What Japan Earthquake Drills Teach Us About Talking to Kids During a Geopolitical Crisis
Every few months, children in Tokyo hear the earthquake siren, put on their helmets and calmly walk from their school buildings to their evacuation points. Why don’t they panic?
From their first year in kindergarten, children are regularly taught about earthquake preparedness in an age appropriate, non-alarming manner. In Japan, a natural disaster is a fact of life. Can preparing for disasters be the antidote to fear?
What if we need the same approach for the coming AI geopolitical crises?
The world is getting more chaotic. Our kids may already know this.
Whether its a military conflict, a pandemic, or political instability, screens in the house, in school, or elsewhere project alarming content that feeds on anxiety and outrage.
Our parental instinct may want to simply block screen-time as a solution, but children can still pick up on parental anxiety and routine disruption.
Perhaps it is time that we treat instability as a permanent feature. Unlike the past, when crises were seen as interruptions to normal life, instability should be treated as normal, with preparedness built around it.
Build Household “Drills”
Which routines could serve the same function as evacuation drills?
- Lead with concrete actions, not abstract threats.
In Japan, little kids don’t get a lecture on tectonic plates, they are taught how to wear a helmet and where to go when the earth shakes.
When a crisis is in the news, lead with the family’s concrete response, not with geo-political analysis:
What does this mean for our household?
Are there practical steps we should take, like checking with relatives abroad, adjusting travel plans or our budget.
How do we analyze whether a particular AI content is fake?
Give children age-appropriate roles. For example, the older kid reviews emergency supplies, and the younger kid draws the family meeting point.
Discuss family rules on use of AI and social media content and regularly revisit rules as they relate to mental and physical well being.
The action is the point. It converts anxiety into agency.
2. Make AI literacy and media literacy a regular habit
Unfortunately, AI and geopolitical crises worsen the information environment. Unlike a natural disaster, parents need to worry about AI misinformation, competing narratives, and algorithmic amplification of alarming content, as well its effects on childrens’ health. Regular scheduled conversations about diverse topics like how AI and media is developing, how to analyze misinformation and how algorithms promote doom scrolling can be repeated as new information deepens discussions on these topics.
The hardest part is modeling the behavior. If a parent believes an AI content that later turns out to be false, understanding how the parent realized the truth can be an educational lesson for the child and can be included in family discussions about AI. Family discussion should include not just childrens’ but parental use of AI and media.
The aim is to show the child that they have agency over the information they choose to interact with and helping them use tools to maintain this agency in the future.
Graduate with Complexity
A five year old gets: “Country A has a big disagreement with country B. Our relatives in country B are safe. We will call them regularly to check up on them.”
“Lets learn about the countries of the world”
“Some videos may look scary and real but are false. Tell me if you see or hear anything that is alarming.”
“Lets learn how AI can create very real looking videos. Lets learn how AI can sound like a real human.”
An eight year gets: “These countries are at war with each other. The war affects this area. Many goods pass through this area. The goods may not pass for some weeks. So those goods may be more expensive in our country. Lets check our emergency supplies and make sure we are prepared for increased prices.”
“Lets learn about the history of various AI companies. Lets learn about the company that created your AI video game.”
A twelve year can handle a conversation about alliances, economic interdependence, and why different news sources describe the same event differently.
A teenager can engage with escalation dynamics, the role of propaganda, historical parallels, and the difference between what they see in media and social media, and what’s actually happening on the ground.
Teenagers can benefit from in depth information about machine learning, how back propagation works and the current debates and discussions in AI safety.
The world is not going to get simpler. Our children may already sense this. Our kids need tools to practice agency. They need tools that they practice regularly, grounded in action, and honest about what we know and what we don’t.
This is preparedness. And it may very well work.
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