Pediatrician Calls for Prescribing AI, Not Banning
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- Dua Hassan, a physician at Boston Children's Hospital, argues that the problem with children's screen use isn't screens themselves but passivity — the absence of the "serve and return" back-and-forth interaction that drives language acquisition, emotional regulation, and social cognition.
- A JAMA Pediatrics study cited in the piece found that higher screen time in early childhood was associated with poorer developmental screening scores by age 2, and co-viewing by parents has been shown to neutralize much of that effect.
- Hassan draws a parallel to the creation of Sesame Street, which she says disciplined the medium of television for specific developmental goals rather than rejecting it — and argues AI now needs the same kind of intentional, tested design.
- The American Academy of Pediatrics has detailed guidance on screen time and co-viewing but "almost nothing" on AI for children, according to Hassan, leaving pediatricians silent as the technology moves into kids' daily lives.
- Hassan calls for AI products for children to be built with pediatricians and developmental scientists from the start and tested with randomized controlled trials measuring real developmental outcomes — not engagement metrics — drawing an analogy to the pediatric drug trial standard.
- Current AI products for children are optimized for time on screen and engagement, not language acquisition, attention, or emotional growth, running on the same incentive structure that produced autoplay and infinite scroll, per Hassan.
- Hassan concludes that pediatricians should demand "pediatrician-prescribed AI" — tools built around the vocabulary, turn-taking, narrative comprehension, and emotional labeling milestones she already counsels on at well-child visits.
Why it matters: The AAP has detailed screen-time guidance but almost no position on AI for children, and Hassan argues that gap lets engagement-optimized products reach kids unchallenged. Her prescription — RCTs measuring developmental outcomes, not clicks, and pediatricians in the room at design time — would set a drug-trial-level evidence bar that no major AI product for children currently meets.
