Shaping Digital Citizens: How to Teach Adolescents to Use AI with Responsibility, Faith, and Discernment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21713002Keywords:
Digital Citizenship, Generative Artificial Intelligence, Adolescence, Ethical Discernment, Values Education, Academic Integrity, Neurodevelopment, Digital Humanism.Abstract
The massive and sudden integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) into the daily routines of classrooms and households has substantially reconfigured the ways in which contemporary youth access knowledge, process information, and construct their identity. In adolescence (ages 12 to 18), characterized by intense neurocognitive restructuring and the search for autonomy, the uncritical use of automatic generation algorithms poses severe threats: the atrophy of reflective effort, the erosion of academic integrity, the spread of disinformation, and the displacement of human empathy by synthetic interactions.
This research paper proposes a comprehensive pedagogical, bioethical, and axiological framework for the formation of conscious digital citizens, capable of interacting with technology based on critical discernment, truth, and a faith embodied in the common good. Through an interdisciplinary analysis articulating developmental neuroscience, sociology of technology, moral philosophy, and the social doctrine of humanistic educational institutions, classroom digital dynamics are examined. The Critical-Axiological Discernment Model (CAD) is presented, school and family mediation protocols are provided, and guidelines to consolidate intellectual honesty when facing algorithmic systems are detailed. It is concluded that the current educational challenge does not lie in the punitive prohibition of the digital environment, but in cultivating a mature moral conscience that subordinates technology to the service of truth and human dignity.
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