January 19, 2025 • 20 mins
Justin and Kylie explore eight bold predictions for parenting and family life in 2025, covering everything from emerging parenting styles to AI's impact on education and the challenges facing young men.
Key Predictions
1. **The Rise of Lighthouse Parenting**
- Moving away from helicopter and free-range parenting extremes
- Parents act as steady guides while children navigate independently
- Balanced approach between oversight and autonomy
2. **AI in the Living Room**
- Explosion of AI use in everyday parenting
- Personalized solutions for family challenges
- Interactive parenting resource for various needs
- Notable energy consumption implications
3. **AI Revolution in Education**
- Traditional schools facing paradigm shift
- Move from standardized to personalized learning
- Emphasis on AI literacy and critical thinking
4. **Homeschooling Growth**
- Increasing mainstream adoption
- Driven by concerns about school environment
- Enhanced by technological capabilities
- Post-pandemic perspective shift
5. **Cost of Living Adaptations**
- Rise in multi-generational living
- "Backyard as the new Byron Bay" - focus on staycations
- Response to economic pressures
6. **YouTube Dominance**
- Shift in children's career aspirations
- Increasing influence over traditional media
- Growing platform preference among Gen Alpha
7. **Phone and Social Media Restrictions**
- Classroom phone bans showing positive results
- New legislation for under-16 social media access
- Australia leading global tech restriction movement
8. **Focus on Boys' Development**
- Addressing educational and social challenges
- Growing concern about male disengagement
- Seeking solutions for the "boy problem"
Notable Quotes
"Lighthouse parents illuminate" - Justin on the new parenting style
"The pandemic was just the trailer. 2025 is the feature film for homeschooling."
Resources Mentioned
- Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation"
- happyfamilies.com.au
Credits
Produced by Justin Ruillon from Bridge Media
*Note: This is a predictions episode and all forecasts are speculative. Check back at the end of 2025 for accuracy review.*
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Happy Families podcast Real Parenting Solutions every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. I'm just I'm
here with Kylie today something different. Not so much about
solutions on the pod today as it is about predictions.
Jogi Bearer said, it's tough to make predictions, especially about
the future, but that's not going to stop me from
(00:27):
being confident. You're almost smiling at that one. Did you
like that quote? No?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I was just thinking whether you've started reading the stars
you're into your narch.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
No, No, but I am. I'm pretty Some of my
favorite podcasts do predictions for the year, and I decided
last year we did a word for the year and
it just didn't excite me. We talked about it all year,
but we kind of already know what we was supposed
to be doing as parents. Didn't excite me or didn't
want to do a word for the year. This year
kind of just went meh about it felt pretty mid
if I was the quote our ten year old or
(00:56):
our fourteen year old, But I thought, I really love
the idea of predictions. And I happen to little bit
about parenting and parenting trends and I reckon we should
do some parenting predictions. So today my eight predictions for
twenty twenty five for parents and their families. These are
family and parenting predictions.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Number one, parenting style of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I'm making a prediction that we're going to shift away
from this idea of helicopter parenting and free range parenting.
Are you supposed to hover at that extreme or you're
supposed to go to other extreme and just let the
kids go for it. Carte blanche, go and fill your boots, kids,
do whatever you want. Into something more nuanced. Parents who
stand firm like lighthouses, offering steady guidance while letting their
(01:42):
children navigate their own waters. Not lighthouse parenting, I think
is going to be the parenting trend, the parenting style
of twenty twenty five. Lighthouse keepers don't jump into the
water to drag ships where they're supposed to go. And
I think that with everything that's been going on in
the world over the last few years, parents are starting
to step back a little bit, resist that urge to
(02:02):
solve every problem. But they're also identifying that too much
freedom is not healthy. There has to be a really
healthy balance, So Like I said, helicopter parents, they have
free range parents kind of disappear. Lighthouse parents illuminate. That's
my parenting style prediction for this year.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
In Parental Guidance Season two, we actually saw a brilliant
example of lighthouse We were ahead of the Babby and Jason.
We are much like a lighthouse. We observe from a distance,
but ultimately that they ever do get into trouble, they
can come to us and then we can help.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Them with a lighthouse parenting approach.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
We can raise these children to be confident, strong, worlled,
happy adults.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, we were ahead of the curve in Parental Guidance
Season two. Lighthouse parents. They were awesome. They had their
I think Pepper was ten at the time, and they
just I loved having them on the show. They brought
such wisdom and they ended up really making a great contribution.
