I am just beginning my high school but I am already surrounded by AI in school. Sometimes I feel that I am living two lives simultaneously: one where I'm encouraged to develop my own thinking and one where everyone around me is pushing me to embrace the convenience of having AI alongside me. AI tools are always making me wonder whether my own thinking is becoming less necessary. Should we wholeheartedly celebrate the unprecedented convenience that AI brings, or should we be concerned that, by relying on it for every answer, we may slowly lose the curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking that make us human? AI is everywhere: on websites, in emails, across educational platforms, throughout job hiring processes, and even in novels, art, music, and text messages. Unlimited access to this technology has encouraged people to use it to replace even mildly difficult tasks they can to minimize costs and time. What was once a miraculous new technology with limitless potential is now used for countless mundane tasks. Unsurprisingly, the infiltration of AI throughout everyday life has left me frustrated. I go to restaurants only to be greeted by brightly colored, unrealistic posters and AI-generated menus. I search for information online only to find web pages that appear to have been written entirely by ChatGPT. I cannot even receive a slightly longer message from friends or family without a pop-up offering to summarize it with AI. As if websites and social media are now assuming the average person doesn't have the capacity to read a message longer than a few words and fully comprehend it on their own! Worse yet, these assumptions are not entirely unfounded. The use of AI is increasing rapidly in schools among both students and teachers, and its effects are becoming increasingly apparent. While AI can be a valuable educational tool, its uncritical use can hinder the development of essential skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving and independent learning. I have experienced these effects firsthand and have observed them among my peers, leading me to believe that many teenagers at least in the USA today share similar concerns. The structure of the education system means that many students (and teachers) prioritize the completion of tasks more than the knowledge gained from them. I know that if there was a choice between learning how to write a paper and simply writing it using AI, the latter is a no-brainer for most. This is understandable: people naturally tend to seek the most efficient way to complete tasks they do not consider meaningful. However, when AI replaces rather than supports learning, students miss valuable opportunities to develop essential skills such as reading comprehension, critical thinking, research, and effective writing. Over time, this dependence can weaken the very abilities that education is meant to cultivate. Even students who wish to learn more and practice their skills may resort to AI use due to heavy workloads and the stress of extracurriculars. And while it may seem harmless to use AI for smaller tasks in order to make workload easier, unfiltered AI use can still lead to dependence and the inability to perform these tasks on your own. If you always go to Chat GPT to get ideas for a paper or a creative assignment, it becomes harder to think of these ideas on your own. While many cite AI as a useful creative tool, the 'new' ideas it generates are really just the regurgitations of human creativity. In order for AI to continue to be 'creative', we must keep feeding it ideas. How will we do that if we rely on AI for creativity in the first place? Additionally, students often use AI to help them understand new concepts by breaking them down, creating practice questions, and summarizing lengthy explanations to make them easier to understand. Of all the uses for AI in education, this seems to be the most innocent. However, using AI to learn new things is risky because the sources that AI draws its information from may not always be reliable. Because the entire internet is at its disposal, the sources could be anything from academic articles to social media posts from random people. I've noticed that people my age have become increasingly impatient and averse to reading long articles and text books, no matter the subject matter. This is also likely due to social media and short-form content, but AI definitely plays a big role. When people are used to reading summaries of information rather than the information itself, they lose the criticality and comprehensive learning opportunity. Unsurprisingly, there have even been people that turn to AI not just as a tool or teacher, but as a friend. One of my own friends talks to Chat GPT regularly as if it's a real person, even giving it a nickname. Many teenagers have turned to AI bots such as character AI and used them to simulate companionship, rather than finding connections with real people which can be messy or difficult. This use of AI is very dangerous, due to AI's lack of guardrails and its penchant to validate and support the user no matter what. There have been several cases of teenage suicide where the victim had engaged in long conversations with AI that validated their suicidal ideation. Some have even entered a state of AI psychosis, that attribute sentience to AI models and become attached to them, seeing them as romantic partners or even divine deities. The increased isolation in society and unwillingness to endure difficulties or friction in relationships is a likely reason for this behavior. For AI expansion, more and more data centers are being built to train and run AI, which needs a significant amount of energy and resources. Their incredibly high-power usage and a huge amount of water to cool servers, cause significant strain on local communities. These centers are also incredibly loud, reaching 85 decibels in some areas, and this noise can last for days on end, disrupting sleep and worsening daily life. The AI learning tools and summaries aren't there just to help us learn or create new ideas. They are becoming merely ploys for companies to become richer, all while ignoring the long-term consequences and the people being harmed. Even if the expansion of AI isn't really something individuals can fully control, there are things that we can do to lessen its impact on our lives. These can be small things, such as intentionally avoiding or reporting content that involves AI. For example, many people I know have switched from Google to search engines that allow users to search without AI-generated summaries. Additionally, we can advocate for AI use to be used to areas where it would be more useful, such as medical research. What I think is the most important form of resistance is retaining the ability to think for ourselves and analyze the world around us. In order to combat the misinformation and atrophy of critical thinking that AI causes, we can make an honest effort to learn the information from its source and research topics properly, rather than relying on over-sensationalized media. This means reading books and articles, listening to the experience of real people, and forming our own conclusion. Not only is this necessary to maintain our critical thinking skills, but it also allows us to question those in power and the decisions they make. AI is a force that grows stronger every single day. While there are potential benefits to this technology, its invasion into every aspect of our lives can harm mentally, socially, and environmentally. However, the tool itself was never to blame, and it was really the drive for profit rather than overall human wellbeing. Although, someday in the future when profit is taken out of the equation, perhaps AI can be used properly, in applications that save lives rather than take them. Maybe then, it will become what it was always meant to be: something to revolutionize society and enhance our lives in the best ways possible. Until then, we have work to do. Paudel is a 9th grade student at the Early College at Guilford, North Carolina, USA