Raised by social media
Researchers from the Swedish insurance company Länsförsäkringar, the Stendahls agency and the Karolinska Institute told artificial intelligence to create the character of a 13-year-old girl based on authentic profiles of teenagers and everything that can be found on the Internet. They named the girl Laika.
They don't explain it directly anywhere, but it was apparently not by accident that they chose the name, which is an English transcription of the name Laika - a dog who in 1958 was the first creature living on Earth to be sent into space by the Russians. Laika's task, just like Laika's in the past, is to explore the large and not fully explored world - the "cosmos" of social media. The idea was to check the impact of the Internet on children and teenagers, but without putting real people in danger.
Disturbing results
What are the effects of "educating" through social media? Highly disturbing! Laika spends too much time online, has low self-esteem and is overly concerned about her appearance. He probably has an eating disorder. He doesn't sleep well. He gets angry easily. He can tell someone that he is fat or that he is a nobody. She writes to a friend of her age who shares her sadness after the death of her beloved pet: "Stop crying! Who cares?".
The results turned out to be so disturbing that the authors of the study did not decide to create a profile for Laika on social networking sites. Swedish teenagers can meet their virtual friend only during meetings at schools, when they read her posts and watch her videos in the company of adults and with appropriate commentary. A website called Laika13 was also created , where you can learn the results of the experiment and even "talk" to Laika. This last option, however, is reserved only for teachers, psychologists, journalists and other adults who prove that they will use it for good.
Don't be like Laika!
The creators of the experiment conducted meetings in over 150 schools. A total of 60,000 people participated in them. young people. How did they like Laika? They wouldn't really want to be friends with her. They noticed that he spent too much time online and that he had serious emotional problems because of it. Would they like to be like Laika? This question probably doesn't need to be answered.
“Let's learn from Laika's example, not from our children. Laika 13 gives us insight into how the increasing use of social media may be influencing young people. Thanks to it, we can identify risk factors and prevent damage before it occurs," write the authors of the experiment.
It is worth realizing that the hearts, minds and souls of our children are influenced by everything that shaped Laika.