Meta recently announced new parental controls around AI character chatbots for teen accounts, allowing parents to block some or all of those interactions and see more about the kinds of topics their kids may be exploring with AI characters. On the surface, that is a safety conversation, and it should be. But what caught my attention was the deeper question beneath it: what happens when a child starts turning to an artificial “friend” for something they aren't getting from real people? Social media companies already understand that attention is valuable, and their business models reward keeping users engaged longer. If kids are insecure or socially disconnected, an AI character can offer something remarkably efficient: someone always available, who responds immediately, remembers what you told it, asks questions, and is designed to keep the conversation going. For a teenager who feels ignored or awkward around peers, that can feel more comfortable than trying again with a real person.

Dr. Kathy's definition of compassion gives us a much better parenting goal: compassion notices that someone is hurting and wants to help. It is not detached categorization or feeling sorry from a safe distance. Compassion moves toward the person and asks what love requires. That movement matters because saying, “Look how unfortunate that person's life is,” is different from asking, “Is there something I can do that would genuinely be useful?” One centers my judgment; the other centers the person's need. Christian compassion has an especially strong foundation because compassion is repeatedly associated with God's character and with Jesus' response to people. We are not teaching children a fashionable emotional skill. We are forming them to notice as Christ notices and to move toward people as He moves toward people.

I was sitting on the couch one evening, scrolling through the news while our younger kids were winding down for bed, when a video started describing violence happening somewhere in the world. Like most adults, I was only half conscious of how intense the language sounded because I already had enough context to put the report into a larger category: another terrible thing had happened, I roughly understood what it meant, and I could move on to the next story. Then one of my five year old twin daughters walked over, looked at the screen, listened long enough to know something frightening had happened, and started asking me what I was watching. Suddenly, I heard the report differently because I was hearing it through her ears. She had no categories for much of what was being described, but she knew enough to recognize pain and danger, and now something I had casually allowed into our living room had become part of her world too. I remember the tension every parent eventually feels: I didn't want to lie to her or dismiss the question, but I also knew that giving a five year old every adult detail wouldn’t be honesty; it would be overload. Our children are real people living in the real world, but that does not mean they are ready to carry every part of it at full weight.