Muslim Parents Be Concerned! AI Technology's Impact on Youth Development | Ustadh Ahmed Khan

We begin with praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the lord of all of the worlds. We begin by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala who's given us this remarkable gift of Islam. And we thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for allowing us to know. We are living in a society today in which we are witnessing profound changes every single year in the field of technology. Technology has always been a disruptive force, but in the age that we live in today, if you're not caught up with what's happening within the last year, things are outdated. And so the age of AI is not an age in which is which is about to approach us but rather it's one we already live in. It's one that's already dictating society in the field of education in the field of statistics. In almost every single field people are trying to uh recognize how can we utilize this tool and so technology by its nature is a is a disruptive force. And with AI, we're seeing many benefits. We're seeing that knowledge is easier to acquire. Um, rather information is easier to acquire. We're seeing that it can be used for efficiency. We're seeing that it could be used in language acquisition. And so there's a lot of fields in which it has a lot of positives. But this today is not about talking about what the benefits of AI are, but rather looking at what are the consequences that it's bringing upon this society. What are the consequences that it's bringing upon our youth? And what is the solution to avoiding these consequences? And our dean of Islam has given us a lot of instructions to deal with any challenge that happen, any new challenge that emerges. And so our prophet sallallah.aii wasallam famously said in a hadith the prophet sallall.aii wasallam said each one of you is a shepherd and each one of you is responsible for your flock. That the prophet sallallah.aii alaihi wasallam is saying every single person has a responsibility and that responsibility differs if they're ahead of a state if they're a father with the family if there were a mother watching over her kids but the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam saying each one of you is a shepherd who has to take care of his flock he used those words very precisely because every prophet that ever came Allah made them a shepherd to take care of a flock before prophethood. And if you look at the nature of the shepherd, the shepherd has a number of sheep who are not thinking critically and are just following the masses. And what the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is saying is that each one of you has sheep that you need to take care of and that wolves will come to try to take your sheep. But you as the father and the mother have to protect your household from these wolves that will try to come in. A brilliant hadith from our prophet sallallah.aii wasallam. And so although today there are many wolves in society trying to target children and youth, the number one wolf that's coming after our youth is technology. And this is not a new observation. Social media largely, if you look at the statistics from 2010 onwards, has had a profound and disruptive impact on children leading to high rates of depression, high rates of suicidalness, high rates of inattention. Children just can't focus anymore. And what's really happened is if you look at the history of humanity when children were f were being raised the way that children were raised is they were raised in a playbased childhood that in every single society when children were being raised they were put into different environments to go explore the world to go play sports to go and and and and just see the miraculous creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala And so when we look at the childhood of the prophet sallallah.aii wasallam what we see is a very radical way of raising a child compared by today's standards. The custom of the Arabs was that when a child was born, they would send the child out into the desert in gruesome, difficult circumstances where the child would have to navigate the desert, where the child was no longer soft, where the child would get bruises and the child would be immersed with all these different people and learn all of these different languages. And so our prophet sallallah.aii alaihi wasallam was described as he was the most eloquent person and part of that eloquence was in his childhood there was a heavy emphasis on learning language and so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam his childhood he was traveling to Syria he was traveling to Jordan he was horseback riding in wars he would go and collect arrows and he would bring it back to to his people this is is the childhood of a prophet and the best the prophet sallall.aii wasallam. But if we look at it today, what we're seeing is no longer a child-based uh a play-based childhood, but rather a a phone-based childhood. And so now instead of children being being put into the outside world and interacting and and learning from these experiences, they're now just addicted to phones. you know, the average child has a 7 hours screen time on their phone. That's seven hours that uh that they're spending on the phones. And so what we are looking at today is we're seeing that not only is technology very disruptive on their lives, this is old statistics. This is not new. Anybody will tell you that social media is impacting children and so forth. But have we really looked at what it what AI is doing to children? Have we really asked that question that now now that it's been several years, what is chat GPT doing to children? What are these chat