For twenty twenty five, we're seeing this emerges the correction
to our overparenting crisis. Lighthouse parenting.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Next two AI predictions, one for the lound room and
one for the classroom.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, We're going to go from the house to the
school with two things that I think are going to
be really big. This year. The first is an AI
parenting boom Kilie. The greatest parenting library or resource that's
ever been assembled now exists, and it's in AI llm's
AI training sets. We're talking about grond called Chat GBT
(03:30):
or Anthropic or Gemini or I don't know whatever AI
platform you're using. Most people on Chat GPT, but the
some other brilliant ones that are out there, and it
has got all the information that you'll ever need about parenting,
everything from discipline strategies to bedtime stories, to breathing exercises
to do to calm the kids, down to lunch packing hacks.
(03:51):
Like it's all there. It's this incredible comprehensive parenting partner.
And while over the last couple of years AI has
been building and more and more people are getting on it,
I believe that twenty twenty five is the year that
AI is going to explode in our living rooms and
parents are going to be It's not like you're just
searching up something and saying I need an answer and
Google gives you two bajillion hits in zero point seven
(04:14):
to six seconds. It gives you an answer. Let's say
you've got a child who's gluten free or lactose intolerant.
You can say I need a recipe for blah, and
when it gives it to you can look at the
rest and say, I really like that, but can we
substitute this ingredient for something else? Or that one doesn't
quite work. I'm looking for something more along the lines
of and you give it these prompts and start a
conversation with the AI and parents are starting to get
(04:35):
their head around how this works. I was with some
people just the other day, and every time a question
came up in our conversation, one of the guys would
pull out his telephone and he would use chat GPT
to enhance and augment our conversation to provide some clarification.
But it was different to saying, oh, Google says this.
Instead it was a hey, it looks like there's a
(04:56):
couple of different alternatives here, and it changed the conversation
so much.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
A few friends and I are preparing for a triathlon
in March.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Look at you, my friends. Well I didn't predict. I
think triathlon is going to boom this year as well.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
And my friend sent me a message and she said, so,
I've just organized a training schedule with chat GPT, and
I told it that we were a bit weak on
the swim, we needed to work on our run and
we had the bike fine, and it just spat out
this amazing routine that we can all follow.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, here's your training schedule for the next four weeks.
It's crazy, come back and report. What's fascinating is how
AI is learning to adapt to different parenting styles and
contexts culturally. So I don't think that AI is going
to replace parental intuition, but I do think it's going
to enhance it. As a side note before we move
on to the other AI prediction that I have for
(05:53):
twenty twenty five, an AI search, if you use chat,
GPT or anthropic or whatever, it uses at least ten
times the power, the electricity the energy generation of a
Google search. So you type something into Google and all
of Google servers fire up and they give you the information,
and Google uses an x amount of energy. But if
you use an AI search, it's using ten times minimum
(06:16):
ten times the power required to get you that information.
So my sort of non parenting prediction around this is
watch the tech giants start to invest in nuclear because
I think that's the energy product of the future.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Or should I predict that electricity bill is going to
go through the roof?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Well, Google's will, anthropics, will chat GPTs will. I think
the other thing to highlight here, just while we're talking
about this is I'm not necessarily on the side of
all the things that I'm predicting. I'm just highlighting that
they might happen. So you mentioned the living room AI boom.
That's prediction number two. Prediction number three is the classroom
AI boom. I think we're going to see massive challenges
(06:55):
as traditional schools become increasingly like landline telephones and a
smartphone world. They're functional and they're familiar, but fundamentally they're outdated.
And my prediction is that we're witnessing the death of
the classroom assembly line, that standardized process where kids show
up at four or five and they go through their school.
(07:16):
AI isn't just replacing teachers. I think that it's rewriting
the very definition of education itself. And as a result
of what's happening with AI, certainly at the tertiary level
and it's starting to trickle down into high school, we're
starting to see major cracks in our school system, which
highlights to me that what we've got is a standardized
(07:36):
school system rather than an individualized education system. So to me,
the real battle in twenty twenty five kicks off. It's
not actually AI versus teachers. Teachers are navigating this incredibly well,
but my goodness, it's hard for them. It's really the
industrial education complex versus the personalized, individualized learning revolution that
(08:00):
AI is going to enable. There's one more thing that
I'd highlight around this as well, and that is that
the schools and the teachers and the students who will
flourish are those who become massively AI literate and they
use it to enhance and improve thinking and an idea development.
