The Copy Paste Generation

All season we’ve looked at the risks of AI and screens for kids’ thinking. This week we hear the other side. Cristine and Elicia talk with Dr. Kristen DiCerbo, Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy, about what a good AI tutor should do, what it should never do, and why teachers aren’t going anywhere.

ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Kristen DiCerbo sets the teaching and learning strategy at Khan Academy and led the launch of Khanmigo, its AI tutor for students and assistant for teachers. A former school psychologist with a PhD in educational psychology, she has also worked at Cisco and Pearson. She was named to the TIME100 AI list.

IN THIS EPISODE
(02:05) From school psychologist to ed tech: helping more learners learn more
(04:12) What Khan Academy and Khanmigo actually do
(06:26) Not all screen time is the same: about 30 minutes a week of practice leads to real gains
(08:58) How Khanmigo is built to tutor instead of giving answers
(12:03) “Explain Your Thinking”: getting students to justify their reasoning
(14:26) Guardrails, teacher flags, and full chat transcripts
(16:33) “IDK, IDK”: spotting kids who are just clicking through
(19:09) The WALL-E future and why AI should augment thinking, not replace it
(21:47) Can AI replace teachers? “Human high fives beat computer confetti”
(24:07) Can AI read students’ emotions?
(25:45) The line AI should never cross, and what gives her hope
(28:03) The AI-supported classroom 10 years from now

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Not all screen time is equal. The question is what kids are doing on the screen.
• AI built for learning protects productive struggle. General chatbots usually just hand over the answer.
• A good AI tutor asks questions instead of giving answers, just like good teachers do.
• Teachers stay in control: flags, transcripts, and summaries show what students are doing.
• AI should augment kids’ thinking, not replace it. Help students understand why an assignment matters.
• Relationships matter most. Students with a caring adult at school are more likely to graduate and go to college.
• AI should never be used to manipulate students’ emotions or hook them the way social media does.

FOR TEACHERS: “ASK ME, DON’T TELL ME”
A K-5 lesson where students learn the difference between a helper who gives answers and a helper who helps you think, then take turns being the tutor. You’ll use Khanmigo, which is free for U.S. teachers, to build part of it.

FAMILY HOMEWORK: LEARNING OR BUSY?
Sit next to your child during screen time just once and ask yourself: is this learning or is this busy? If your child is in 3rd grade or up, try a Khanmigo session together and watch how it answers a question with a question. Tell us what happened!

Hosts: Cristine Davis and Elicia
The Copy Paste Generation, Episode 7

If this episode helped you, share it with a parent or teacher who needs it.

“My Chromebook died.” “The Wi-Fi kicked me off.” We joke about the modern “dog ate my homework,” but for many families, getting schoolwork done online is a daily struggle. Cristine and Elicia talk with Dr. Vikki Katz, who has spent more than a decade studying digital equity, about what kids really need to learn at home, and how AI is changing the picture.

ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Vikki Katz researches the homework gap and how families navigate technology together. Her work shows that digital equity is about more than owning a device. It’s also about reliable internet, digital skills, and support at home. To learn more about Dr. Katz, go to https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/vikki-katz.aspx.

IN THIS EPISODE
(02:50) What the homework gap is
(05:10) Why “digital divide” is outdated, and what it means to be underconnected
(06:30) “Dependable instability” and the stress teachers can’t see
(07:40) Why kids aren’t really digital natives
(09:11) Families as systems: everyone brings different skills
(12:48) Why smartphone-only families are at a big disadvantage
(14:10) Did Chromebooks fix the homework gap?
(15:30) How online homework can lock out parents who could help on paper
(16:54) AI, cognitive offloading, and protecting productive struggle
(20:10) Pen and paper as a learning technology
(21:38) AI teachers and a new kind of inequality
(23:10) The deeply human skills kids need
(26:11) What gives her hope: students writing their own AI rules

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Many families have a device and internet that aren’t reliable enough for school. It’s a spectrum, not a yes-or-no gap.
• A family that could log on two weeks ago may not be able to today, and teachers won’t know unless families tell them.
• Kids may know the buttons, but parents help them make sense of what they find.
• No device is a silver bullet. Chromebooks help, but they don’t fix internet access or support at home.
• Good AI tools for school do one thing well and help kids work through hard problems instead of skipping them.
• Writing by hand and brainstorming before typing still matter.
• Bring kids to the table. They care deeply about fairness and want clear boundaries around AI.

FAMILY HOMEWORK: Plan Before You Plug In
In this episode, Dr. Vikki Katz explained that owning a device and having Wi-Fi isn't the whole story. It also matters whether your child can get online when they need to, and whether someone at home can help when the technology gets in the way. Back in Episode 2, we talked about executive function: the brain's planning, remembering, and self-control skills. Those two ideas meet at the kitchen table. When the laptop is shared, the hotspot runs out, or the school portal won't load, kids who can plan around the problem keep going. This week's activities build that skill.

