Post by @jnl@hcommons.social

Teen2: Can I read you the opening paragraph of my essay?

Me: Of course

Teen: [reads thing indicating he has no idea how much time I have spent 'grading' AI generated essay content over the past couple of years]

Me: I ... do not want to hear what ChatGPT says about this

Teen: I swear, I didn't use Chat!

Me: I don't want to hear what ANY AI has to say. I only want to hear what YOU write. In your words. Your writing.

Teen: I ...

Me: [stare]

Teen: Ok I put it into Google. I can read you the original. But it's not as good.

Me: YES PLEASE

Teen: [reads good, human, high school essay intro paragraph]

Me: That, bro, is all I want. That is all anyone wants. Just bring me your writing. Just you. Nothing else.

Teen: But it has comma splices and stuff. And repeated words.

Me: YES. Please just bring that. I really do not want or need to hear what the predictive text machine says 1000 other people have said. I just want to hear YOU.

Teen: Ok. [Returns to read me paragraphs all evening]

JNL

@jnl@hcommons.social · 15 hours ago

Parents, if your teen learning to write matters to you; if you believe that your teen learning to write is absolutely essential to their learning to think and to their finding and guarding the essence of who they are, intellectually ... you've gotta have this conversation.

It's the new Make Good Choices; We Are Here for You

JNL

@jnl@hcommons.social · 15 hours ago

Because I'm me and this is how we do parenting and family, Teen2 and I then had a much fuller conversation about deskilling and how "wages" are the actual problem AI investment is trying to "solve," along with my passionate witness toward what learning to write at this age gets you. Kid is fortunately already pretty committed as a writer- he has discovered this magic and loves the power he feels with it- so this is more of a "don't lose the path" moment.

But friends, NO ONE is gonna have this talk with your kids if you don't.

They are just being relentlessly pressured and their role models are themselves pressured and have all of the ambivalent moral commitments and institutional confusion that the last two decades have sown

JNL

@jnl@hcommons.social · 15 hours ago

accompanying your adolescents and teens on their journey of development as writers with their own voice and capacity to wield language on the page for their own purposes is as punk as it gets in 2026

it's fucking seditious

it is a rebellious act that requires both you and your kid to turn against the flow

and I am absolutely certain that it is essential if "thought" is to continue to be one of our shared projects