It’s beyond a trope at this point for Gen X kids to tell the story of their magical, free-range childhood, but just indulge me for a moment. I spent my summer running around with my sister and a pack of neighborhood kids, riding bikes, hopping around backyards, and making up and competing in endless games. We knew not to venture beyond the main road and to be home for dinner when the streetlights came on, and while there were some broken bones and lost teeth, we all more or less survived and became functional adults.
Perhaps one of the reasons we became those functional adults is because we weren’t just playing and exploring – we were solving problems on our own. All those invented games needed rules, and someone had to enforce them. If we strayed too far and got lost, we had to problem solve and figure out how to get home. If we got busted breaking into the abandoned house on the other side of town, we had to come up with a story about what we were doing – fast.
The point of this is not to just revel in some nostalgia – it’s to say that while we were making up games and getting in scrapes, we were also learning quick thinking and negotiation skills, along with conflict resolution. And while the normalization of things like bike helmets and seatbelts are no doubt social goods, parents who excessively monitor their children and solve every single problem for them put them at a major disadvantage. Because alongside the rise of AI, we are in danger of raising generations that lack the fundamental skills to succeed in the workplace of the future.
“Every time a kid wrestles with a problem on their own – figuring out the rules of a game, resetting a bike chain, standing up to a pushy friend – their brain is quietly wiring itself for adulthood,” says Misha Byrne, Managing Partner, Europe and Middle East at Neuro Group. The parts of the brain that help us stay calm, think ahead, and bounce back from mistakes only mature when they’re exercised. Studies show that moderate doses of challenge and frustration are what strengthen these systems, not constant comfort. When parents rush in to smooth every bump, they might feel like they’re helping, but they’re actually stealing practice runs for resilience.”
As AI automates more rote tasks, employers will place a premium on human skills like collaboration, creativity, and problem solving. If students are too dependent on AI to complete their work, their mental muscles could basically atrophy, and when they have to answer questions or defend their work, they will be caught out quickly. We all remember the kid who read the Cliffs Notes on the bus the day of the book report and tried to lie their way through it; this is more or less harmless in fourth grade but potentially fireable in the workplace. There have already been a handful of high profile examples of this, from legal briefs generated with AI that contained made-up cases to consulting firm Deloitte having to refund a client after it was discovered the work contained facts invented by an LLM.
But even if the models get better, employees will still need critical thinking skills. An average Gen Z’er spends a quarter of their day passively consuming content, often short form videos, and time spent reading for pleasure has plummeted among teens. With devices on hand at almost all times, kids never have to be bored – but boredom can generate new ideas and force people to be creative to entertain themselves.
“We think of boredom as dead time, but for the brain, it’s the opposite,” says Byrne. When nothing’s happening, a quiet network deep inside the mind lights up – the one that lets us daydream, plan, and make sense of our lives. That’s why so many good ideas come in the shower or on long car rides. But today’s kids rarely get that empty space; every lull gets filled by a scroll or a ping. Adults aren’t immune to this either, but kids’ developing brains are especially vulnerable.”
So what can a parent or caregiver do to prevent this? When safe and possible, encourage kids to spend time on free play, ideally with others. Don’t immediately step in to help when they are struggling with something, and give them puzzles to solve and logic problems to work through. Teach them to use AI as a tool, not a crutch, and align with educators to make sure they are testing for comprehension of a subject rather than just grading essays that could have easily been generated by an LLM.
“Emerging research hints that younger generations may be developing slightly different personality profiles than those who came before them — showing higher average neuroticism and lower conscientiousness or extraversion for their age group,” says Byrne. “The reasons are complex: social media intensity, pandemic disruption, and declining opportunities for unsupervised play all shape how self-regulation and social confidence evolve. These findings are preliminary and the differences small, but they point in the same direction as the neuroscience — modern life may be giving kids fewer chances to practice the emotional and cognitive skills that once came built into everyday childhood.”
