A note on how we use AI: At Axis, we are working hard to stay human. Every week, a small team of writers based in California, Colorado, and New York writes this newsletter. We continue to do all the writing, fact-checking, and hands-on developmental editing. We sometimes use Claude or Perplexity for preliminary research, grammar checks, and titling suggestions. All em-dashes are our own—because we love them.
Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor debut their new dinosaur movie, “that’s AI” is the ultimate burn from Gen Alpha, and how one teacher found a way to get his students reading again. But first:
Resource of the Week
We get asked all the time how we keep up with and translate teen culture in a world where it changes so quickly. This week, in a unique narrative-style podcast episode, we pulled back the curtain to reveal our research process. We tell you how each of our team members does things just a little bit differently, share the sources we find most reliable, and explain why we think it’s important to talk to teens in real life throughout the process. Turns out, “I saw it on TikTok” is not quite a complete research methodology. Listen now on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts!
And now for our three conversations..
1. The End of Oak Street
What it is: A new movie starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor explores how a suburban family in the 80s might have handled dinosaurs.
Why it’s surprisingly deep: For reasons that have something to do with wormholes and Carl Sagan, the good people of Oak Street are transported into a prehistoric age. It doesn’t go well. When McGregor’s character insists that “God’s not going to let us die here,” his daughter sarcastically retorts, “What about the people who are out there getting eaten?” In other words: how do we trust God for help when it doesn’t look like He’s helping? In between tense action sequences, the movie explores how having an external enemy (i.e. hostile dinosaurs) can unify people who have stopped seeing eye-to-eye. It’s ultimately a movie about faithfulness: not only to God, but to each other.
Continue the conversation: How do you think our family would do if dinosaurs took over our neighborhood?
2. “That’s AI”
What it is: Gen Alpha might be using AI, but their new diss shows they don’t think it’s cool.
Why there’s a swag gap: Young people are often the first to adopt and celebrate new technology, but teens have mixed opinions on AI. 37% of teens aged 13 to 17 cringe when they see AI-generated content, and more than half worry about misinformation and deepfakes, according to WIRED. Against this backdrop, the phrase “that’s AI” has become a catch-all way to call something lame. While it can be used to critique a video or photo that appears to be AI-generated, it is now being used more broadly to refer to anything teens don’t like. A friend might bring up an embarrassing photo, and a teen might say “that’s AI” if they don’t like how they look in it, or if they are not friends with the person in the picture anymore. The phrase might also be used to dismiss rules teens don’t want to follow, or just about anything they deem mediocre.
Continue the conversation: How would you summarize your friends’ general view of AI?
3. Left Unread
What it is: In July, The Atlantic controversially declared that “the end of reading is here.” Now, as teens head back to middle school and high school, several additional articles have highlighted alarming literacy statistics amongst U.S. students.
Why there’s still hope: Darius Williams, a teacher in Houston, Texas, made headlines this week after he shared that he broke down in tears because his seniors couldn’t complete basic literacy tasks. And in New York City, in the biggest school district in the country, literacy rates for fifth graders plunged by 14 points. As educators, parents, and policymakers debate what, or who, should be blamed, one teacher took an unorthodox approach—reading Dostoevsky for the first time alongside his college students.
Let’s translate this one further…
Sometimes, discussions about literacy revert to arguments about standards and testing strategies. The temptation can be strong to make tests easier so students—and by extension, their teachers—may be more likely to “succeed.” But when Matt Dinan assigned the infamously lengthy and challenging novel The Brothers Karamazov to his students, he found they were more than up to the challenge.
“Today’s educational problems are often attributed to a deficit of focus or attention, but attention is an anemic way to understand what allows education to transform people,” Dinan wrote in the New York Times. He concluded that modeling curiosity and an overall posture of learning could reconnect students with the heart of education.
In other words: we can’t simply will our kids into being better readers. We have to help them care about the learning process for its own sake, and to see it as inherently valuable.
It’s a complicated challenge when ChatGPT appears to know it all. But an AI agent can’t model learning. A robot can only model knowing.
Isaiah wrote of his longing to understand the person of God in the wake of his judgments, writing, “My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.” As Christians, our passion for learning can also be animated by love for God, and care for the souls who walk the earth alongside us.
Earlier this month, we published an interview with Jeffrey Bilbro—an associate professor of English at Grove City College. Speaking about the concerns currently swirling around AI and education, Bilbro said, “It’s important to think well, but that has to be oriented by love. And that tends to happen in a body of believers who know and love each other.”
As teachers, parents, youth workers, and grandparents head into the new school year, we would do well to focus not on dread, but on possibility—and on what we can actually control. Every time we show up with questions, instead of answers, or utter the phrase, “I could be wrong,” we’re reminding teens that we’re still learning, too.
For more context and nuance, check out our Roundtable podcast on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the meantime, here are three questions to help you continue the conversation with your teens:
- Who is the most curious person you know?
- What’s your favorite thing to read?
- What’s your biggest hope for this school year?
Parenting together,
Kate Watson and the Axis Team
In Other News…
- This week in AI: In light of concerns about romantic involvement with chatbots, “ChatGPT for Teens” is being marketed as a homework helper that limits “the emotional and intimate exchanges between young people and AI.” Robbie Torney from Common Sense Media argues that we should remain cautious until we have actual evidence that these features have been turned off.
- This week in dopamine: South Korean websites like “Dopamine Shop” and “FoodNeverComes” allow users to “pay” for clothes or food, and still feel like they’re getting “retail therapy,” without having to spend any money (because the products aren’t real).
- This week in arson: “Prediction market” Polymarket has enabled users to bet on the outcome of wildfires, which historian Jamie Pietruska rightly labels as a “perverse incentive.”
- This week in fabric: The word “polyester” has become a new way for Gen Z to call something out as low-quality or cheap. But you know what’s worse than that? Wool and linen, woven together.
- This week in fabric, again: An article in Teen Vogue suggests that “poetcore” (aka Dark Academia’s “cozier, more relaxed cousin”) and “vintage 90s mall fashion” will be some of the biggest fashion trends this semester. On a completely unrelated note, here’s The Guardian on how social media has “automated individual taste into oblivion.”
PS: Know someone who could use our conversation starters with their teens? Share the CT with a friend!