How to Raise Resilient Kids in an AI-Dominated World

0:00 Are your kids making deeper, more meaningful connections to AI chatbots than they are to their friends, family, and even you? As more kids choose artificial validation over real human connection, it's creating a generation that can't handle authentic relationships or genuine feedback. While schools push AI integration, we're accidentally teaching kids that algorithms understand them better than their parents, teachers, or friends do. So today we're gonna talk about how you can help your kids use AI as a tool without losing their humanity. We'll talk about the warning signs of AI dependency, understand why current education systems are failing our kids emotionally, and get practical strategies for building real world resilience in an artificial world. So hang out as we try to discover how to raise emotionally intelligent humans in an AI dominated world.

0:50 Hi there, is BroBots, the podcast formerly known as The Fit Mess, and along with Jason, I'm Jeremy, and this is a podcast for men who want to use AI safely to manage their mental health. And our conversation today is really a continuation of one that we've had on this show for some time now, as we've been talking more and more about how so many people are using AI to manage their mental health, whether they don't have access to human mental health through therapy or counseling, things like that. People are turning to AI because they are finding a lot of validation. They're finding a lot of advice, good and bad. ah And it's creating a lot of opportunity for people to get help that they need. But it's also creating a lot of danger for people that don't really know how to navigate it well.

1:30 And so as I mentioned, this is sort of a continuation. uh I posted something on LinkedIn recently. I'll just read it to you. said, the danger of AI therapy isn't that it doesn't work. The danger is that it works too well. Perfect responses, instant availability, zero judgment. relationships can't compete with that level of artificial perfection. We're accidentally making human connection feel inadequate. this one got an interesting response from a guy named Scott Merkel. He responded saying, Jeremy, you nailed it. While everyone is arguing about cognitive offloading and brain rot in education, which is totally off base in my opinion, this is the real issue, outsourcing all types of relationships to AI, girlfriends, therapy mentors. In a therapeutic context, one of the most nuanced things a mental health professional can do is use a belief in the other person's potential to challenge them and push them beyond their comfort zone.

2:16 You would need an MA in counseling psychology to even know how to prompt for that level of young people and disenfranchised folks want validation. Our systems and institutions have offered them that. and or they became jaded about their ability to navigate these systems. Our education system is a great example of failing so many kids and not validating their strengths. The trust has eroded and they shift to AI. This is the problem we should all be paying attention to. Naturally, I looked up Scott's background to try to understand who he is and a little bit of his context. And what I found was very compelling. He's one of the people with boots on the ground to try to help solve this problem as we explore more about how to use AI in our real lives, but also try to hang on to our humanity and what it is that makes us different from machines.

2:58 So we invited Scott to join us here on the show and have a conversation about what he's seeing working directly with young people and where the school systems are letting them down and where AI is starting to fill in the gaps for better and for worse. so we'll talk more with Scott about that right after this. Our guest today is Scott Merkel. He's a school counselor and founder of the Impact League. It's a program that helps young people take awesome ideas and make them happen in the real world to help others. He's also interested in how things like AI are changing school systems and how we think about ourselves. And Scott, you and I connected on LinkedIn a few days ago, really in response to something I posted, which was in response to something we talked about on our show. And it's how we're turning so much of our AI therapy over to AI.

3:38 Jason, you were sharing recently that mental health is like the number one thing people are using AI for these days. And you had some concerns about how people are doing more and more of our outsourcing of not only therapy, but our actual human relationships. What are the concerns that you have about this? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the world that I've been occupying for the last couple years in education, a lot of the conversation has been about the actual production of work and cognitive offloading. there was a recent study done by some folks at MIT that gained a lot of traction. I'm sure you've seen it. And there's just so much conversation about the function of school and learning and the cognitive offloading of that.

4:25 For me, that's a non-issue. I think there's plenty of evidence out there that suggests that humans have ah some intrinsic motivations, some natural curiosity, some natural inclination to learn. I don't think that stuff goes away with AI, but the bigger concern I think, and we've seen this play out for young people, especially over the last decade, is just the loneliness epidemic, ah continued isolation, continued push away from trusted connections and relationships into more siloed spaces where they are ultimately interacting with algorithms ah that change their thinking and really take away their humanity in a lot of ways.