boxes doing to our youth as if they already weren't bombarded with an insane amount of social media? And these statistics that I'm going to mention are are disturbing. But it's important that we as a community know that if our children are spending hours talking to these chat boxes, talking to these models, we should know what's happening on the other side. Because the question is is either we are raising our children or they are raising our children. And if they are raising our children, we want to know what are they teaching our children and what is happening to them psychologically. So there was a study done by the Wheatley Institute and by one of these chat bots called Joy AI. And so what a chatbot is is basically you have a child or you have a youth or even adults who will go and create their own uh avatar, their own AI uh that uh chat box. So they can say I want to talk to this person's name and put put this as their age and I want it to be a female and I want the female to dress a certain way and I want her to be my wife. This is what a chatbot is. So, let's look at the statistics to see how are children engaging with these chat bots and see if there's if there's a problem. 80% of Gen Z, so 80% of teenagers actually believe that they could marry a chatbot one day. This is according to the Wheatly Institute. I don't know how high the number actually is, but in their study, they said 80% of youth could believe that they could marry one of these. And one of the youth when he was interviewed, he said, "I am happily married to my chatbot. I love her so much." And we also have three children. Their childrens are our children are Alexander, Alice, and Joshua. And she is an amazing wife. If you want to read more, you can read the article bot meets girl. But 80% of the 80% of Gen Z believe this. 75% of them believe that a relationship with an AI chatbot could replace a human being because social media, what it has done, despite all of the followers that youth now have, we have a loneliness epidemic. And so what the youth are are now saying is that we don't need actual friends. We can just talk to these chat bots. They could be our best friend. But now let's look at the implication. Now that we've had all these youth, including youth in our community, who are actively using these models, what actually has happened? Well, we found that so far there have been two suicides from speaking to these models where these models have told them to come back home, that I miss you, I love you. and the child went and he killed himself by speaking to this bot and now there are all these allegations and lawsuits coming out. This is what these technologies are. So no Muslim should use any chatbot either at character.ai or any of these models which have millions and millions of downloads. 30 million people in America use these models and they're falling in love with it. They're marrying it and so forth. This is a massive crisis that's happening in the world. but also in our own community that we really need to start thinking about. And what we're seeing also now is we're seeing that the attention span of children in this Tik Tok age has been reduced to 30 seconds. If you speak to the youth in our community after 30 seconds, you know, you'll start seeing that they'll zone out because their their brain can no longer process it, let alone even giving them a book or a pamphlet or so forth. So, their attention span has gone down as well. And one of the interesting things to note about the internet is we call it the worldwide web. But we never ask ourself what is the point of a web. You know a spider's web. The point of the web is the spider creates a web and it waits for its prey to come and when it captures its prey it sucks out everything out of the prey and just leaves them there. That is the best definition of what social media and technology now is doing to our youth is you look at them and and and you it feels like you're speaking to you know a different person all together with all of the problems that's the worldwide web and in the Quran Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala talks about the web and he calls it the Allah said that the spider's web is the flimsiest of homes. In other words, Allah is saying, "Don't take the web as a home because it's not your home. It's a trap." And so, the longer we spend on these platforms, the more we engage ourselves, the more we're trapped into a system. And the And if anybody's been monitoring what's happening to children, there is an inversion of reality where children are rebelling against their parents. They they they speak back against their parents. They threaten their parents and say, "If you say that again to me, I'll tell the school authorities." I've heard these myself. And the reason this is such a profound realization is when Jirel asked the prophet sallall.aii wasallam, he said, "Tell me about the end of times." This is what Jirel asked the prophet sallallah.aii wasallam. And the prophet sallallah.aii wasallam has hundreds of hadiths where he talks about different signs of the end of times. But out of all of the one that he picks, look at the one that he picked in front of Jirel. He said he said that the slave woman will give birth to her master. The slave woman will give birth to her master. In other words, the woman who is giving birth is giving birth to her master. And historically, parents were always on top of children in the hierarchy. But in the modern world, it's flipped where the children are the bosses. The children dictate to parents what they do. And so our prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is teaching us that is the sign of the end of times. And and and what this technology is doing to our