Hello Reader,

AI companies are rushing to exploit the $300 BILLION toy industry. Here’s why you should take a pass on AI toys.

✅ Dash of Information

AI is simply not safe for kids. Technology companies live by the motto, “Move fast and break things” as they race to gain market share. Does that sound like an industry that is prioritizing your child’s safety? Nope!

You may have heard about the Kummo AI teddy bear by Folotoy that prematurely sexualized kids by teaching them about BDSM practices. It was taken off the market after warnings came out from the PIRG Education Fund. But one wonders how such an ill-conceived product was ever launched! Move fast and break things. Move fast and break kids is more like it.

✅ Dash of Motivation

Here are 5 reasons why I would encourage you to pass on the shiny new AI toys that are beginning to flood the market:

• Sexual content: AI tech gurus admit openly that they don’t even understand how their algorithms work. Adding safety guardrails to AI is going to prove a lot trickier simply because of that black box reality. Your child doesn’t need to be a guinea pig in this ongoing AI experiment. Please don’t trust AI or the internet with your child’s sexual template. Premature sexualization leads to a host of increased risks and cognitive development impairments.
• Emotional harm: Kids will trust whatever parents put into their hands. If it’s a plush toy with an AI chatbot "friend" that talks to them, kids will automatically trust it and develop an emotional attachment to it. We’ve already seen the “AI psychosis” with adults–it will do so much more damage to children.
• Dulled imagination: Pretend play will be replaced with AI responses. Creativity will be dulled when kids don’t need to come up with the ideas or dialog themselves.
• Parent-child relationship harm. AI will supplant real relationships. Instead of your child asking you, “Why is the sky blue?” Why this, why that? Your child will go to AI. The parent will lose credibility and many of those conversations that connect kids and parents just won’t happen.
• AI spying: That cute AI toy is collecting sensitive information on your child–potentially details like names, birthdays, school names, preferences, even biometric data and location information! Anything it can hear, see or sense will be collected. Why? To make your child the product–sell data and find ways to exploit it for increasing sales. And in ways we may not even understand or foresee. Can you imagine if this data gets hacked by predators?! What a nightmare.

There are many more issues and you can do a deeper dive by reading this report by the PIRG Education Fund.

✅ Dash & Do

Take a minute to think about what “jobs” appropriate toys do for kids. They help develop cognitive, social, and physical skills and a child's own innate and unique creativity.

Will an AI chatbot teddy bear do better than the “blank canvas” stuffed toy your child can freely play and create with?

Share this December Dash with a friend or family member! Here’s the link if you’d like to share it on social media!

Warmly,

Kristen

What I've been up to...

​Outside of Sunday Podcast. Listen as Christa and I discuss why protecting kids from the harms of pornography is one of the most loving things parents can do. Here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2!

Want a gift that can help a child build their internal filter? Consider giving the Amazon bestselling Good Pictures Bad Pictures books — trusted by parents around the world.