Too many people are going to continue to use AI
(08:22):
as the one true answer, like a glorified Google that
is not going to provide an enhanced education. But people
who learn how to engage with the AI and argue
with it and find the mistakes in it and improve
what the AI puts out, they're the ones who are
going to do the best learning, and they're the ones
who are going to find the most educational advances occurring.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Recently, I had a conversation with one of our kids
who was putting together a cover letter for her resume.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
She was adamant that she would not use chat GBT
because she felt like it was a cheat. And I
said that's okay, and so she left the room and
she left me with the cover letter and I tried
to do it normally, but I could just tell that
I was being verbose and everything that she had said
and that I was trying to kind of fix was appropriate,
(09:11):
but there was just it was too much. And so
I pulled up chat GBT and I said, this is
what we've got and I said, but it's just a
bit too verbose. What would you, you know, take out
to make this really succinct and you know, kind of
attention grabbing as a cover letter. And anyway, I pulled
it up and I was just like, oh my gosh,
this is this is good?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
How good?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So I caught our daughter back in and I said,
I know how you feel about chat GEBT, but I
just wanted to give you an idea of what it's
capable of. I said, so this is what we wrote together,
and I read it to her and I said, it
just feels a bit messy, doesn't it. And she said yeah,
I said, listen to what we've now got with the
help of AI. So I read her what we had
(09:54):
and even like literally the first line it took like
a paragraph of our work and just was so succinct
up and she looked at me and I said, so
it's saying exactly what we were trying to say. It's
just made it better. And she said, uh huh. And
I kept reading and by the time I was finished,
(10:15):
I said to her, you don't need to use it.
I'm just showing I'm just showing you the advantages of
what it's capable of doing. And she said, no, that's okay,
you can print.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
That up right, So let me build on that. When
it comes to schooling and education, we're not just talking
about a cover letter for a resume. We're talking about
being able to analyze and describe and contrast and empirically
examine different things. The AI will give great answers, but
the people who are able to then read it and
(10:46):
identify what's right and what's wrong and enhance it further
in conversation with the AI, they're the ones that are
going to do the best, which means that they're going
to have to do the work first. There is not.
Everything can be instant and brilliant, and when it comes
to building great people, there's no such thing as an
instantly great person.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
No, but it's not like I said to AI, I
need a cover letter.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Correct, you'd already done the work. We've done all the
that's my point.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
We've done all the work, and that it enhances Prediction
Number four is an education one as well.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I'm predicting that homeschooling is going to rise in twenty
twenty five here the.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Is this just about our loundroom?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
No, no, it's not. But the experience that we've had
enhances my belief that it will rise. So the reasons
that parents went out of the school system. There's bullying
in school, violence says school refusal, and anxiety. There's enormous
discomfortable education department policies, specifically around what a lot of
parents are claiming is woke brainwashing of kids. There's a
degradation of standards, there's sexualized aggression, there's name calling, and
(11:45):
whether you agree with what I'm saying here or not,
there are parents who absolutely absolutely sit very very squarely
in what I'm saying. Homeschooling used to be the domain
of the deeply religious or the alternative hippie, maybe even
slightly wacky people. But now homeschooling is moving closer and
closer and closer to the mainstream, and parents are looking
for alternative ways that they can protect their kids well
(12:09):
being and maintain their educational standards.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I know that in twenty twenty four they saw a
massive influx big families coming into.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Coming off a load base, but really building.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
And what was mostly interesting to me is the majority
of parents who are pulling their children out of school
are not pulling them out because they're concerned about their
education as such. It's not about a learning issue. It
is entirely about an environment. It's an environmental thing, yeah,
and a social thing. It's a really, really big problem
(12:43):
that our children are experiencing.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, the pandemic was just the trailer. Twenty twenty five
is the feature film for homeschooling. That's my prediction, and
I'll tell you why. Going back to AI. The technology
that we now have means that every parent with a
laptop is sitting on a potential private school right there
in the dining room or in their study. And it's
not just about escaping problems. It's about embracing all of
these incredible new possibilities for personalized learning. I think parents
(13:08):
are seeing it and embracing it.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
It's interesting you said that the pandemic was I guess
the initiator right for it. I think for so many parents,
they've actually seen that it's possible. I think before then,
we didn't have an idea of what it would look like.
