Bring your school or community to the forefront of one of the most important conversations facing young people today.

Young people today have access to more information, more computing power and more ways to communicate than any generation before them.

Schools have embraced many of these opportunities. Students can research the world in seconds, collaborate online, create films and presentations, learn new skills and access educational resources that would have been unimaginable a generation ago.

But as technology becomes more powerful, another question deserves our attention:

Is all this technology making our young people more capable?

An educator may see a student carrying a smartphone capable of accessing almost the entire world’s knowledge—yet struggling to concentrate on one subject for very long.

A student may have hundreds of online friends and followers—yet struggle with real-world connection.

Students can be surrounded by entertainment, yet bored.

Surrounded by information, yet unsure what to believe.

Constantly connected, yet distracted.

And now artificial intelligence can research, write, summarize, calculate, generate ideas and work through problems that students once had to wrestle with themselves.

The concern isn’t that technology is bad.

The concern is what happens when a tool stops making the human being more capable—and begins replacing the very experiences through which capability develops.

Learning often requires struggle. Creativity requires imagination. Friendship requires presence. Independence requires doing things for ourselves.

If technology removes every inconvenience, answers every question and fills every quiet moment, what happens to those abilities?

Are students using the technology—or is the technology using them?

That’s a much bigger conversation than screen time.

Today’s digital systems don’t simply wait to be used. Notifications ask for our attention. Recommendation algorithms decide what appears next. Social platforms encourage us to keep scrolling. Apps can collect information about how they’re used. AI can increasingly perform tasks that once required significant human effort.

Young people therefore need more than the ability to operate technology.

They need to understand how technology operates on them.

Why does an app want my attention?

Why was this particular video recommended to me?

What information am I exchanging for convenience?

When should I use AI—and when should I work something out myself?

Is this technology strengthening one of my abilities, or slowly replacing it?

And perhaps the biggest question:

What parts of being human do I refuse to outsource?

This presents schools and communities with an extraordinary opportunity.

The next step in technology education doesn’t have to be rejecting the tools schools have already embraced. It can be teaching young people how to remain in control of those tools.

Use AI—but continue learning how to think.

Use smartphones—but learn to control your attention.

Participate online—but develop real relationships.

Enjoy convenience—but retain independence.

Embrace extraordinary technology—but continue developing extraordinary human beings.

That is the conversation behind Rise Above the Machine.

It isn’t about fearing technology.

It’s about understanding it well enough to use it consciously—and recognizing when it may be beginning to use us.

Bring your school or community to the forefront of the conversation.

Because as technology becomes more capable, one goal should remain clear:

Our young people should become more capable, too.