An Education Week article asks: Will artificial intelligence short-circuit students’ social-emotional learning — or can it help them build vital interpersonal skills in an increasingly tech-driven world?
This is no longer a theoretical challenge for educators: AI products are becoming increasingly powerful, and existing education tools that incorporate AI are being developed with the intention of supporting kids’ social-emotional learning.
It’s intriguing to see “how people have used AI to help through social and emotional spaces and problems,” such as asking a chatbot to help talk through a family conflict, says David Adams, a social-emotional-learning expert and the chief executive officer for the Urban Assembly, a nonprofit school support organization. “I’m curious about how [AI] will impact what I call emotional offload. Cognitive offload is when we cede reasoning to our AI, and emotional offload is when we cede social and emotional reasoning and skill development to our AI.”
Mental health experts have raised alarms over adolescents’ abilities to distinguish between chatbots and companion bots’ simulated empathy and genuine human understanding, according to a health advisory issued by the American Psychological Association.
There are also concerns around privacy, says Justin Long, a researcher at Instructure, the education technology company that owns the popular learning-management system, Canvas.
“How is the data being used and how is it being stored?” he asks. “Do people know they’re talking to a bot? And especially when talking about SEL, it is really sensitive information. How is that it being protected?”
AI chatbots can potentially provide young people an opportunity to practice and build social-emotional skills in a low-stakes environment. Students can rehearse having difficult conversations with a peer or teacher before having them in real life. They can also use it to practice interviewing for jobs.
AI can likely provide social-emotional and well-being supports for students safely, so long as it’s through a tool specifically designed for that task, says Clarke Heyes, a licensed marriage and family therapist and clinical research and development manager at Alongside.
“AI is not a replacement for school mental health professionals, it’s a support tool,” Heyes says. “If it’s purpose-built and ethically deployed, it can expand access, reduce barriers, and free clinicians and other staff to focus on things that humans do best.”
For teachers, generative AI chatbots can help them weave social-emotional learning into their daily lessons, for example, by brainstorming mindfulness strategies or suggesting journaling prompts.
AI may be able to reinforce some student SEL skills, but it cannot replace the role of adults in teaching social-emotional skills and building relationships with students, says Kim Normand Dorbin, a co-founder of Free the Mind Co, an emotional-intelligence and well-being platform for students.
“AI is about the practice, it’s not the replacement of an educator,” she says. “Adults create the safety and the emotional connection. AI does not teach empathy or relationship-building. Adults do that off-screen.”
Educators and policymakers should be proactive in thinking about how AI is going to impact students’ social-emotional development, says Adams. Adults need to have goals in mind for what they want SEL and AI to accomplish and then evaluate them on those standards.
“By naming what we need young people to be able to know and do, we should be in the driver’s seat [in] thinking about, ‘What are the implications of this technology?’” says Adams.
Education Week
