AI Literacy for Preschoolers? The Frightening Redefining of Childhood

President Trump’s goal to make artificial intelligence (AI) accessible to students in grades K-12 raises far-reaching concerns. Here, I would like to discuss the potential effects this could have on preschool.

The right-wing The74 wants to get children using AI before kindergarten. They reference the link noted in my last post, where Donald Trump grins over an ad, accompanied by a dizzying display of corporations selling AI. Many of these companies have profited lucratively from technology in public schools, with students having little to show for it.

Tammy Kwan, an education entrepreneur and author of a The74 article, aims to introduce kids to AI literacy before kindergarten. She wants her children to understand that machines aren’t as trustworthy as parents or teachers. Still, she emphasizes the need to get young children learning with AI more quickly, stating:

AI is dominating headlines — and rightly so. It’s reshaping industries, redefining work and increasingly influencing homes and childhoods. But as policymakers and technologists rush to prepare K-12 schools for an AI-powered future, they risk overlooking a critical window: the early years, when children’s brains are developing faster than at any other point in life.

Teaching AI literacy to 3- and 4-year-olds may seem premature, but with companies like Google offering the Gemini chatbot to children under 13, it’s more important than ever to start early. Young children are remarkably capable of understanding complex ideas when taught in developmentally appropriate ways. At my children’s preschool in New York City, they’ve learned about skyscrapers and even touched on the events of 9/11. When wildfire smoke from New Jersey recently polluted the air, they discussed climate and health. If I can trust their teachers to guide these complex conversations, I can trust them to begin introducing the concept of AI in ways that are meaningful to my children.

First, this seems like great faith in corporations that have not consistently demonstrated a clear understanding of, or who don’t always appear to have, the best interests of children in mind. Second, why should teachers be at the mercy of AI instruction for preschoolers when there are so many concerns about it?

Eagerness to introduce AI to children with advanced subject matter at an early age is not surprising, however. For years, we’ve witnessed the transformation of childhood, children learning faster, often without considering established research surrounding child development.

We see this in reading instruction, where kindergarteners are expected to read before first grade, a pushdown of skills, with little regard for a child’s age or readiness to learn. This childhood makeover, a redefining of childhood, has included technology; however, it hasn’t made learning better or easier for children throughout the years.

Kwan references Head Start’s early learning outcomes, which are high-stakes standards that micromanage what a child should know at an early age, also involving performance tracking. Many resent this strict manipulation of early childhood.

Add this to the serious concerns raised about AI, including the:

• exploitation of student and teacher data and student privacy (Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger, AI: Invitation or Command?)
• possibility that AI could disrupt the way a child learns to think and how they learn to read (see A.I. Will Destroy Critical Thinking in K-12 by Jessica Grosse)
• lack of adequate resources and accuracy (Su & Wang, 2024).

So, why introduce AI to preschoolers? The rush to pour information into children, as if they are bottomless buckets, simply because their brains are developing at a rapid pace, raises questions. One is how this will impact children’s learning through play and discovery. 

Additionally, preschoolers learn quickly, but that doesn’t mean they need exposure to adult issues or traumatic events, which they’ll likely encounter soon enough. Some children may process information about 9/11 and wildfires well, as noted in the quote above, while others may struggle.

There’s increasing evidence that children and teens are already suffering from an increase in mental health issues. Who’s considering the pressures placed on them to learn beyond their age and development? How’s AI going to fix this problem? Many believe that the overuse of technology has contributed to this problem.

Kwan is a co-founder of the nonprofit Cognitive Toybox, which criticizes traditional observational assessments by teachers and their observations of children in favor of an integrated observational and direct (game-based) assessment platform. How much online data is collected on children? And how does this change the teacher’s role?

She is also VP at Teaching Strategies and works at the Princeton AI Lab. Scroll to find the funders for Cognitive Toybox. 

AI is also scary. The worst is that it could end us if we’re not careful. See: The Guardian’s Five ways AI might destroy the world: ‘Everyone on Earth could fall over dead in the same second.’

Americans should question and examine the widespread adoption of corporate AI programs in K-12 education, particularly for young children. We should pause in believing that AI will miraculously and positively improve the lives of young children, redefining childhood.

The joy of learning starts with young children. They will always need to play and have the freedom to wonder about what they see and hear. To ask their questions and to find their answers. This is how they have always learned best, and AI shouldn’t mess with that.

We should especially recognize the mounting concerns surrounding the use of chatbots and children’s privacy (Singer, 2025).

Maybe it would be best to leave early childhood alone and accept that, when children are loved and nurtured, early learning doesn’t need to be redefined.

References

Grosse, J. (2025, May 14). A.I. Will Destroy Critical Thinking in K-12. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/opinion/trump-ai-elementary.html.

Su, J., & Yang, W. (2024). Powerful or mediocre? Kindergarten teachers’ perspectives on using ChatGPT in early childhood education. Interactive Learning Environments, 32(10), 6496–6508. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2023.2266490

Singer, N. (2025, May 2). Google Plans to Roll Out Its AI Chatbot to Children Under 13. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/technology/google-gemini-ai-chatbot-kids.html.

Here’s a good description of chatbots and their impact on children, courtesy of Joanna Parga-Belinkie: “Are AI Chatbots Safe for Kids?“ from healthychildren.org. She raises a host of concerns about chatbots, including that they don’t know our kids.