AI Isn’t the Problem. Bad Parenting Is.

Hook

“AI psychosis.” “Chatbots triggering delusions.” “Parents suing OpenAI after a tragedy.”

Let’s stop pretending the villain here is the machine.

Context

Every week the headlines get louder: kids falling down AI rabbit holes, parents crying foul, lawyers sharpening their knives. Suddenly, the narrative is that ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever bot is out this month has the power to hypnotize the innocent and warp fragile teenage brains.

Here’s the reality: AI didn’t raise your kid. You did. Or you didn’t. And that’s the actual problem.

Your Take

If you hand your teenager a smartphone, unlimited Wi-Fi, and 2 a.m. alone time with a chatbot, and then act shocked when things go sideways — that’s not on OpenAI. That’s on you.

It’s the same tired pattern:

• Kid finds porn → blame the platform.
• Kid binge-watches violent shows → blame Netflix.
• Kid spirals after hours of unsupervised AI chat → blame Silicon Valley.

No. Stop.

It’s like leaving whiskey on the counter and suing Glenfiddich when your underage son drinks it. Or parking your car in neutral on a hill and blaming Toyota when it rolls. At some point, adults have to take ownership.

Parenting means monitoring, setting boundaries, and — here’s the radical idea — talking to your kids. About screens. About porn. About mental health. About AI. These conversations should start long before 18 and keep evolving as the tech evolves.

Because if your kid doesn’t know how to use technology with a shred of common sense, that’s not the fault of an algorithm. That’s a failure of parenting.

Implications

Don’t get me wrong: AI is powerful. It’s new. It’s intoxicating. Companies do need to build better guardrails and stop pretending safety scripts that break after ten messages are good enough. But let’s be crystal clear — no safety feature will ever replace actual parenting.

Yes, AI can amplify delusions in someone already vulnerable. But pretending it’s a mind-control device that can just “give” psychosis to healthy kids is both bad science and a convenient scapegoat.

And if parents keep outsourcing responsibility — to apps, to schools, to governments, to companies — guess what? You end up with kids who don’t learn resilience, self-awareness, or accountability. You get adults who point fingers instead of facing hard truths.

Further Reading

• AI-Mediated Delusions Explained
• STAT News on “AI psychosis”

Closing

So here’s the uncomfortable truth:

AI isn’t raising your children. You are. If you don’t like the outcome, don’t sue the bot. Look in the mirror.