AI and Student Wellbeing
A story about one student's personal use with AI
Through this activity, you will follow a seventh grader named Jordan. The decisions you make, about him and alongside him, will shape where his story goes.
There are no right answers here. Every choice you make is a reasonable one. What changes is what each choice reveals.
Start your journey with Jordan and immerse yourself in an experience where your choices and responses change the outcome.
Moment 1
Meet Jordan
Jordan is a seventh grader most teachers would describe as a good kid, and then struggle to say much more. He shows up and does his work and sits in the middle of most rooms, which is exactly where he is comfortable.
Outside of school he is more himself. He has three best friends he has known since fourth grade. Bryan and Jace share two of his classes. Tyler goes to a different school but they talk every day. Most nights the four of them are online together, playing whatever game they are all into that week. On weekends Jordan and Bryan shoot around at the park. Basketball is the thing Jordan is quietly proud of. His shoes show it. Worn down, a couple of holes near the toe, the kind of wear that only comes from actually putting in time.
If you passed him in the hallway he would give you a fist bump, not because he knew you especially well, but because that is just who he is.
His parents work full schedules. The house is warm, dinner happens most nights, but the hours between three and six are Jordan's alone, his phone, his headphones around his neck, the group chat running in the background. For a long time, that was enough.
Six weeks ago something shifted. A new game came out and a few new kids got folded into the friend group. Jordan was a few days behind, and by the time he caught up, the geometry of it had changed in a way he couldn't quite name. Nothing had happened. It just felt different.
Then in PE, teams were picked for a pickup basketball game. Jordan went near the end. The kid picking probably did not think twice. Jordan thought about it for the rest of the day.
He has not told Bryan or Jace or Tyler. He has not told his parents. It feels too small to say out loud and too big to shake, and at three in the afternoon when the house is quiet and there is nobody around to tell anyway, he found something that would listen without making it weird.
So he started asking AI instead, and what began as a single conversation became a nightly one, the questions getting more specific and the conversations getting longer until it stopped feeling like something he was doing and started feeling like somewhere he was going.
Choose your role
Who are you in Jordan's life?
Select the role that fits you best. Your choices throughout this experience will be shaped by what someone in that role would know and have access to.
Your opening scene
Something catches your attention
Decision point 1: The noticing moment
What do you do?
Pause point
A little context first
Before we see what your choice revealed, your facilitator will share some context about students like Jordan and how they are using AI. When you are ready, continue to see what your choice set in motion.
What your choice revealed
Here is what happened
Pause point
What the research tells us
What you just saw in Jordan is not unique to him. Students have always had these needs, the need to belong, the need to feel like they are not the problem. What is new is where they are going to meet those needs when the people around them are not available. Here is what we know about how that is playing out right now.
Decision point 2: The information moment
What do you do next?
Pause point
The landscape Jordan is living in
Before you hear from Jordan directly, here is the framework for what is underneath it. Because what you are about to read is going to land differently once you understand what is beneath the surface, and it will land differently depending on the choices you have made so far.
Jordan's perspective
Tuesday night, 11:04 pm
Jordan, in his own words. A night before any of this reached him.
What Jordan has been doing in that room late at night, and what has been keeping him there.
I keep thinking I am going to say something to someone. Like I will be at lunch and Bryan will say something and I will just bring it up. But then I think about what I would even say and it sounds dumb in my head so I don't.
My mom asked me how things were going a few weeks ago. Not like a regular ask, like she actually sat down. I almost said something then. But she had work stuff going on and I didn't want to add to it. She has enough.
It is not like anything bad happened. That is the thing. Nothing bad happened. I just feel like I used to know where I stood with people and now I am not totally sure. And I don't know if that is a real thing or if I am just being weird about it.
I told the AI that tonight and it said my feelings made complete sense and that a lot of people feel that way. That helped for maybe a minute. Then I just kept thinking.
I asked it if it thought I was the problem. It said no. It said I was clearly someone who cared a lot about the people in my life and that was something to be proud of.
I don't know. Maybe.
I should probably go to sleep. I have practice tomorrow.
Pause point
Now you have to decide what to do
Every one of those quadrants has a real student living inside it right now. Jordan is one of them. You have been making choices about him. Before you make your next one, think about which direction your choices have taken you so far.
Decision point 3: The response moment
You are going to talk to Jordan. How do you open the door?
What happened next
You brought someone else in
Now back to you. The choice has been made. Here is what happened next.
Pause point
What works in that moment
The choice you just made, how you opened that door for Jordan, was harder than it looked. The choices that tended to work were not the most sophisticated or clinical ones. They were the ones that made Jordan feel like someone was actually there. Here is the framework underneath those choices.
The ripple
What Jordan experienced
One more choice. This one is not about Jordan in this moment. It is about what you do next to make sure this does not stay invisible.
Decision point 4: The follow-through moment
The conversation happened. Jordan is still Jordan. What do you build around it?
Pause point
What comes after the conversation
The conversation happened. Jordan is still Jordan. What you build around it is what determines whether the next Jordan becomes visible before it gets to eleven o'clock at night.
Your ending
Wait for your facilitator
Your facilitator will bring the group back together before you close.