The last generation to grow up without AI are already using it to train their children’s behaviour. All future engagement with learning, creativity and understanding will be fuelled by a data driven engine.

Since 2011, smartphones have become a staple part of the family, joining us at the dinner table, at work, on transport, even in bed. We now find it hard to function without it. Misplacing it causes our hearts to race, as if we had lost sight of a child. It has become a convenient companion, always in our hand; we are physically and mentally alone without it. This is not an accident. Our attention is valuable to consumer technologies, the more they can create addictive behaviours, the stronger our connection and need for their product. Another reel, another advert, another sale. But at what cost to those around us. Our online persona takes time, effort and editing to develop and maintain. The more we interact with the online world, the more we strengthen our departure from the real one.

Nursey settings are reporting a national decline in early years development. Very young children are arriving with the ability to swipe a screen, but not to walk and talk properly. Cognitive progress flourishes through play, reading social clues, mirroring patterns and behaviour to establish how relationships work. As parenting is eroded through the absence of communication and attention, children are increasingly left to derail as we push them to recognise digital experiences as the norm.

The opportunity to gather knowledge in a natural environment, to use basic building blocks to construct self-awareness, discovery and resilience, is becoming a nostalgic vision of a past where learning was individual and empirical, not dictated as mass instructions.