5:11 And so I think ah it's not even a conversation education right now, which I think it needs to be. And I think that's part of the AI framework and policy stuff that gets talked about in schools. in a lot of places is still not codified and doesn't exist in the way that, like, how do we teach young people that there are some great use cases for AI and this is what that looks like and how do we develop some fluency around that and we don't want to outsource our humanity. Like, that's the quickest way for us to, you know, a few generations from now to not be around anymore. m Yeah, I mean, it's, kind of crazy that you mentioned the idea that kids are feeling isolated and alone and we're supposed to be more connected than ever.

5:57 But do you feel that the personification of the individual and social media comes down to kind of our own mental cognitive map trying to go through and remap the value of self back to whatever it is this presentation layer is that we're, calling social media. and trying to create this interaction where human beings just feel disconnected from themselves because they look at this thing as supposed to be reflection of who they are. And they kind of know it's not. And they're trying to live up to their own ideals that they're putting on themselves that are a mirrored reflection of what their social group says they should be. But I guess my question to you is, since you're working in this space, what's the judo to get out of it for kids?

6:44 Because... I mean, I've got two daughters. They're 20 and 24. They came up right around the time of social media. And no one like Jeremy because his kids are quite a bit younger and they're more steeped in it than my kids are. And I don't see a simple way to fix this problem from a continued use perspective. know China's gone through and they basically limit kids to like two hours a day of social media. um they've had some success with, but man, I don't know, like two hours of doom scroll, it's probably enough to taint things pretty well. So don't know what the right amount is, what the right portion is, and I guess I'm hoping you have some insight.

7:32 Yeah, I mean, I think you're a technologist, Jason, so you'd know more about the ins and outs of the manipulation and the traps that are created psychologically for even somebody like myself who understands psychologically what's happening physiologically and our nervous systems are not uh in position to be able to navigate this world. And of course, kids don't know any of that. They're just trying to make a sense of their identity, especially as they come into adolescence. But I think where I'm trying to work in particular is uh social media is obviously a huge problem, but think one of the, and AI will be a continuation of that I think in terms of what kids have struggled with in the last decade plus is this idea that they don't see themselves in the system.

8:24 They don't have any voice. They don't have any agency. They don't have any sense of co-creation or sharing a power and in that they lose some validation for who they are and what their identity is. There's a lot of, of course, over optimization that's happened in education, like optimizing for all these things. And so in a lot of ways we're treating kids less human to optimize for these things. We're not validating them and they don't have any agency in the process. And so it feels very transactional. And so they look for a place where they can feel some validation and comfort. And I think the downstream implications of that are we've just created a lot of learned helplessness, we've created some fragility.

9:09 ah And these are things that I think we have to look back at ourselves as adults in the system and go, like, what are we doing? We have created this mousetrap that really stunts curiosity, stunts the innate desire for individuals to learn. ah essentially being counting. so going back to the MIT study, the idea that AI has ruined education is a farce to me because it's, Jason, to your point, it's a mirror back on the system. If the system was operating effectively, wouldn't be...

9:50 Intrinsic motivation is uh predicated on self-determination theory. It's autonomy, it's competence, it's relatedness. If those things are happening in a meaningful way in the environment, like there's not this desire to take the path of least resistance. So that path has always been there. I used to be calling, you know, I had a friend named Alex Engel or something. He was my AI, right? And he had all the answers to the homework. ah So the path of least resistance looks different now, but it doesn't change the mechanics of like what's happening in the system itself. So to me, that is... directly where we need to be working as adults to go like we need to give up tent that we created around what's actually important and what work we're doing and we need to bring kids into the process and give them some agency and treat them like human beings.

10:43 And I think that really goes a long way. I'm oversimplifying it. It might seem a little esoteric, but I've done some work in that space and I've just seen the the results from kids with no agency just like, okay, tell me what to do. They're just so trained into that, into that mode to then have any agency to go create and design something that is important to them and gives them some sense that they have some agency and ownership over what can happen in the give me an example or two of the kids you've worked with that are struggling with this, that don't have that agency, that are sort of like, what does that look like in your office, on the campus? who is that kid walking down the hall?