We couldn't conceive of what it meant to have our
children at home and actually help them through their learning.
(13:31):
And now we've had that taste and we've recognized that
we can actually do it.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
After the break, how the cost of living is going
to affect my predictions for what happens in your family,
especially around family holidays and intergenerational contact. We're also going
to talk about social media and phone bands and the
Year of the Boy.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Number five, a prediction around the cost of life and
adaptations to it.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Right, So you and I both know and everyone who
does this, everyone who goes to the grocery store, it's
just an exercise in pain. We went down to pick
up a couple of things the other day and it
was over one hundred bucks. And they weren't big things,
they weren't expensive things. It was just a handful of
bits and pieces to get through a day's worth of food.
Electricity bills are off off the charts, and Australian households
(14:23):
are carrying what we can only describe as historically high debt,
particularly mortgage debt, which is putting so much pressure on
family budgets and it's influencing living arrangements. So my prediction
for twenty twenty five, I'm going out on a limb here,
but I'm predicting that multi generational living is going to
make a comeback. Your parents are moving in with this, Kylie,
maybe my mine are okay for now. And while they're
(14:45):
not actually, but while they're going to be strange relationally
for a lot of people, I just think it's in
that positive in terms of the impacts on family support
and connection. My other prediction around cost of living is
that we're going to make the backyard the new Bali
or Byron Bay. I just people can't afford to go
on holidays anymore. Travel is out. Staycations are in number six.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Predictions around the dominance of YouTube.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah, in fact, predictions six and seven are both tech related.
We'll start with YouTube. It's really fascinating when you look
at the data. Today's kids they don't dream of being
a Hollywood star or staler. They don't believe that they're
going to become rock stars. You know what they want
to be. They want to be influencers. They dream of
having a million subscribers on YouTube. And it's not about entertainment.
These are massive career aspirations, says Studies that show a
(15:36):
third of kids aged eight to twelve saying that being
a YouTuber is their dream job. We have a daughter
who is ten who literally says that to us on
a pretty much on the daily. We've got research showing
that eighty one percent of Gen ALFA on YouTube compared
to sixty two percent who are watching traditional I say,
traditional streaming services like Netflix, Like that's so traditional, right,
YouTube has a bigger market share than Netflix, has twice
(15:58):
the number of monthly users as tick Talk. Watch YouTube
boom in twenty twenty five. This is Alphabet's, their parent
company of YouTube and Google and so on. Watch YouTube
boom in twenty twenty five, and Alphabet continues to go
from strength to strength.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Well, you said number seven was tech base. We're to
looking at mobile phones and social media bands.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Right, Okay, so when we look at I can't believe
back in the day cigarettes in hospital, cigarettes on aeroplanes,
cigarettes in elevators, and future generations will be as shocked
as I am that people smoked where they smoked. They'll
be that shocked that we allowed phones into our children's
(16:39):
hands at such young ages. Last year we got phones
out of state school classrooms. I don't think we've removed
enough tech from schools for my liking, but the evidence
is compelling. Schools who have implemented phone bands are seeing
at least a six percent improvement in test scores. Teachers, principal, students' parents,
everyone's recognizing the value of this decision. At the the
(17:00):
end of last year, the Australian government said that legislation
comes into play in twenty twenty five, saying that under
sixteens will lose access to social media In Australia. We
are leading the world in this revolution. It's thanks very
much to Jonathan Hate's book The Anxious Generation. The rest
of the world is watching and following, and I think
(17:20):
this is going to be one of the biggest movements
in tech related to parenting globally this year.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Where you promised us eight the Year of the boy.
