Should AI be banned for under-15s?

# Should AI be banned for under-15s? - Glimpse Source: [https://glimpse.skema.edu/en/glimpse-6-en/should-ai-be-banned-for-under-15s/](https://glimpse.skema.edu/en/glimpse-6-en/should-ai-be-banned-for-under-15s/) If young people’s brains aren’t ready for TikTok, why would they be ready for artificial intelligence \(AI\)? Recent research from MIT shows that AI deforms us\. And perhaps that’s the main reason we need training on it in the first place…  You must have seen it: in late January 2025, France’s Assemblée Nationale passed a law banning social media for children under 15\. Emmanuel Macron, sporting his favourite sunglasses, made the case… on social media: “Our teenagers’ brains are not for sale\.” The reason is not geopolitical, then; it has to do with “the brain” and its maturity\. So maybe we should consider whether artificial intelligence should be banned for the same reason\. After all, the most downloaded app on the App Store in 2025 wasn’t TikTok but ChatGPT: are teenagers and children under 15 ready to ask it all their questions? ## AI, THE PHILOSOPHER AND MIT In June 2025, researchers at MIT carried out a study on well\-formed brains: those of 54 adults aged between 18 and 39, who were asked to write a text\. One group was asked to do this with ChatGPT, a second with Google, and the third using only their own neurons\. Unsurprisingly, the results did not argue in favour of spontaneous assisted production: the participants’ brain activity was at least 34% lower when using the search engine, and 55% lower when using the generative AI\. Researchers talk about the creation of a “cognitive debt”\. The use of AI could “hinder” learning and the development of critical thinking, particularly in younger children\. The French philosopher Éric Sadin attributes this to a fundamental difference between the ways in which artificial intelligence and the human brain work\. “These systems are designed to harvest the entirety of existing digitised corpora, with a view to subjecting them – via other systems that take over – to statistical and mathematical equations based on a single principle: that of recurrence\. If you say the word car, the term steering wheel is never far away,” he said in France Culture’s programme “La Conversation scientifique” on 6 December\. “These systems are based on the fundamental principle of probabilistic correlation,” he continued\. “We are unable to see it, but – with AI – what has already happened happens again\. And that is the complete opposite of how we make play with language\. Language is not based on the principle of correlation, but of association\. We each associate ideas in a way that is entirely unique and individual\. No one else in the world does this the same way\. We don’t know what we’re going to say in four or five seconds’ time\. And why is this? Because our relationship with language is not probabilistic but indeterministic\. And that’s where freedom lies\!” ## FROM HEGEL TO THE “DEATH OF TV” The website The Pessimist’s Archive, which contains a long list of knee\-jerk reactions to every technological innovation, points out that in 1933 the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers viewed radio and “talking pictures” as the “death of music”\. And that, nearly a century later, the same organisation has become one of the leading companies in charge of collecting public performance rights for music… notably on television\. However, speaking on France Culture, the philosopher stressed that AI is a singular innovation\. He believes that the fact that any question we ask can get an immediate answer without going through the thinking stage changes our relationship with knowledge\. And the journalist Étienne Klein quoted Hegel to back this up: “If learning were a matter of passively receiving information, the result would scarcely be better than if we wrote phrases on water; for it is not the fact of receiving but our active engagement that enables us to grasp something and the ability to apply that knowledge again that alone make it our own\.” ## BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS The MIT experiment proves the German philosopher right\. Participants in the “ChatGPT” group and the “neurons only” group were asked to repeat the exercise\. Everyone had to write a text again, but this time using the other “tools”\. The group that had used AI to begin with could hardly remember their first time\. Its members were able to carry out the task “efficiently and practically” but, “actually retained nothing” in “their memory network”\. But the second group, who had first had a chance to think for themselves before writing a text with the help of AI, achieved good results\. They even showed an increase in brain connectivity across all EEG frequency bands\. In other words, AI extends the brain in the same way that a hammer extends the hand, provided you have learned to think for yourself\. Rather than banning AI, should we be considering a licence to use it? ### What is AI doing to us? La Conversation scientifique, France Culture 6 December 2025