11:23 What is he dealing with on a day-to-day basis? And what does that look like? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the best exercises that we can do as adults is, it's been a long time since we all sat in a classroom. And so one of the things that I've tried to do every year is be a student for a day. And that's human design, that's empathy, right? And that's something that AI can't do. AI can, you know, ah simulate trying to be empathetic and talking about what that experience is like, but it can't live it as close as you might. uh as a human being in kind of a surrogate way. So I think for kids, it's we've created, it's twofold.

12:04 So one, we've created this system by which it's like uh becomes zero sum competitive to get to this place, which is higher education in a lot of ways. And I've worked in public schools for a long time as well. And there's a lot of that there. It's like, I have to take all the AP classes. I have to check all the boxes. I have to do all the things. And it becomes just this exercise of stuffing the quote unquote resume. And what that looks like in practice for a kid is they wake up at, I don't know, 6.30, 6 a.m. and they get to school. An example of a kid I followed, we went to uh their one elective for the day, which is like graphic design. And that was fun.

12:46 And then we went to honors chemistry, took a test for 90 minutes, went to AP World History. took another test for 90 minutes and then went to pre-calc. And by the time we're in pre-calc, you know, I'm struggling to keep my eyes open. I'm doodling. There's been no opportunity to move. There's been no opportunity to discuss. There's been no opportunity to uh get any type of feedback other than to sit there, rote memorization and dump information or listen to a lecture. Graphic design aside a little bit, but those same kids then go to extracurriculars. They go to music sports, theater, scouts, whatever it may be, they're not getting home ah sometimes until eight, nine in the evening.

13:31 They haven't eaten. We've just taken these things that sound crazy. That's a crazy day for any one of us in terms of a work day. And to do that day in and day out ah in search of this thing that we've all determined is important, I think is... ah it's really challenging. So when they come in, think they just feel they're just trying to survive. There's no sense of like, don't have, they don't even have the space to sit and like unpack whether they should be doing this. Like they feel like they have to. And that's just the messaging that they've been given from the jump.

14:13 So do you feel like administrators and folks that make curriculum are focusing on the wrong KPIs? So I mean, they're data-driven and they're trying to elicit certain results, but they're not taking into account the physiological, the psychological, and the emotional toll that driving and pushing this direction actually take on individuals. And as far as I can tell, we're trying to use AI to elicit a certain response out of kids in terms of putting them through a certain curriculum criteria and trying to get them strive them towards a certain output or a certain outcome. But we don't do anything to measure mental health of kids. Like, we really just don't. Like, there's not a mental health scorecard.

14:54 There's not a class on how to deal with shit in schools. And there should be. I mean, we don't teach kids how to balance a checkbook or how to pay rent or any of those pieces, but we'll push them through like trig and geometry, like not really practical skills. And we'll do story problems that, you know, This is how fast a how long a train takes to go from somewhere in Paris to somewhere in London. And there's a schedule for that. Like I don't really need, that's not really a skill I need, but I need some more practical skills and we're like bypassing these practical skills and putting them in these situations even as while they're in school, when they're leaving school, where they're not prepared, but we're also putting them at a disadvantage while they're in school to push them towards KPIs that, you know, honestly are probably not really going to be relevant anymore because With the advent of AI, a lot of these jobs that we're talking about pushing them towards that require a college degree are just not gonna be there in 10 years.

15:48 Probably even sooner than that. schools are titanic in terms of their curriculum and how they actually can transform and move things. It takes a long time and most of time they can't slow down before they hit an iceberg. It sounds very much so like we're heading towards an iceberg and like there's a lot of people waving their hands in the air saying, we're gonna run into this thing as AI becomes our prevalent in the school and in schools themselves. Are we just kind of hosed? I guess that's my real question to you. don't think we're hosed, but I think there's a lot of step back and reflection that needs to happen on the part of the educators.

16:30 There's identity there, and I don't want to treat that as if that is easy to think through and reflect upon. But it's a change in identity from being the holder of all the knowledge and the information and the content to a co-creator because to your point, Jason, we don't know where It's going to be in 10 years. And I think we have to relinquish some of that control. It's a compliance and control model right now. And what it has ended up doing downstream or, you know, the misaligned incentives or the KPIs like you were talking about has just created this over pathologizing of childhood. And, you know, I think John Heist probably talked about that a little bit in both his books, Coddling of the American Mind and The Anxious Generation, but you're taking kids that are generally fine and putting them in a place where they are no longer fine because be it the expectations, the environment, the ask of them, the lack of validation, the lack of true human connection in a place that's supposed to be an opportunity to learn and develop a lot of the skills that you mentioned, it's just not what's happening.

