敲响了警钟。
It is tempting to see this as progress. It is progress. But it is also an indictment of how we got here. For years, children used products engineered to capture and hold their attention while researchers worked to understand what those products were doing to sleep, mental health, relationships, learning and development. Families were repeatedly told to manage the risks themselves. Scientists accumulated evidence. Parents raised alarms.
最终，在数百万儿童已经暴露于这些风险之后，防护措施才开始跟上。我们不应在人工智能领域重蹈这一覆辙。在接受 CNN 记者安德森·库珀采访时，英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋认为，AI 安全本质上是一项工程挑战。如果一款 AI 产品不安全，他说，公司只需简单地不发布它即可。更好的封装、监控和技术防护措施可以应对这些风险。
And eventually, after millions of children had already been exposed, safeguards began catching up. We should not repeat that sequence with artificial intelligence. In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang argued that AI safety is fundamentally an engineering challenge. If an AI product is unsafe, he said, companies should simply refrain from releasing it. Better containment, monitoring and technical safeguards can address the risks.
就在几天前，在与埃兹拉·克莱因的对话中，黄仁勋面对了另一种风险。克莱因引用了涉及中国超过 2.6 万名中学生的研究，该研究发现生成式 AI 的使用提高了作业表现并减少了完成作业所花费的时间，但与六个月内考试成绩下降有关。黄仁勋承认，儿童已经开始忘记诸如长除法和乘法表等技能。他的回应基本上是在质疑这一点是否重要。
Days earlier, in a conversation with Ezra Klein, Huang confronted another kind of risk. Klein cited research involving more than 26,000 secondary-school students in China that found generative AI use improved homework performance and reduced the time spent completing assignments, but was associated with lower exam scores within six months. Huang acknowledged that children are already forgetting skills such as long division and multiplication tables. His response was essentially to ask whether that matters.
人类一直在技术使某些技能变得不再必要时停止记忆某些事物，他这样认为。我们可能会失去某种形式的智力灵巧性，同时发展出其他形式。也许。技术一直在改变人类需要了解的内容。但黄仁勋和其他人之所以投资于人工智能，正是因为它承诺以速度和规模远超以往技术的变革。这一次，我们尚不清楚我们可能会失去什么，可能会获得什么，或者孩子们因此会变得更强还是更弱。
Humanity has always stopped memorizing certain things when technology made those skills unnecessary, he argued. We may lose some forms of intellectual dexterity and develop others. Maybe. Technology has always changed what humans need to know. But Huang and others are investing in AI precisely because it promises change at a speed and scale that far exceeds previous technologies. This time, we do not yet know what we may lose, what we may gain, or whether children will emerge stronger or weaker as a result.
童年不应被优化为便利或高效。它应被优化为成长。学习的目的不仅仅是尽可能快速地给出正确答案。与问题作斗争、容忍挫折、从记忆中检索信息、评估某事是否合理、产生原创想法以及学习如何与另一个人类交流，这些都是发展性体验。当技术为儿童执行这些任务时，我们需要了解所获得的是什么，所取代的是什么，以及这些权衡在8岁、13岁和17岁时是否不同。
Childhood should not be optimized for ease or efficiency. It should be optimized for growth. The point of learning is not simply to produce the right answer as quickly as possible. Struggling with a problem, tolerating frustration, retrieving information from memory, evaluating whether something makes sense, generating an original idea, and learning how to communicate with another human being are developmental experiences. When technology performs those tasks for a child, we need to understand what is being gained, what is being displaced, and whether those tradeoffs differ at age eight, 13 and 17.
而且学习只是人工智能开始重塑的童年部分之一。儿童和青少年已经开始转向对话系统，以寻求陪伴、情感安慰和建议。2026年皮尤研究中心的一项调查发现，12%的美国青少年曾使用人工智能聊天机器人获取情感支持或建议。其中一些系统被设计为提供个性化、情感响应的互动，这使它们对年轻用户尤具吸引力。对于孤独的青少年来说，这种人工智能互动可能格外有吸引力。
And learning is only one part of childhood that AI is beginning to reshape. Children and teenagers are already turning to conversational systems for companionship, emotional reassurance and advice. A 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that 12 percent of U.S. teens had used AI chatbots for emotional support or advice. Some of these systems are designed to offer personalized, emotionally responsive interactions that can make them especially compelling to young users. For a lonely adolescent, that can make an AI interaction unusually appealing.
