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Things Parents Need To Teach Their Kids About Prompting AI

by Kevyn Gohu
February 24, 2026

Welcome to the basics of prompt engineering for AI! Here are some things parents and kids should know when doing so:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is obviously here to stay, and the kids are now using it as their new “Google” or Search Engine.

The only difference is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more interactive than search engines. Search engines usually need only a few keywords. AI, on the other hand, may need something more specific or more direct. Sometimes, it may even feel like we’re talking to a child—except it only exists in the digital space, not the real world.

Here are some things kids and parents need to know about prompting AI:

1. Artificial Intelligence is only as smart as the internet allows it to be

Like any brain, it has a limit—the one set by what’s on the internet. Artificial Intelligence does what developers call “scraping.” By only going through the words, it doesn’t completely interpret them. However, they are capable of compiling them together and following basic structural rules, which is why people believe it can “generate” written or artistic works.

2. When prompting AI, be specific.

While artificial intelligence impresses with its wide scope of knowledge, it doesn’t always get it right. Again, this is because of rule no. 1. If the things about a certain topic are wrong on the internet, then most likely, AI will get it wrong also. Fact-checking is still something only within the domains of human knowledge.

Another is that AI doesn’t always backread very well. What some prompters do is that they look at the specific words the AI model used and parrot them back. Others just highlight, right-click, and quote it to ask AI to deal with the issue.

3. Don’t be afraid to send a wall of text.

We think peppering AI is a lot easier, but the truth is—walls of text save much more time. It also properly manages the number of messages sent to a specific model or chatbot since most of them are locked behind payments.

How do we know the model’s changed? Look at how it responds to the message. If it sounds too generic compared to the usual, that means we’ve used up one model, and it’s using either an earlier version of the bot or the most basic form of the model.

4. The sites it grabs aren’t always the most reliable.

Marketers call the new trend AIO or “Artificial Intelligence Optimization“—by optimizing and fixing their articles or whatever output they have on the internet, they can make it more visible to AI engines like ChatGPT, CoPilot, Claude, and others.

So always check the websites it scrapes through. Some of them may not be completely right either.

5. To fully release AI’s potential, there needs to be context.

Prompt engineering was the old trend of speaking to AI. Today, many developers call it “context engineering.” To answer the old issue of AI being so generic in responses, people nowadays give it specific files or text to scrape through and type into the prompt: “create this based on this write-up” or something of the sort.

6. AI can only do 40% of the work.

Using AI isn’t cheating or being lazy. In fact, it’s being smart. Why waste hours on end going in a loop when we have a machine that can flag the issues?

The problem is not actually the use of AI; it’s more of how people just assume everything AI spits out is correct. We forget to examine the information AI gives. It’s not always correct; as humans, it still falls to us to correct its knowledge. It’ll also remember that so long as it’s within the thread.

And what allows us to correct it? It’s our actual hands-on experience with the work. Writers who have been scribbling for years could tell from a line alone that it’s AI. And no, it’s not because of the spammy em-dash.

7. Not all AIs will respond to the prompts the same way.

Each AI is designed in a particular way, depending on who its developers are.

Some have noted that DeepSeek, being a China-based AI, may favor certain political stances.

ChatGPT, the most commonly used one, is commonly a “yes” man and cannot say “no.”

So, even if we do design the prompt in one way or another, the AI models will all respond to it in a certain way. That being said, it still falls to us to choose which one is the most appropriate.

Artificial Intelligence Is Still Just A Tool

Families have been whispering, “Is AI going to take our jobs? How will we feed our families?”

No, AI won’t take the jobs. It’s someone who knows how to speak to AI who will survive. Today, the ability to prompt and context engineer AI is slowly becoming a soft skill that many parents and kids will need in order to survive the quickly technologically-advanced world.

And like anything else, AI is still just a tool. If we truly want our kids to survive, then the best thing we can do is to teach them how to use it. By learning how to prompt and context engineer for AI, they’ll be able to do a lot more things than just “generate.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Are all AIs designed equally?

Not all AI respond the same way to the same prompt. Depending on who their creators are, some AI may do better than others.

What are the most commonly used AI?

ChatGPT has been the long-running poster child of AI. But others, such as Gemini, CoPilot, Siri, and many others, have already been in the market.

Should kids still learn the old ways before AI?

Absolutely! AI is only as smart as the internet allows it to be.

What’s the difference between prompting AI and Context Engineering for AI?

Unlike prompt engineering, which is literally just telling it to do things, context engineering is when people provide details to further refine an AI’s response.