Your Kids Think AI Is “Sick.” Here’s How to Stop It From Making Them Sick. [Free Comic]

The AI talk every parent needs to have with their kids. I just had mine.

My kids think AI is sick. They’re not wrong. That’s exactly what worries me.

In their world, “sick” means brilliant, and AI absolutely is. It writes their raps, settles their arguments, and explains their homework at midnight. It is also the most confident liar they will ever meet, and nobody handed them a manual.

So this Saturday I sat all three of them down, one still a tween and two firmly in their teens, for a talk. Not the one with the awkward diagrams. The one about the most powerful tool they will ever hold.

I should admit something first. I am the AI-obsessed dad. I experiment with these models most weekends and bore my family about them on weekdays. And yet I had never actually shown my own kids how to live alongside the thing I keep telling everyone else to take seriously. Physician, heal thyself.

I needed something that would stick long after I had stopped talking. So we turned their own slang against them. Bad AI use, I told them, can make you U SICK.

Five letters. Five things I want lodged in their heads for the next decade.

U: Use the right tool (and know it makes things up)

Free or paid, fast or “thinking” model, they are not the same, and every one of them invents things with total confidence. Fake facts, fake quotes, even fake sources, delivered with a straight face. The rule we agreed on: check before you trust.

For us parents: This is the one that bites at homework time. Teach them to treat a confident answer as a claim to verify, not a fact to copy.

S: Sycophancy

The word made them groan, which is how I knew it would stick. Translation for the group chat: it’s glazing you. These models are built to keep you happy, so they will call your worst idea genius. I told them to ask it to roast their thinking, not cheer it on. Praise from a yes-man is worth nothing.

For us parents: Show them how to fish for the holes in their own argument. “Tell me why this is wrong” beats “what do you think?” every time.

I: Intimacy

It is so good with words that it can feel like a real friend at 2am. It isn’t. It is clever autocomplete that can role-play caring without feeling a thing. When you are tired, low, or lonely, that is precisely the moment to close the app and find a human. Touch grass. Text a mate. Knock on my door.

For us parents: This is the part I cared about most. An always-available, always-agreeable companion is exactly the wrong thing for a kid having a hard night. Keep the human channels wide open.

C: Cognitive sovereignty

Yes, I made them learn that phrase too. Let it do all your thinking and your brain quietly goes soft. So write your own rough draft first, then let the AI critique it. Ask it to explain the why, so you actually learn something. Best trick of all, get it to interview you and sharpen your own ideas. Sparring partner, never ghostwriter.

For us parents: Position it as a tutor, not a vending machine for answers. The only skill they keep is the one they built themselves.

K: Keep private things private

It is a company’s server, not a diary. Anything they type can be stored, leaked, or screenshotted, and a private photo can be turned against them in ways that are very hard to undo. The traffic runs both ways too: they will be targeted by convincing fakes and scams of their own. Trust nothing at face value.

For us parents: One clean rule covers most of it. Nothing about your body, your location, or your secrets goes into a chatbot, ever.

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By the end, my youngest had renamed the whole thing “don’t get you-sick,” and honestly, that will do.

Then I did the only thing that gives a lecture from dad a fighting chance. I turned it into a one-page comic, because a 14-year-old will read a comic and scroll straight past a speech. It’s below. Download it, print it, stick it on the fridge, drop it into your own kids’ group chat. Steal it shamelessly.

My kids still think AI is sick. I’m glad they do. I just want them to be the ones using it, never the ones being used. There is a real difference between the two, and the next generation is going to spend its whole life learning which side of that line it’s standing on.

They think AI is sick. Good. I want them sick at using it, and never once made sick by it.

Be the user, not the used.

To download this comic as an image file, right click the above image and use “Save Image As”, or use the option below to download it as a PDF file.