FOR TEACHERS: Plan Before You Plug In
Dr. Vikki Katz's research shows that the homework gap goes beyond whether a student has a device. It includes unreliable or shared access, phone-only connections, and whether anyone at home can help navigate school technology. In Episode 2 we covered executive function. This lesson brings the two together: students learn to separate the screen parts of an assignment from the parts they can do anywhere, plan around their real access, and have a strategy ready when technology fails.

Hosts: Cristine Davis and Elicia
The Copy Paste Generation, Episode 6

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like and subscribe!

We hand kids a device designed to be impossible to put down, then act surprised when they can't put it down. Cristine and Elicia talk with Hannah Chidekel of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital and Dr. Linda Charmaraman of the Youth Media and Wellbeing Research Lab at the Wellesley Centers for Women about how screens and social media shape kids. The answer isn't throwing every phone in a lake. It's driver's ed: practice, coaching, guardrails, and an adult in the passenger seat.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Hannah Chidekel is a clinical research coordinator at the Digital Wellness Lab, a nonprofit research center studying healthy digital media use from infancy through young adulthood.

Dr. Linda Charmaraman has studied social media, smartphones, gaming, and AI for nearly 20 years. She co-wrote the APA's guidance on teen social media use and submitted testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on protecting kids online.

IN THIS EPISODE

(02:50) The Digital Wellness Lab's balanced approach to kids and media

(04:47) Why Dr. Charmaraman bet on social media research early

(07:20) Design problem or developmental problem?

(09:54) Does social media replace friendships or add to them?

(12:13) Three kinds of heavy users, and when screen use signals something deeper

(15:34) The middle school brain and the "imaginary audience"

(17:14) The high school brain: guardrails instead of lockdowns

(19:31) Why digital literacy belongs in every teacher's training

(21:52) Phone policies work better when students help write them

(23:37) The "learning to drive" mindset

(25:35) Teaching teen girls to take control of their algorithms

(27:55) What age-based social media bans miss

(29:48) Why there's no "magic age" for a first phone

(31:48) What real progress could look like in five years

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Kids with strong offline friendships are more likely to feel they belong online too.

Watch for what screen time crowds out: sleep, homework, and friends.

Middle schoolers feel like everyone is watching, so online drama hits hard.

Teens need guardrails, not lockdowns, to practice self-regulation.

Students accept phone policies more when they help create them.

There's no magic age. Readiness depends on the kid and the family.

The goal is balance, not zero tech or unlimited tech.

FAMILY HOMEWORK: DRIVER'S ED FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

Family screen time check: everyone guesses their number, then checks the real one.

Conversation starters for the car.

48-hour challenge: parents turn off their own notifications.

FOR TEACHERS: "WHO'S DRIVING YOUR BRAIN?"

Students try the Ding Challenge, focusing while the teacher interrupts with silly questions, then redesign an app to be good for their brains and pitch it Shark Tank style.

RESOURCES

Digital Wellness Lab: digitalwellnesslab.org

Youth Media and Wellbeing Research Lab: youthmediawellbeing.org

Instagram: @youthmediawellbeing

Hosts: Cristine Davis and Elicia

The Copy Paste Generation, Episode 5

If this episode helped you, share it with a parent or teacher who needs it.

Episode 4: The Shortcut Machine: Screens, Dopamine, and Our Kids Why does turning off the game end in a meltdown? Why can a child scroll for two hours but not sit through ten minutes of homework? Cristine and Elicia talk with child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Clifford Sussman, a former gamer and programmer, about what's actually happening in kids' brains when they're on screens, and what parents and teachers can do about it without turning every limit into a power struggle.

About Our Guest

Dr. Clifford Sussman is a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Washington, D.C., who has specialized in treating internet and video game addiction since 2008, a decade before the World Health Organization formally recognized gaming disorder. He was a gamer and programmer before going into psychiatry, so he understands both the appeal of virtual worlds and the risks.

