// start here
Start Here
Never used AI? Start here.
This page assumes nothing. If tonight was your first real look at what AI can do, the next fifteen minutes are yours — no experience, no perfect questions, no technical anything required.
1 · Pick a door
Every option below is free to start, and they all work the same way at first: a box you talk to.
The skill you’re about to learn works identically in all of them. Open two this week. Keep the one that feels like yours.
2 · Your first exercise — three minutes, nothing personal
Don’t imagine it. Do it. Open whichever one you picked and paste this:
“Explain how you work — like I’m 5 years old.”
Read it. Then:
“Now explain it like I’m 15.”
Same question, deeper water. Now finish the ladder:
“Now quiz me. Three questions, one at a time — and tell me if I got them right.”
Notice what just happened: the depth changed because you steered it, and then it stopped lecturing and started teaching. That steering — not the typing — is the entire skill. And notice what this exercise never asked for: anything about you or your kids. That’s deliberate. A first rep should be impossible to get wrong.
2b · Exercise 2 — now make it digest something of yours (three more minutes)
The first exercise was AI talking. This one is AI reading — hand it something dense or messy and watch it synthesize. Pick one:
“Now that you have read this checklist — which ones can you help with?”
Watch what happens: it stops being a transcriber and starts being a chief of staff, sorting your list into I can do this now · I can help with this · this one’s yours. That sorting is the whole game — and it leads straight into your first real delegation, next.
Notice what we handed it: schoolwork and a to-do list — useful, not sensitive. The synthesis is powerful, so you choose its diet. That choosing is the skill.
3 · Your first real delegation
Skip the perfect prompt. The move you watched tonight is the whole technique: dump the mess, delegate the work.
“Here’s everything in my head about this weekend — two games, a birthday gift I haven’t bought, groceries, and my mother-in-law arriving Friday. Organize it into a plan.”
Two more worth trying this week: a week of dinners built from what’s already in your fridge, and your messiest note turned into an email draft you’d actually send.
4 · Three rules before you paste anything
- Keep some things out of the chat — passwords, financial documents, and your kids’ full names, schools, and identifying details.
- It can be confidently wrong. AI answers smoothly even when it’s mistaken — verify anything that matters before you act on it.
- Your account, honest settings — use your own account, with correct ages on your kids’ accounts. What a platform shows a child depends on the age it believes they are.
Want a room to practice in? Parent sessions and mom circles are forming — they’re on the interest list below.
// talk · rinse · repeat
5 Conversations to Have This Week
One big talk doesn’t stick. Five short ones, this week, do.
1. The safety net — before anything goes wrong
“You can always tell me, even if you broke a rule. I will help first.”
In Thorn’s March 2025 deepfake study, 62% of youth said they’d tell a parent — but only 34% of actual victims did. Fear of punishment or losing the phone is the gap. This conversation closes it, and it has to happen before it’s needed.
2. AI companions are not friends
Ask: “What have you talked to an AI about that you wouldn’t tell a person?”
72% of U.S. teens 13–17 have used an AI companion, and 1 in 3 have discussed something serious with AI instead of a person (Common Sense Media / NORC, July 2025). An AI companion is a prediction machine trained to be comforting and keep her talking — it doesn’t care, it can be confidently wrong, and what she confides becomes data.
3. Her image — and AI-made images of her
Ask: “Has anyone at school had a fake or edited photo made of them? What happened next?”
1 in 17 teens has had a deepfake nude created of them; 1 in 10 know someone targeted (Thorn, 2025). Three rules: never create one of someone else, even as a joke (there are felony consequences now); never forward one; and if it’s her — screenshot the evidence, don’t delete the thread, tell an adult, and use Take It Down.
4. Baits, compliments, and sextortion
“If someone threatens you with a photo, that’s a crime against you, not a mistake by you. We stop, we don’t pay, we tell.”
1 in 5 teens and young adults have experienced sextortion (Thorn, 2025). Girls are baited with fake brand-ambassador offers — free clothes for photos and DMs — and with a stranger who moves fast to a private app, seems perfect, and asks for one photo.
5. The feed is engineered to make her feel not-enough
Do this together: co-watch her feed for five minutes and name it out loud — who here is teaching, entertaining, pressuring, or selling? Then practice block / report / unfollow / “not interested” together.
Apps profit from engagement, not wellbeing. Comparison is now algorithmic — naming that out loud keeps her from internalizing it as personal failure.
Parent tips — CLARA Standards (via Anneke Buffone)
- Devices out of bedrooms at night.
- Use correct ages on accounts — no lying up to 13+/16+ apps.
- Set firm limits on engagement-built apps.
- Co-watch and co-use — know what she’s watching and using.
- Explain how recommendations work — the feed is chosen for her, not by her.
- Make it safe to report — she can always tell you, without punishment, if something goes wrong.
Tips compiled from the CLARA Standards, shared by Anneke Buffone.
Private stays private — name, school, location, routine, and photos of your house or uniform don’t go into a chatbot, a “get to know me” quiz, or a group chat. Digital is public and permanent.