The impact of artificial intelligence on children and adolescents: education, development and well-being

The article is devoted to the issue of children's interaction with artificial intelligence agents. The main stages of the digital transformation of society in the 21st century are studied and how it has affected the development, learning and well-being of children and adolescents. The role of artificial intelligence in these processes is determined. Changes in the cognitive, psychological and social skills of children and adolescents as a result of their use of various artificial intelligence algorithms are described. In particular, it was found that artificial intelligence agents, if they were developed taking into account the principles of learning, can be useful and very effective, but cannot and should not replace real interaction and communication with real people: friends, parents, classmates, etc. The importance and necessity of teaching literacy in the field of artificial intelligence at an early age was emphasized. The issue was considered from the perspective of generational theory, and it was determined that the majority of children and adolescents currently belong to the Alpha generation, whose representatives don’t simply perceive the digital environment as something natural, but were the first to be born in the digital age. Because of this, some researchers are quite optimistic about the potential impact of the revolution in artificial intelligence, in particular, on the psychological health of "alphas", unlike, for example, representatives of generation Z, who appeared earlier and are also partially related to this study. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the principles of the human brain are fundamentally different from the principles of artificial intelligence, and a significant quantitative and qualitative change in the processes occurring in the environment leads to psychological stress, social problems and even the loss of certain cognitive skills