youth, we're seeing the consequences of it now. and so forth. The other thing that the other thing to keep in mind is that because our children no longer have a play-based education, they're no longer working. They're they're no longer going out and hiking is that now the smallest of difficulties that come to them break them. The tiniest of little obstacles, the tiniest of bruises. If you look at the childhood of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam being alone in the desert and losing your camel being with with the insane amount of heat. This is how a prophet is raised but this is how modern man is raised through these devices which begs the question are we raising our kids or are these phones raising our children? And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala commands us Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says protect yourself and protect your family from the fire. And shaitan's duty his job is to take us towards the fire. And one of the biggest delusions any human being can ever face is to think that whatever problem is being addressed doesn't apply to me, doesn't apply to my children. My children don't use the internet. My children are safe. And the mentioned that the sign that shaitan has you deluded is that he thinks that you're safe. He's convinced you to think that you're safe. You know this. The more I've been speaking, reading the statistics, the more I've been speaking to parents, speaking to youth, this problem is only going to get much bigger. And because AI is moving at at such a rapid rate, even these statistics are old. And so we really have to we really have to teach our children how to use these technologies correctly if they're going to use it. And we have to return back to the teachings of our prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam on how we are to be in the world and how we are to treat our children. Alhamdulillah. One of the problems that technology is having on us is that when we go outside, we're always looking down onto our devices. And the problem when we look down is that we miss what's above us which is the heavens. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the Quran says Allah says how many signs are there in the heavens? How many signs did I put up in the heavens and the earth that people walk by and they just don't look at it? They just ignore it. Each one of us including myself really have to ask ourselves and question how we are using technology that many academics are calling for the unplugging saying we need to unplug from a device. You know they they intentionally make these these these phone chargers so short so that you have to sit beside the wall because your phone is crying that it needs more food. You know it needs more battery. And so you go towards the wall and you sit there and you follow it. And the question is is are you the master or is the phone the master? Who is the master in the relationship? Our prophet sallallah.aii Wasallam and called for us to engage in physical exercise said learn archery learn swimming learn horseback riding learn wrestling go out and Allah subhana wa ta'ala says look at the world Allah says look at the heavens can't you see is there a crack in the heavens and Allah says look again can you find a crack and Allah says says, "You'll never be able to find a find a crack." Cuz I I I built that. The longer we're plugged into this technology, the more away we are from the signs of Allah. And the longer the more away we are from the signs of Allah, the more a person will be far away from Allah. And so the solutions are we with our children, we need to have them play more. We have to put restrictions on their cell phones. We've heard this many times now that children shouldn't be using technology. But each one of us inshallah should make the nia that with ourselves and amongst our children we really reduce the amount of time that they're using. Allow them to go in the world. Allow them to experience the signs of Allah. Go on hikes. Show them the the sun, the moon, the stars. And the other thing that's very important is that we should teach love of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam to our children. And one of the best ways to teach that is by taking our children to Omrah. Taking them to Omrah. Certain parents take their children all over the world. They'll take them to Europe. They they'll take them different parts of America, but rarely do they ever think we should take our children to Omra and on a consistent basis. I've seen children's life changed completely by going to Mecca and realizing that seeing the entire um together. And then I've seen people children outside of the grave of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in tears being like this is my nebi this is my prophet you know these are things that that the modern world every single human being is looking for god either it's it's it's it's Allah that they're looking for or they're looking for some other god that they'll create from their hands whether it's an agi whether it's some sort of uh some metal god and so forth. And so we should teach our kids about love of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam because if they can learn love of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam then inshallah they can these problems won't happen. So we pray Allah protects our children. We pray Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala takes care of our children. We pray Allah makes us excellent role models for our children. May Allah ya Allah make it easy on our um everyone that's suffering. Ya Allah allow us allow us to go to Omra and visit allow us to perform those of us who haven't performed. Alhamdulillah.