17:43 I think that's kind of the we're going towards a place where, and we're already there, right? I think about young men in particular who are less likely to form, ah especially if they're isolated through adolescence, like they're less likely to form these tight relationships in the same way. And I also have daughters, but in the same way that girls might, females are much better, I think, at maintaining a network and staying in touch with them. But young males, you could be a young male orders your coffee online, picks it up, you don't have to talk to anybody, you get your Amazon delivery, you get your groceries delivered, you interact with an AI girlfriend or AI therapist, and you play games all day, and you might gamble online.

18:36 You don't have to talk to a human. And you can still, we've made it. just described my dream world. That was amazing. But it's dangerous. Yeah, you're right, it's dangerous. it's completely frictionless and you need friction for growth. And so I think we've removed, we've created all these points of quote unquote friction in our systems, but they're the wrong points of friction where the right points of friction would be how do we create kids that are not fragile but anti-fragile? And the only way to do that is in like true relational environments where there is the messy middle.

19:18 There are these opportunities for feedback in different ways. There are opportunities to let go of the control and let it play out and everyone's going to be fine. Everyone's going to be safe. I think we've just pushed so far away from that into this other direction where it's just an easy button now. Yeah, I don't need to tell either of you, you know that. It's just, hard to watch young people who don't have kind of that fully formed sense of identity and maybe don't have the language to honestly even, and this is where we can go maybe into the therapy piece, but like they don't even have the language to articulate a lot of times what they're consciously feeling and what that looks like.

20:01 And they're kind of relying on an LLM who's going to probably either over-validate or send them into, you know, different direction that really isn't what they needed in that moment. Yeah, it's almost like they need a default profile in their prompt engineering that takes into account the Dunning-Kruger effect for kids who think they actually know something because the AI bot spits back something and says, you're right, it's validating. And it's really hard to attain emotional maturity when you're dealing with something that just keeps going, yeah, you're doing great. Something needs to check you in the process because when something in the real world does and you don't know how to handle those pieces, you're going to break down.

20:46 You know, I, I used to coach softball and I, I watch it with some of my players. Like if you came at them and criticize them in a certain way, they, they really couldn't take it. And it was a lot different when I was a kid. And I just, this seems to be accelerating and becoming more of a divergent path and becoming more and more difficult to have regular emotional conversations with kids. And for good reason. it's not like there's not a real reason why these things are hard. But yeah, I, sorry just to comment on that. You that's been my experience with working with AI is it's going to validate you and validate you and validate you.

21:28 And you're perfect. You're the perfect person to do this thing. And it's like, well, I don't know about that. I have a lot of gap. But you can see kids taking that in such a way. And that's not always good for their growth either, because they need to be given the space to take healthy risks. Yeah, I just think the isolation and the loneliness piece of it is really the biggest challenge. think that's an epidemic and I think ah we need relational friction and a lot of our systems are dependent on human beings ultimately. And so we're just cutting that out of the process. So I mean, what I'm hearing from this conversation is really kind of opposing uh goals really.

22:12 mean, on one hand, we need to be teaching these kids how to really integrate AI and how to really understand and use it as the tool that it is for any sort of future role in an economic system, whatever is left of our current one. But also we need to have them use it less and interact more in real life with real people and real challenges. and maybe the answer here is, I don't know, but like, is there any agency at the education level from the teacher, from the district, whatever agency to build that? mean, can a teacher experiment and find ways to combine the two or try new things?

22:53 Or are they all really locked into a curriculum that's enforced so that they pass the test and the school continues to get the funding that it needs? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I probably can't speak for every environment, but I think leadership dictates a lot of that. There are some, I think, environments where teachers are given some agency to go explore and try things. And I think those are probably the environments where you'd see the most kind of innovative and unique solutions, of course. I think a lot of the, again, lot of the dialogue I've heard around it is just in the environments that I've been in is just this concern of losing this cognitive offloading and this critical thinking.

23:40 And that's not a concern for me because I don't think, I think the other things that are playing on the system that we just were talking about are much bigger barriers to what happens going forward than this cognitive offloading piece. And I think that has existed, like I said previously, for quite some time. It's just very, very visible now to everybody that's watching. So I think any young person that has some, that lights up about something that they're interested in, that gives them energy, engages them, that they feel some confidence around is going, and they feel like they have some autonomy to follow that and pursue that.

