Kids Today: Anxiety and AI

Recently, I was selected to be part of a committee to review and select high school senior applicants for college scholarships focusing on academic performance and financial need.

While reviewing the essay portion of the application, two things stood out to me.

ANXIETY. Many of the applicants wrote about anxiety at varying levels.

It was heartening to see students talking about anxiety without shame or stigma. 

On the flip side, has anxiety become so openly discussed and claimed that it is being used to label more innocous things such as shyness or lack of confidence?

Did not we all go through some form of anxiety while growing up? Especially with all the hormones and unwritten rules of high school social hierarchy that consumes kids, who have absolutely no perspective on how large the world is if they are only able to see beyond their daily routine.

Or, is the omnipresence of social media highlighting a glossy and filtered reality creating a pressure cooker environment for kids who are trying to be authentic and figure themselves out leading to this anxiety?

Adults with decades of maturity fall pray to this - comparing and basing their worth against filtered lives. How do kids today stand a chance?

These kids in paricular also went through the isolation of COVID while in the 8th grade during middle school. 

Did the isolation during this formative year to prepare for the transition to high school and more independence lead to levels of anxiety that are still present four years later?

Artificial Intelligence. Even though the essay requirements for the scholarship application are short (with some essays 200 words), a few kids used AI. 

The essay questions are highly personally, asking about the student's experiences. 

It was fairly easy to detect those who used AI.

Needless to say, students who used AI scored lower than students who wrote original essays.

Teenagers using AI to write an essay did not surprise me as much as how prevalent and 'normal' AI is for today's generation.

One day last week, my daughter wanted to set up a scavenger hunt and had started writing some clues. 

She finished the scavenger hunt that night with her babysitter, a high schooler. 

My daughter reported that the high schooler used AI to help her generate the last few clues.

Kids today are not considering AI just used for 'special' projects like writing a paper or essay, but for any activity where thought is required.

Will AI replace critical and creative thinking for this generation? Much like Google has replaced the need to memorize facts or dates? 

Social media has replaced authenticity; or at least currated it. With AI, will people become even more bland and generic?