In This Episode

• (01:56) How a lifelong gamer became a psychiatrist specializing in screen addiction
• (03:40) What made excessive gaming look like the addictions he saw in training, and the brain imaging research behind it
• (05:27) Using motivational interviewing to help teens become their own authority figure
• (06:42) Why every teen is torn about changing, even the ones who say "I'm fine"
• (08:46) How kids have changed over the past decade
• (09:39) Dopamine as the "get what we want when we want it" chemical, and why screens are shortcut machines
• (12:39) How instant rewards overpower inhibitory control, especially in teens
• (14:11) Online escapism: why games level the social playing field, and why kids still need balance
• (19:02) Dopamine receptor downregulation, tolerance, and whether it's reversible
• (22:12) Why kids with ADHD and autism are more vulnerable, and how their reasons differ
• (24:20) Why kids get so irritable when the screen goes off: withdrawal and "reward deficiency syndrome"
• (26:38) How to talk to kids without it turning into a lecture
• (29:25) Systems that avoid the "five more minutes" standoff
• (31:07) How screen overuse affects working memory, impulse control, and planning
• (33:31) AI and chatbots: what's exciting and what's worrying
• (36:12) What parents and teachers can do now
• (38:22) Setting up home and classroom environments: low-dopamine and high-dopamine zones

Key Takeaways

• Speed matters more than reward. Screens don't necessarily give kids something better. They give it faster, which is what makes them so hard to put down.
• Meltdowns aren't just defiance. When a binge ends, kids can go through a real dopamine low that leaves them bored, irritable, and unfocused, sometimes for days.
• The brain can recover. Dopamine receptors lost to overstimulation can come back with time.
• Validate the feeling, keep the limit. You can acknowledge that your child is upset without giving up the rule.
• Watch the cues. Phones by the bed, devices at the dinner table, and Chromebooks on desks all signal the brain that it's time for screens. Create screen-free zones.
• Add low-dopamine structure. Off-screen activities that require reading social cues help balance things out.

This Week's Homework:

• Dr. Sussman's website: cliffordsussmanmd.com
• Fast Rewards for Your Brain
• Parent Homework

Episode description

Can't remember your own kid's phone number, but you still know your childhood best friend's by heart? That's the Google effect at work. In episode 3, we talk with Dr. Brittany Harman, a cognitive psychologist at Wilson College who studies digital amnesia, about why our brains stop bothering to store information we expect to find again later, how this "fear" actually goes back to Socrates, and what her own research reveals about memory, motivation, and the classroom. We also get into the surprising "photo-taking impairment effect" (why photographing something can make you remember it worse than just looking at it), what AI means for all of this, and how teachers and parents can design habits and assignments that build memory rather than bypass it. We close with this week's homework: beating the Google effect at home and in the classroom.

Guest: Dr. Brittany Harman, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Wilson College

Hosts: Alicia Dunk and Christine Davis

• 00:14 – Welcome and what this show is about
• 01:31 – Setting up today's topic: the Google effect
• 02:21 – Meet Dr. Brittany Harman
• 03:08 – What is digital amnesia, and why the fear is thousands of years old
• 05:51 – What the Google effect actually means (and how it's different from digital amnesia)
• 09:16 – Do we forget, or do we just never fully learn it?
• 12:44 – How this connects to executive functioning skills
• 15:50 – The photo-taking impairment effect: why photos can hurt memory
• 19:03 – The cell phone reliance scale she helped develop
• 21:17 – Would this effect look different in younger kids?
• 24:11 – Designing assignments that use technology without bypassing memory
• 26:28 – Does AI supercharge digital amnesia?
• 29:10 – What gives her hope about this generation
• 32:41 – Hosts' recap: proving the Google effect in real time
• 33:44 – This week's tool: homework for parents and teachers

• Dr. Brittany Harman's faculty page, Wilson College Psychology: wilson.edu/psychology-faculty
• Google Scholar (for the primary research on digital amnesia and the Google effect, as Dr. Harman recommends): scholar.google.com
• Sparrow, Liu & Wegner (2011), "Google Effects on Memory," the original study that named the Google effect, published in Science
• Henkel (2014), "Point-and-Shoot Memories," the study behind the photo-taking impairment effect, published in Psychological Science
• This week's homework and the middle/high school lesson plan: thecopypastegeneration.com

Parents: Beat the Google Effect. A parent-and-kid activity — notice when you're offloading a memory task to a device out of habit rather than necessity, and practice holding on to information a little longer before reaching for your phone.

Middle and high school teachers: A lesson plan designed to open students' eyes to how outsourcing memory is affecting them.

Find both at thecopypastegeneration.com.

Episode description

What exactly are "executive functions," and is technology helping or hurting kids' ability to build them? In episode 2, we talk with Dr. Adele Diamond, a leading researcher on executive functions at the University of British Columbia, about what these skills actually are (inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility), why she considers them more important than IQ, and how stress, joy, and our own expectations shape whether kids develop them. Then pediatric occupational therapist Brittni Winslow joins us to talk about what she's seeing hands-on with kids: fine motor changes, difficulty transitioning away from screens, and the everyday habits that help. We close with this week's homework: the Task Breakdown Challenge for parents and a matching classroom lesson plan for teachers.