24:23 That is so innate. That's how we derive purpose and meaning in life. I don't think that goes away. But I think what is happening is we are not leaning into those things and we're not cultivating environment for those things to take place. And so I guess in a perfect world in an environmental system, you'd have, like you were saying, Jeremy, you'd have a barbell strategy here where you have a lot of time without AI, where you have some opportunity to take some some risks in the real world, try some stuff, get some feedback, work with some different people, mix up the ideas in such a way and the adult becomes more of a mentor and a guide than the holder of all the information because that's where learning comes from is that place of curiosity and there's neuroscience around that too.

25:17 But then there's some piece of it as well where it's like we need to have some fluency around how to use the tool and we need to be able to sit down and go like, hey, this is a great place to use case for it. We think you should use it as a writing partner. You should use it as a sparring partner to come up with different ideas and brainstorm and think about how you can do X, Y, or Z. But you don't want it to take the place of all these important human relationships that are really, again, going back to just the most deeply humane things about us is our connection with others. I just think there's not a ton of thought about that.

26:01 It's such a deep place to go to, I think. And in education, I think we're still stuck in standards and, well, kids have to go to college and kids have to do this and kids have to do that. And oftentimes if you ask the kids, they have a completely different, and I did a project like this in a school where the kids' perceptions of what was happening in the environment and the adult's perceptions were on polar opposite ends. And I think oftentimes we don't ask the kids what their perspective is. And I think that ends up inadvertently creating these types of dynamics.

26:44 Is there a positive to all the AI influence coming in in education? I let me relay a quick story. So I grew up uh military brat, hopped around a lot. um Had a lot of teachers, lot of different schools. And I get to fifth grade and my teacher just goes, you're going to be bored with the curriculum. Here's the student version or the teacher book and go for it. See how far you can get. So I did that for fifth and sixth grade. And by the time I had done it, I had finished the sixth grade, I'd finish the seventh and eighth grade curriculum. If I had an AI, this would have been a great tool for that to kind of put those pieces forward. And it's one of those pieces where I think people can thrive in certain environments and certain conditions, but education needs to be sent towards the masses.

27:28 And while you need to look at the different fringe levels of those pieces, I think that there's, to me, it seems like there's value in AI being used in those kinds of ways to answer your. answer questions about curiosity that you're mentioning. like Google was great for that. didn't, we didn't know the answer. Everyone knows the answer. Now that you can Google those things, you can settle an argument right then and there. But then the question kind of becomes with this instant access to information, how much am I going to hold onto it? How much do I actually remember? I don't need to remember phone numbers anymore. I don't need to remember addresses anymore. I don't need to know how to have directions anymore. I just need to know how to operate my GPS and lock my phone. Those things I think are great and a value add, but yeah, there's a declining value on the other pieces.

28:12 And if society collapses and falls apart, sure, I don't have telephones anyways, whatever. But kind of my point being that it seems like there's actually good things in here that could be pulled out of it. And that the way that we get those into the system needs to be integrated with a more comprehensive education program that actually takes into account. the emotions of kids, but also the interests of kids because not every kid gives a shit about going to college. They don't and they shouldn't, to be honest. mean, my degree in social sciences does nothing for me in my current field of occupation, but I have it. And my wife's a real estate agent and heard this season English slip major.

28:55 Like these things don't really cross over. And yes, I think there's value in going through these process and learning. how to operate in the system, going to college and getting that learning experience. But ultimately speaking, I don't think we're teaching kids enough of how to use the existing tools of society. And now we have these whole new sets of tools coming in and we're not really doing a good job of showing them how to use it and how to regulate it. And we're trying to push it into everything right now. And it's scary. I mean, Microsoft just came up with this whole new thing for all the Office line products where you are forced to use copilot. Like you are forced to use their AI system and they are charging you more for this, up to your subscription cost to force you to eat more AI, which is bad for the environment and terrible for this and that.