What is your predictions?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So my final prediction relates to masculinity. The game console playing,
bedroom dwelling boy isn't just a parential headache. He's a
canary in our societal coal mine, whether we're talking about
Bendigo or Bunbury or anywhere starting with something other than
be our young men are retreating from education, they're moving
(17:52):
away from work relationships at really, I think concerning rates,
over the last several decades, we focused and quite rightly
on lifting or removing the glass ceiling, but we've forgotten
about the quicksand that's been pulling our boys under. So
I'm not suggesting that twenty twenty five is the year
that we will reverse or switch, but rather that we're
(18:13):
going to expand our focus on who we're helping and why,
because the stats are telling a really i think confronting
story in that is that workforce participation in young men
is not great. Mental health challenges are undeniably soaring, Educational
engagement is at historic lows, particularly for boys. It's a
global thing. It's definitely on Australian shores, and it's not
just a society thing. It's a family crisis, because when
(18:35):
you're the parent of a teenage boy who is in
his room gaming for eight hours straight, all of the
complex social debates like toxic masculinity and feminism, they just
fade into the background. Parents, especially mums, they're watching their
boys struggle and they're desperate for solutions. And what we're
seeing right now and through twenty twenty five is the
increased acceleration of names like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn.
(18:58):
This is I think Jordan Peterson, even Andrew Tate. I
hate to bring him up on the podcast, but what
the rise of these guys tells is something really compelling,
and that is that people are searching for solutions to
what I'm going to compassionately call the boy problem, and
the path forward is going to be debated and discussed
ad nauseum throughout twenty twenty five as we try to
(19:19):
help our boys to find purpose and connection in a
world that seems, in some ways to have forgotten them.
I think twenty twenty five is going to be the
Year of the Boy, the Year of the man. Changes coming.
I'm writing a book right now, I'm in the process
of finishing it about raising boys I think this is
an issue whose time has come.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
There's some big predictions you've got there. Are we planning
on checking in throughout the year on these ones?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Well, we won't checking on during the year, but at
the end of the year or early next year, we'll
talk about how right I was or how wrong I was.
They're my eight big predictions for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Well, have you got room for one from me?
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I didn't know you had predictions. I thought that you
weren't into predictions. Let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Well, my prediction. It might sound a bit cheesy, but
if you can find a way every day to connect
with your kids, to see to really see them and
hear them and value them, your relationships will be better,
your love for them will build, and family life will
be so much happier.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I think that that's probably the most likely prediction of
all of the works that we've talked about to come true.
The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Rulan from
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(20:33):
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information and resources to make your family happier, visit us
at happyfamilies dot com dot au.
Welcome to the Happy Families podcast Real Parenting Solutions every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. I'm just I'm
here with Kylie today something different. Not so much about
solutions on the pod today as it is about predictions.
Jogi Bearer said, it's tough to make predictions, especially about
the future, but that's not going to stop me from
(00:27):
being confident. You're almost smiling at that one. Did you
like that quote? No?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I was just thinking whether you've started reading the stars
you're into your narch.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
No, No, but I am. I'm pretty Some of my
favorite podcasts do predictions for the year, and I decided
last year we did a word for the year and
it just didn't excite me. We talked about it all year,
but we kind of already know what we was supposed
to be doing as parents. Didn't excite me or didn't
want to do a word for the year. This year
kind of just went meh about it felt pretty mid
if I was the quote our ten year old or
(00:56):
our fourteen year old, But I thought, I really love
the idea of predictions. And I happen to little bit
about parenting and parenting trends and I reckon we should
do some parenting predictions. So today my eight predictions for
twenty twenty five for parents and their families. These are
family and parenting predictions.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Number one, parenting style of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I'm making a prediction that we're going to shift away
from this idea of helicopter parenting and free range parenting.
Are you supposed to hover at that extreme or you're
supposed to go to other extreme and just let the
kids go for it. Carte blanche, go and fill your boots, kids,
do whatever you want. Into something more nuanced. Parents who
stand firm like lighthouses, offering steady guidance while letting their
(01:42):
children navigate their own waters. Not lighthouse parenting, I think
is going to be the parenting trend, the parenting style
of twenty twenty five. Lighthouse keepers don't jump into the
water to drag ships where they're supposed to go. And
I think that with everything that's been going on in
the world over the last few years, parents are starting
to step back a little bit, resist that urge to
(02:02):
solve every problem. But they're also identifying that too much
freedom is not healthy. There has to be a really
healthy balance, So Like I said, helicopter parents, they have
free range parents kind of disappear. Lighthouse parents illuminate. That's
my parenting style prediction for this year.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
In Parental Guidance Season two, we actually saw a brilliant
example of lighthouse We were ahead of the Babby and Jason.
