Check on Your Kids' AI Anxiety Today

"Dad, everyone says AI is going to eliminate all the programming jobs before I even graduate. Why bother?"

My sophomore son asked me this yesterday. He started AP Computer Science this year and was absolutely loving it, but yesterday, he looked defeated and anxious.

His question gave me an immediate strike of clarity. All of us adults are busy debating our own career redundancies and the "Future of Work," without recognizing that there is a generation of teens silently listening in the background, and they are even more terrified than you are.

Teenagers Are Living at a Strange Crossroads

Previous generations faced rapid technological change, but it was usually built on a foundation of hope and progress. The internet was going to connect the world. Smartphones were going to put the world's knowledge in your pocket. The narrative was optimistic.

Today's narrative around AI is creating a foundation of dread and obsolescence. Lots of adults are anxious about AI, but there's a good chance that our kids are feeling it by an order of magnitude. They're hearing the doom and gloom from every direction, and they don't have the life experience yet to contextualize it.

Humans Don't Just Survive Change, We Drive It

For 2026, it's important that we all start to shift the conversation. Change and evolution is a steady feature of the human condition.

Humans adapted through wars. Humans adapted through plagues. Humans adapted through the Industrial Revolution. Every single time, the people who leaned into the change came out ahead, and the tools they built made life better for everyone who came after them.

The ability to adapt and harness the power of change is one of the primary things that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Don't let the headlines steal your ambition. The tools are changing, yes, but your ability to adapt is what makes you human.

What I Told My Son

My answer to my son was that not only will programming still be a job, but it will be even better for people his age because he's not going to have to waste hours and hours on tedious bullshit like looking for a missing curly bracket.

He will be able to unleash a level of creativity that my generation only dreamed about experiencing. His future is much brighter than mine was at his age. The ceiling for what one person can build has never been higher, and it's only going up from here.

The Ask

Do me a favor and check in on your kids' AI anxiety today. Ask them what they're hearing, what they're worried about, and how they're feeling about their future.

There's a good chance they're feeling it even more than you are right now, and they need to hear from the adults in their life that the future is not something to dread. It's something to build.