– I hate this. Tired of this. Let me be. The words come from the AI teenager, Laika. She has only been fed information from social media. She was created last year by Länsförsäkringar in collaboration with AI specialists and brain researchers. A few days ago, the students at the English school in Borås got to try to get to know her. – She gets angry so easily if you don’t talk about TikTok with her, explains student Estelle Gardström. And she gets the support of her classmates. – She has many features of what happens on social media, eating disorder and a lot of depression. Should make young people reflect on the risks The teacher Malin Riise has made Laika take the national tests in social studies and the result was far below the level of passing. And, like Laika, getting all of her information from social media didn’t just affect her mood, it also affected her attitude to worldly issues, according to Riise. – For example, on a question that dealt with child labor, she also reasons that it can be good, because then it will be cheaper for us to buy clothes. So there you see that she is extremely self-centered and that should be beneficial for her. The project with Laika aims to make young people reflect on the risks of excessive screen use, and the students at the International English School believe that they will become more aware of their behavior in the future. – You become easily addicted. They thought they would check for 5 minutes and then they checked for several hours. You get tired and a different person, says Annie Tidebrink. According to the teacher Malin Riise, it is important that both parents and the school take up the discussion with children and young people so that they understand that social media cannot be the only frame of reference. – It’s this eternal scrolling, the constant hunt for followers and likes, it destroys her.
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