29:43 And really takes away from the individual creative process and force you to think on your own. If the tools themselves are being shifted in that direction and moved in that direction and you're not going to get corporations to really change those those aspects. Do we just need to be more adaptive in the way that we address these things, especially with children who are probably our most vulnerable members of society? What's what's the trick? mean, I don't think I don't know if anyone's figured this out yet, but you know, where does that balancing line come between utilizing these cool new technology pieces to try to derive some value out of it versus you've just taking this new technology piece that you're bludgeoning children over the head with and trying to turn this into another tool that they're only going to be able to use this much of and ultimately it winds up being a negative for Yeah, I don't know if I know the answer, but I laughed when you said co-pilot because I noticed that logging into my work email the other day and I couldn't figure out how to get to my email because co-pilot made it very challenging.

30:50 I think the best kind of metaphor for this is what's been going on with SEL for the last 10 to 12 years and The short version of that is instead of going down to the root and figuring out some of what I was talking about before, I think, and the environment itself and the ways that can change, there became this movement that, kids just need more of these SEL skills, which I, I'm a mental health professional. I agree they need those skills. I just don't think that calling them out and siloing them as a separate thing.

31:32 is the effective way to do that. And so what happened is that's how it was presented. It got siloed. And then schools said, hey, we need to do SEL. Every teacher is going to have a advisory. They're going to teach these SEL uh lessons and provide these skills. And the teachers were like, no, we don't want to do this. We're not qualified. We don't know how to talk about self-awareness and social awareness. responsible decision making and all that stuff. it didn't get, it wasn't equitable and how it was rolled out. And so then it becomes, well, this ed tech company swoops in and they have the solution and they go, we can do it for you.

32:16 And the school feels some responsibility to say that they're doing it well. And so worse than the teachers trying to struggle through it and acknowledge that like, hey, this is messy. I don't know exactly what I'm doing. And that's part of this whole thing. That's what SEL is anyways. We've got EdTech on the scene and they're like, yeah, just press this button and it'll give you everything that you need. really kids, especially middle school and high school kids, they see right through that stuff. They're not participating. They just want authenticity. And that goes, I mean, that goes back to where I started with this is like the validation that they're looking for is because they're not, they don't feel those authentic connections. There's a lack of trust in the system in terms of like meeting me as a human being.

33:02 And so that's where I think the biggest concern is, I guess to bring this back full circle is like the biggest concern is that the power and agency that we have to just be human beings in these systems, we have made ourselves more robotic and less human. And so the robot actually seems like the better option because it's going to show up with validation first instead of just leaning into like It's just the over optimization and the hustle and the busyness. And even in schools, it's not that big of a deal. And everyone is burnt out. The teachers, the kids, the administrators, we don't have to be in that spot, but we are.

33:48 And it's the name of the thing. It's artificial. Like, we're not becoming more dynamic and more organic. We're becoming more artificial. the tool's not adjusting to us as much as we're adjusting to it. And this seems a lot like social physics, just like regular meat space physics, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and there's only so much emotional space kids can deal with. And how do you? Yeah, that search for authenticity is huge. And also the fear of being authentic is huge. Like you might actually have terrible thoughts. And if you express them and the AI sees it and listens to it, it might amplify those pieces or you might be shunned for it.

34:35 mean, it feels like there's a real lack um of space for organic growth and control because we've just embrace what we think is so much better, which is artificial, which by the way, it's very inefficient. It's not great. It's not cost effective. There's all kinds of problems with it, but it makes things happen really, really fast. For some reason, we're more concerned with fast results as opposed to quality accuracy. And it really feels like that's being pushed into education and on teachers in an unfair way. 100%. Yeah, I think if the teacher was given some agency to, I'll talk about a little bit of a project I did and I know an eighth grade teacher in Colorado that's doing this work as well, he's basically doing whatever he wants and then tying back what, and whatever he wants is giving his agency and having them dictate within some red line.

35:42 boundaries like where the learning goes and then the kids drive it and the kids have to present and the kids have to write and the kids have to so they have to do all these things. There's plenty of friction there but he's letting the kids drive within what I'm calling these red line boundaries which is don't walk out into traffic. Don't you know go to this place on the internet and if you don't do those things we're all good here and I want you guys to drive it and then I'm going to be able to tie these back and so I kind of did a similar deal with some kids that I started a peer counseling program five years ago and I couldn't control, going back to control, I couldn't control, I spent a semester training them, giving them credit and I couldn't control the flow of the kids that were coming in to seek their support.

