By Dr. Élena Bagourdi, PhD, Clinical Psychologist | Specializing in relationships, attachment, emotional development, and emerging technology
In many classrooms today, something subtle is shifting.
As a clinical psychologist working with adolescents and families, I’m seeing this shift not only in schools, but in how young people relate to their own thinking.
Students are no longer simply struggling with writing, attention, or motivation. Increasingly, they are learning that the act of thinking itself can be bypassed — particularly with the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT in schools.
As more students use AI for schoolwork, questions are emerging about how it may be affecting critical thinking, learning, and development.
AI can generate the paper.
It can organize the argument.
It can produce something that looks complete, coherent, even impressive.
And so a quiet question begins to emerge:
What happens to a developing mind when it no longer needs to stay with its own thinking?
The Role of Friction in Learning: Why struggle still matters in an AI-saturated world
For decades, part of growing up has involved a certain kind of friction.
Sitting with an idea that doesn’t yet make sense.
Trying to find language for something unclear.
Tolerating the frustration of not knowing what to say, and slowly discovering that you can.
This process has never just been academic.
It is developmental.
Because difficulty is not a barrier to learning; it is the condition that makes it possible.
It is through:
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not getting it right the first time
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having to try again
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staying with something longer than feels comfortable
that a young person develops:
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resilience
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a tolerance for frustration
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and a sense of what real effort requires
Over time, this becomes something deeper than skill.
It becomes a relationship to challenge itself:
the capacity to stay engaged when something is not immediately rewarding, clear, or successful.
When that process is bypassed consistently, success can begin to feel like something that should happen without effort and difficulty, something to be avoided rather than worked through.
When AI enters this process as more than a tool, it does not simply make things faster.
It changes the relationship.
The adolescent is no longer alone with their mind.
They are now in a kind of relational triangle:
self → task → AI
And over time, the AI can begin to take on a quiet role:
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organizing
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soothing
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resolving uncertainty
What once required patience and internal effort is now externally regulated.
From a clinical perspective, this matters.
Because the ability to think is not just cognitive, it is regulatory.
It requires:
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tolerating ambiguity
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staying present through frustration
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allowing something imperfect to take shape
When that process is consistently outsourced, the threshold for effort begins to shift.
What was once ordinary begins to feel overwhelming.
What was once expected begins to feel optional.
And thinking itself can start to feel like something someone else can do better.
This is where the conversation often becomes behavioral.
We ask:
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How do we limit AI?
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How do we incentivize original work?
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How do we prevent “cheating”?
But these questions stay at the surface.
A deeper question is:
What is the adolescent gaining when they turn toward AI in the first place?
In many cases, the answer is not laziness.
It is relief.
Relief from:
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the pressure to perform
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the discomfort of not knowing
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the vulnerability of producing something imperfect
AI offers something very specific:
A version of thinking that feels complete without requiring exposure.
AI as Tool vs. Substitute: How AI is framed may determine whether it supports or replaces thinking
This is not an argument against AI.
Used thoughtfully, it can support learning, expand curiosity, and offer access to information in ways that were not previously possible.
The question is not whether young people should use it, but how it is being used, and what psychological role it is beginning to play.
When AI functions as a tool, it can extend thinking.
When it becomes a substitute, it can quietly replace the very processes that thinking requires.
At home, in schools, and in clinical work with adolescents and families, this shifts the task.
The goal is not simply to remove the tool.
It is to restore the capacity to stay with oneself.
This means:
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allowing room for unfinished thinking
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valuing process over polish
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making space for effort that does not immediately produce results
It also means paying attention to where a child or adolescent still feels alive in their thinking:
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what they are curious about
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what they return to on their own
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where they are willing to struggle a little
The Developmental Question
We are not just teaching children to write papers.
We are helping them develop a relationship with their own mind.
And that relationship is being quietly reshaped.
At the center of this shift is not a question of technology.
It is a question of connection:
What happens when the work of thinking, like the work of relating , is no longer something we have to do ourselves?
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