The use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) by children demands critical examination over whether and how the technology affects their cognitive development. Given the growing empirical research showing the impacts of GenAI on human cognition, this paper aims to philosophically examine the threats that this technology may pose to children’s development as practical reasoners, given the importance of childhood and adolescence in developing this central capability. This paper first outlines and justifies the use of the Capabilities Approach and the particular focus on the central capability of practical reason. I then explore empirical research which shows that GenAI may put downward pressure on children’s ability to reach the necessary threshold for practical reason. I then argue that, due to the pressures it places on this capability, if children are unable to reach the necessary threshold for practical reason due to cognitive offloading and delegation to GenAI, they may be at risk of becoming dependent on GenAI tools and the corporations that control them. Such dependency would raise two important critiques of the adoption of GenAI in childhood and education: first, prudential critiques where the agent’s own interests are undermined; second, political critiques where unjust social forces are reinforced and exacerbated.
