Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them. (Psychology Today, 3/22)

[Ms. Toad]

31. I noticed all of these in my daughter 25 years ago - long before AI.

The consequences show up in four observable ways.

AI-dependent students lose the ability to explain their reasoning journey. They can produce proficient work but cannot articulate why they chose particular evidence, what confused them initially, or how they worked through competing interpretations. When questioned, they repeat conclusions but cannot reconstruct the thinking that led them there.

Encountering difficulty becomes anxiety. Students cannot spend 10 minutes wrestling with a challenging problem without external input or seeking assistance.

They lose capacity for extended reasoning chains. Multistep arguments that require Steps 1 through 4 to understand Step 5 become impossible. Complex problems requiring sustained reasoning produce the same collapse patterns that recent research identified in AI systems themselves.

And critically, students are unable to detect their own confusion or knowledge gaps. They'll submit work they cannot defend, express surprise if questioning reveals gaps in their logic, and often cannot remember what caused this confusion in the first place. Self-monitoring of the learning process begins to atrophy entirely.

And in the other students I've taught over the years. The path to diminished ability to perform complex tasks was well on its way before AI came along.