Opinion

AI in education gives us to a chance to use the best tech to fix our broken schools

Social media's failures with child safety offer a cautionary tale as artificial intelligence enters classrooms

By Jon Hage , Ed Pozzuoli Fox News

Published October 8, 2026 7:00am EDT

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The lesson of social media is not that transformative technologies should be feared. It is that when children are involved, safeguards must come before harm — not after.

For years, social media platforms expanded with few meaningful protections for child safety, transparency, age-appropriate design, parental visibility or independent oversight. Only after mounting evidence of harm did policymakers begin responding in earnest. By then, millions of children had already been shaped by systems designed to maximize engagement.

Artificial intelligence (AI) gives us a rare chance to do better.

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AI has extraordinary potential in education. It can personalize support, extend teacher capacity, widen access and help students learn in new ways. But it can also shape how children think, write, reason and engage with the world. That is why this moment matters. Unlike social media, AI arrives with the benefit of hindsight. We already know what happens when powerful technologies become deeply embedded in the lives of children before........

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