Child development researcher Nikki Martyn has warned that parents must play a stronger role in helping children think for themselves in a digital world, as children increasingly look to online systems for identity, validation and truth.
Martyn, a Guelph-based researcher and founder of The Love Model and The Love Lab, argues that technology is playing a larger part in children's development at a time when many families are struggling to maintain attention and connection offline. Her work focuses on the emotional and developmental effects of screen-based environments on children and adolescents.
She argues that the central issue is not children's intelligence but the conditions in which they are growing up. When children lack strong human relationships, they are more likely to depend on algorithm-driven platforms to answer questions about who they are, where they belong and what they should believe.
That view places emotional safety at the centre of children's relationship with technology. Martyn argues that children need to feel seen, heard, understood and valued if they are to develop independent judgment and avoid being overly shaped by recommendation engines, social media feeds and artificial intelligence systems.
Her comments come amid broader concerns about the role of digital platforms in childhood development, particularly how online systems influence attention, behaviour and social trust. Researchers and policymakers have increasingly examined how young people interact with tools designed to hold engagement and guide decision-making.
Martyn argues those systems now reach beyond entertainment and information. "Historically, belonging was found primarily through families, communities, schools, cultural traditions, and human relationships, but today, recommendation engines, social media feeds, engagement-driven platforms, and artificial intelligence systems participate in these developmental processes," said Nikki Martyn, founder of The Love Model and The Love Lab.
"Children and adolescents now turn to digital environments not only for information, but also for belonging, identity, validation, and truth," she added.
Developmental questions
Martyn argues that many of the questions children ask digital tools are not simply technical or informational. In her view, they are questions that have traditionally been worked through in families, friendships, schools and communities.
"Asking AI questions such as Who am I? Where do I belong? Who can I trust? What is true? are not only technological questions, they are developmental questions, and increasingly, the answers have societal consequences," she said.
That concern reflects a wider debate over whether algorithmic systems are becoming too influential in shaping children's understanding of themselves and others. Critics of highly personalised digital environments have pointed to risks including misinformation, social division and dependence on machine-generated answers at the expense of critical thinking.
Martyn argues the challenge is to create conditions in which children can use technology without being overtaken by it. Emotional security and human connection are central to that balance, she says, because they give children the confidence to question what they see online and make their own decisions.
"In the world we're living today, algorithms are curating the way we see the world and don't give kids the experience of being seen, heard, understood and valued," she said.
"When technology tells children what needs to happen next and what they need to be, we stop innovation and kids stop being themselves - they accidentally become like AI because AI teaches them how to be," she added.
Role of parents
Her proposed response is rooted in everyday family behaviour rather than technical controls alone. Martyn argues that parents need to draw children into shared offline experiences by putting away their own phones, being present and spending time in play and direct interaction.
That approach requires patience, she says, but speaks to children's basic need for attention and connection from parents and carers. The emphasis is on building relationships that make digital alternatives less dominant, rather than relying only on restriction.
"While AI can do many things, it can't love, and humans are born to love," she said.
She linked that point to children's long-term social and emotional development. "The more experience children have with other humans, the healthier they will become and the more human they will become," she said.
Martyn also argues that families and educators must begin earlier in helping children separate their sense of self from the systems that surround them online. She says this is now a basic requirement for raising children who can assess information independently and decide what is right for them.
"We have to teach children at an earlier age than we've ever had to before who they are separate from algorithms and give them the ability to think critically so that they can make decisions about what is or isn't right for them," she said.
Her broader point is that the debate over children and technology is not only about screens or software, but about the relationships and environments adults create around young people. "It will be determined by the kinds of humans we become in relationship to them, and if children become what they experience, then the future becomes what children experience," she said.
Martyn will present the findings of her research at this week's Big Thinking Summit, taking place in Edmonton from June 9 to 11.