36:28 So at one point I said, I want you guys to do a project. It wasn't for a grade, I just said, I'm giving you credit, it's pass fail, but you're gonna do this project. what the project looks like is 100 % up to you. I'm going to give you some data, school level data. want you to look at it. We'll gallery walk it. And I want you to ask some questions and we'll go from there. And the first four weeks were painful because they just wanted me to tell them what to do. And they wanted to, it's just that that's how they were trained. And we trained the curiosity out of them. So fast forward, they, they run with it. They, it was a great experience. They publish.

37:08 This paper they're presenting to the adults. They're the thought leaders We've shared power now. I've opened doors for them to to get in front of adults and and the I think the reaction from adults when they see kids who have taken some agency Have gone through a thoughtful process have collected some data have taken all these meaningful steps It's like standing ovation and yet we don't give them any space and then we go back to business as usual and we don't give them any space to actually do that. And so that was kind of where my side project impact league came from. It's just this idea that when you give kids some space to lean into their agency, something that they're super motivated to kind of run with, and you give them a little bit of light mentorship and guidance, like they're gonna do amazing things.

38:01 We just need to get out of their way, create those red lines. And that's how they learn. I mean, the level of confidence, capacity, ah the change in 12 to 18 months, way more than you see in a typical classroom. 10x. Like if we can bring more of that into the classroom, give the teachers the agency to do this sort of thing or build new curriculum that does this. think that that is one at least answer to this big puzzle. ah treat them like IEPs, right? Individual education programs that can be tailored to the individual that can run through this kind of process to give them that kind of feedback. But you have to make space, like Scott was saying, for the emotional connection and interactions.

38:46 Where I think if you use these things as derivative tools that go through and look at these KPI indicators and then also added in the emotional context piece inside of this, you can actually go through and have those kinds of interactions. I think you'd be much better off. And I think we have to stop measuring things as ABCs, Ds, or ABCs, Ds and Fs, because that's not what the criteria for output is anymore. I mean, if you look at the way that these systems actually work, they're 51 % positive. That 1 % is the effective value that they actually make and grow and generate in those LLMs. businesses, most successful corporations aren't 100 % successful. They're 51 % successful or better. Yeah.

39:26 That 1 % can derive a lot. I think that needs to be put into education. And I think other countries have done this. Scott, it sounds like your program is definitely leaving the forefront on this. Where can folks learn more about it and follow your work? Yeah, theimpactleague.org. We provide micro grants to youth. We give them some light mentorship. The goal is to amplify impact and really support the next generation of change makers in doing the type of work that I know they can do. They have incredible potential. We just need to give them some space to do that. So that's where you can find more information about the program. We'll have the links in the show notes. Anything you want to add here that we didn't get to?

40:07 No, I think the only thing would be to look at the people you love and stay connected to them. And I've been trying myself to go back to friendships and folks have gotten disconnected from it, just to reconnect. And I think that's just going to be the most important currency going forward is that human connection. Could not agree more. Thank you so much, Scott. This has been great. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Scott. Likewise. All right, our thanks Scott. Boy, that's really loud. All right, our thanks to Scott Merkel. Great conversation there.

40:47 found it validating in a lot of ways as a parent. There's so many things where he was talking about like the red lines and just sort of giving kids the freedom to experiment and grow within those boundaries. know, essentially, within those boundaries, essentially, you know, don't run into traffic, but you know, go play in the yard. These are the kinds of things I do as a parent is try to give my kids the freedom to explore, to go out and be kids. It's a novel concept seemingly now, but I mean, when I was a kid, that's how we grew up. We came home from school, said hi to our parents if they were home. More often they weren't. And we were just out in the neighborhood until dinner. And if you weren't home by dinner, parents might've been concerned, but for the most part, kids were allowed to be kids and explore.

41:28 And there's so much emphasis on testing and getting it right and... being on the optimized path to make the most of every opportunity. And I get it, like there's a lot of value in that. There's a lot of missed opportunity I think that does come along if you don't work towards something. But if you're allowed to explore what that something is for yourself, I think it's just gonna lead to a much more fulfilling existence for that kid that you're trying to raise in the world. Lots of great information there. Lots of information from Scott that you can find at his website, theimpactleague.org that is linked at our website, brobots.me. And that's where we'll be back in just a few days with another episode. Thanks so much for listening.