What Future Awaits Our Children in the Age of AI — and What Impact Will It Have on Parents? ?

UNESCO Youth Forum in the Age of AI Opens an Essential Debate

On September 25, 2026, in Paris, UNESCO organized the UNESCO Youth Forum in the Age of AI – A Universal Reflection on Magnifica Humanitas.

Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”) is the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV. It calls for artificial intelligence to remain at the service of human beings, justice, work, freedom, and peace.

MMM’s Head of the UNESCO Advocacy Team, Brigitte Marais, and Elisa Valentin, Youth Representative, attended the event.

AI and Humanity: What Balance for Tomorrow?

The gathering brought together young people, artists, intellectuals, researchers, and decision-makers around an essential question: how can we develop artificial intelligence while preserving what lies at the heart of our humanity?

AI governance, information, culture, education, creativity, and responsibility were among the key topics of discussion, with one common thread: human dignity, peace, and dialogue in the age of artificial intelligence.

Three Roundtables to Open the Debate

• Learning in the Age of AI: Opportunities and Challenges
• Creativity and Innovation in the Age of AI: The Future of Culture and Human Expression in a Changing Technological Environment
• Youth, Human Agency, and AI: What Next?

The Key Issues Raised by the Roundtables

The discussions highlighted the need for a thoughtful, responsible, and human-centered approach to artificial intelligence:

• Develop critical thinking and learn how to verify information generated by AI.
• Preserve human relationships, awareness, and autonomy, particularly in the face of the risks of addiction and dependency.
• Do not view AI as a friend or a substitute for human beings, but as a tool in the service of learning, creativity, and knowledge.
• Understand algorithms, which are not neutral and incorporate choices and decisions.
• Protect privacy, as well as children and young people.
• Train teachers, parents, and young people to use AI in an informed, responsible, and creative way.
• Give teachers and parents the means to act through appropriate training, guidance, and resources, so they can support and protect children as they navigate an increasingly AI-driven world.
• Equip parents with the knowledge and confidence to guide their children’s use of AI, including understanding its opportunities and risks, encouraging critical thinking, protecting privacy, and helping children maintain healthy human relationships and autonomy.
• Invest in scientific research to better assess and measure the effects of AI on children and young people.
• Establish standards and regulations to provide a framework for its development.

The challenge, therefore, is not to allow AI to take the place of human beings, but to give everyone the means to use it with discernment, responsibility, and imagination.

These discussions will help inform reflection and enrich the international debate, while also contributing to the development of new standards to guide society through the transformations of the digital age.

MMM and the Transformations Linked to AI

At a time when AI is profoundly transforming our societies, these discussions resonate strongly with the work of Make Mothers Matter. Understanding new uses of technology, developing critical thinking, protecting children, and preserving human relationships are essential if innovation is to remain at the service of humanity.

But this responsibility cannot rest on parents alone. Too often, and particularly for mothers, the burden of protecting children and young people from the risks of new technologies falls on families, while the responsibility for creating a safe environment should be shared by governments, technology companies, schools, and society as a whole.

Protecting children and young people in the age of AI must therefore rest first on strong regulation, accountable platforms, effective safeguards, and public investment, rather than on the invisible and often undervalued work of families.

At the same time, mothers and fathers must be able to play a full part in this transformation, including in the decisions that shape it. Parents need access to the knowledge, resources, and support that enable them not only to guide and protect their children, but also to have a voice in the policies and systems that will determine their future.

For MMM, the question is ultimately how to ensure that a world shaped by AI remains human, inclusive, and fair — including for those who care for others.