Guests:

• Dr. Adele Diamond, Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, University of British Columbia
• Brittni Winslow, MS, OTR/L, pediatric occupational therapist and Executive Director at Emerge Pediatric Therapy

• 00:14 – Welcome and what this show is about
• 01:26 – Setting up today's topic: executive functioning skills
• 02:23 – Meet Dr. Adele Diamond
• 03:39 – What are executive functions, and why more important than IQ?
• 08:48 – "Lazy" or struggling? Rethinking how we read kids' behavior
• 10:17 – Does executive function look different at home vs. school?
• 11:12 – How well-meaning adults can undermine executive function
• 13:03 – Why joy and emotional investment matter for building these skills
• 15:50 – The age range when executive function is most under construction
• 18:41 – Why some activities (like martial arts) build these skills better than others
• 22:22 – Constant notifications, AI, and the impact on kids
• 23:44 – Dr. Diamond's advice for parents and teachers
• 27:13 – Meet Brittni Winslow
• 27:59 – What technology has changed in kids' fine motor and behavioral skills
• 30:10 – What Brittni actively teaches now that she didn't before
• 31:46 – The technology fears parents bring her, and which ones are overblown
• 32:29 – Apps and tools she recommends
• 34:24 – Exercises for building executive functioning skills
• 36:23 – Practical tips for screen time at home
• 39:34 – Hosts' recap
• 39:55 – This week's tool: homework for parents and teachers

• Dr. Adele Diamond's research and lab: devcogneuro.com
• Emerge Pediatric Therapy (Brittni Winslow's practice, locations in Durham, Chapel Hill/Carrboro, and Cary): emergepediatrictherapy.com
• Nex Playground (the AI motion-tracking game system Brittni uses in therapy sessions): nexplayground.com
• Korro (the AI-powered occupational therapy app Brittni mentioned): korro.ai — search "Korro" on the App Store
• Full episode resources, including this week's homework: thecopypastegeneration.com

Parents: The Task Breakdown Challenge. Spend about 15 minutes with your kid picking one real task on their plate and turning it into a simple, ordered list of steps together.

Teachers: A full classroom lesson plan built around the same skill — breaking big tasks into small ones — complete with a warm-up, guided practice, and printable activity slips.

Grab both at thecopypastegeneration.com.

Episode description

Ed tech didn't start with iPads. In our first episode, we talk with writer and historian Audrey Watters about the hundred-year history of technology in the classroom, from Sidney Pressey's 1920s typewriter-based "teaching machine" to B.F. Skinner's behaviorist devices, the first computer labs, Maine's statewide laptop program, and today's AI chatbots. Audrey explains why the same promises of saved time, personalization, and "the future" keep coming back, why the claim that "it's inevitable" should make us skeptical, and what she'd rather see in every classroom (hint: it's a window). We finish with this week's homework for parents and teachers.

Guest: Audrey Watters, author of Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning and writer of the Second Breakfast newsletter and the long-running Hack Education blog.

Hosts: Alicia Dunk and Christine Davis

Timestamps

• 00:14 – Welcome and what this show is about
• 02:16 – Meet Audrey Watters
• 05:29 – The 1920s teaching machine and its promise to save teachers time
• 10:24 – Why "ed tech is inevitable" is a story worth questioning
• 14:07 – Gadgets, household automation, and Cory Doctorow's "enshittification"
• 17:30 – What would Skinner think of a 2026 classroom?
• 19:17 – The 1980s: from Logo and Seymour Papert's vision to the computer lab
• 22:47 – The sales pitch: "the future" and personalized learning
• 26:58 – The laptop era and Maine's one-to-one program
• 30:44 – How AI compares
• 33:13 – Audrey's favorite education technology
• 34:48 – Lightning round
• 39:49 – Hosts' recap
• 40:28 – This week's tool: homework for parents and teachers

Links and resources

• Audrey Watters' website: audreywatters.com
• Second Breakfast (her newsletter on ed-tech criticism and AI): 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com, also linked from her website. Some posts are subscriber-only.
• Hack Education (her long-running blog on the politics and business of ed tech): hackeducation.com
• Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning (MIT Press): mitpress.mit.edu/books/teaching-machines

Also mentioned in this episode (no links needed, but handy for curious listeners):

• Sidney Pressey and B.F. Skinner's teaching machines
• Seymour Papert and Logo
• Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA chatbot (1960s) and his book Computer Power and Human Reason
• Cory Doctorow's term "enshittification"
• Historian Ellen Condliffe Lagemann's summary of American education: "Dewey lost, Thorndike won"

This week's tool

Parents: Cook or bake something with your kid. Have them read the recipe, follow the steps in order, measure everything by hand, and keep time with a real clock or kitchen timer instead of a phone.

Teachers: Plan a homemade applesauce lesson. Give students mismatched measuring cups and let them work out how to make a half cup from what they have.