这并不意味着人工智能对儿童本质上有害。生成式人工智能可能成为非凡的支持。它可能帮助儿童探索想法、克服学习障碍、表达创造力以及以我们才刚开始理解的方式获取知识。
That does not mean AI is inherently bad for children. Generative AI could become an extraordinary support. It may help children explore ideas, overcome barriers to learning, express creativity and access knowledge in ways we are only beginning to understand.
它还可能帮助年轻人演练困难的对话，或在他们需要时找到合适的支持来源。但“它可能有帮助”和“我们可以以后再解决问题”不能成为我们整个儿童安全框架。科学家们越来越多地表达着同样的观点。一项最近的国际研究涉及272名AI专家，识别出从错误信息和过度依赖到开发者之间危险能力和竞争压力等各种风险。其他研究人员开始探讨生成式AI可能如何影响儿童的认知、情感和社会发展，发现结果可能高度依赖于年龄、使用强度、系统设计、成人参与程度以及AI互动在儿童生活中所取代的内容。
It may also help young people rehearse difficult conversations or find appropriate sources of support when they need them. But "it might help" and "we can fix problems later" cannot be our entire child-safety framework. Scientists are increasingly saying the same thing. A recent international study involving 272 AI experts identified risks ranging from misinformation and overreliance to dangerous capabilities and competitive pressures among developers. Other researchers are beginning to map how generative AI could affect children's cognitive, emotional and social development, finding that outcomes may depend heavily on age, intensity of use, system design, adult involvement and what AI interactions replace in a child's life.
这些区别至关重要。帮助青少年解决困难方程式的AI导师与直接给出答案的AI导师不同。用于头脑风暴故事的聊天机器人与直接写出故事的聊天机器人不同。鼓励痛苦中的儿童与可信赖的成年人交谈的工具与旨在成为儿童自身可信赖知己的工具不同。然而，产品的演变速度正在超过我们研究这些差异的能力。在AI成为童年不可分割的一部分之前，我们应在仍有时间塑造其影响时，建立理解其影响所需的科学基础设施。
Those distinctions matter enormously. An AI tutor that helps a teenager work through a difficult equation is different from one that supplies the answer. A chatbot used to brainstorm a story is different from one that writes it. A tool that encourages a distressed child to talk with a trusted adult is different from one designed to become the child's trusted confidant itself. Yet products are evolving faster than our ability to study these differences. Before AI becomes inseparable from childhood, we should build the scientific infrastructure needed to understand its effects while there is still time to shape them.
这意味着要大力投资于独立研究，追踪儿童随时间的发展，并让研究人员获得数据，以评估特定AI功能如何影响学习、人际关系、情感发展、心理健康和行为。开发者应在产品面向数百万年轻用户之前，与儿童发展领域的专家合作，而不是在危害出现之后。安全评估应提出具有发展阶段特定性的问题，而不是将10岁儿童仅视为成年人的缩小版。
That means investing aggressively in independent research that follows children over time and giving researchers access to data that allows them to evaluate how specific AI features affect learning, relationships, emotional development, mental health and behavior. Developers should work with experts in child development before products reach millions of young users, rather than after harms appear. Safety evaluations should ask developmentally specific questions instead of treating a 10-year-old as a smaller version of an adult.
Children and Screens 最近与儿童发展、神经科学、心理学、教育和数字安全领域的研究人员合作，绘制了围绕生成式人工智能与儿童的新兴证据图谱。一个结论是不可避免的：其影响将取决于我们构建什么。我们将迎来的未来将由当下正在做出的选择塑造。问题不在于儿童是否会在人工智能环境中成长。他们会。问题在于，这一次，我们是否会建起理解人工智能对儿童所产生影响所必需的研究、保障措施和科学指导 — — 而在我们仍有机会塑造未来之际。Kris Perry 是 Children and Screens 的执行董事。
Children and Screens recently joined researchers across child development, neuroscience, psychology, education and digital safety to map the emerging evidence around generative AI and children. One conclusion was unavoidable: the effects will depend on what we build. Which future we get will be shaped by choices being made now. The question is not whether children will grow up with artificial intelligence. They will. The question is whether, this time, we will build the research, safeguards and scientific guidance needed to understand what AI is doing to children — while we still have the opportunity to shape what comes next. Kris Perry is executive director of Children and Screens.