We are much like a lighthouse. We observe from a distance,
but ultimately that they ever do get into trouble, they
can come to us and then we can help.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Them with a lighthouse parenting approach.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
We can raise these children to be confident, strong, worlled,
happy adults.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, we were ahead of the curve in Parental Guidance
Season two. Lighthouse parents. They were awesome. They had their
I think Pepper was ten at the time, and they
just I loved having them on the show. They brought
such wisdom and they ended up really making a great contribution.
For twenty twenty five, we're seeing this emerges the correction
to our overparenting crisis. Lighthouse parenting.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Next two AI predictions, one for the lound room and
one for the classroom.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, We're going to go from the house to the
school with two things that I think are going to
be really big. This year. The first is an AI
parenting boom Kilie. The greatest parenting library or resource that's
ever been assembled now exists, and it's in AI llm's
AI training sets. We're talking about grond called Chat GBT
(03:30):
or Anthropic or Gemini or I don't know whatever AI
platform you're using. Most people on Chat GPT, but the
some other brilliant ones that are out there, and it
has got all the information that you'll ever need about parenting,
everything from discipline strategies to bedtime stories, to breathing exercises
to do to calm the kids, down to lunch packing hacks.
(03:51):
Like it's all there. It's this incredible comprehensive parenting partner.
And while over the last couple of years AI has
been building and more and more people are getting on it,
I believe that twenty twenty five is the year that
AI is going to explode in our living rooms and
parents are going to be It's not like you're just
searching up something and saying I need an answer and
Google gives you two bajillion hits in zero point seven
(04:14):
to six seconds. It gives you an answer. Let's say
you've got a child who's gluten free or lactose intolerant.
You can say I need a recipe for blah, and
when it gives it to you can look at the
rest and say, I really like that, but can we
substitute this ingredient for something else? Or that one doesn't
quite work. I'm looking for something more along the lines
of and you give it these prompts and start a
conversation with the AI and parents are starting to get
(04:35):
their head around how this works. I was with some
people just the other day, and every time a question
came up in our conversation, one of the guys would
pull out his telephone and he would use chat GPT
to enhance and augment our conversation to provide some clarification.
But it was different to saying, oh, Google says this.
Instead it was a hey, it looks like there's a
(04:56):
couple of different alternatives here, and it changed the conversation
so much.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
A few friends and I are preparing for a triathlon
in March.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Look at you, my friends. Well I didn't predict. I
think triathlon is going to boom this year as well.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
And my friend sent me a message and she said, so,
I've just organized a training schedule with chat GPT, and
I told it that we were a bit weak on
the swim, we needed to work on our run and
we had the bike fine, and it just spat out
this amazing routine that we can all follow.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, here's your training schedule for the next four weeks.
It's crazy, come back and report. What's fascinating is how
AI is learning to adapt to different parenting styles and
contexts culturally. So I don't think that AI is going
to replace parental intuition, but I do think it's going
to enhance it. As a side note before we move
on to the other AI prediction that I have for
(05:53):
twenty twenty five, an AI search, if you use chat,
GPT or anthropic or whatever, it uses at least ten
times the power, the electricity the energy generation of a
Google search. So you type something into Google and all
of Google servers fire up and they give you the information,
and Google uses an x amount of energy. But if
you use an AI search, it's using ten times minimum
(06:16):
ten times the power required to get you that information.
So my sort of non parenting prediction around this is
watch the tech giants start to invest in nuclear because
I think that's the energy product of the future.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Or should I predict that electricity bill is going to
go through the roof?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Well, Google's will, anthropics, will chat GPTs will. I think
the other thing to highlight here, just while we're talking
about this is I'm not necessarily on the side of
all the things that I'm predicting. I'm just highlighting that
they might happen. So you mentioned the living room AI boom.
That's prediction number two. Prediction number three is the classroom
AI boom. I think we're going to see massive challenges
(06:55):
as traditional schools become increasingly like landline telephones and a
smartphone world. They're functional and they're familiar, but fundamentally they're outdated.
And my prediction is that we're witnessing the death of
the classroom assembly line, that standardized process where kids show
up at four or five and they go through their school.
(07:16):
AI isn't just replacing teachers. I think that it's rewriting
the very definition of education itself. And as a result
of what's happening with AI, certainly at the tertiary level
and it's starting to trickle down into high school, we're
starting to see major cracks in our school system, which
highlights to me that what we've got is a standardized
(07:36):
school system rather than an individualized education system. So to me,
the real battle in twenty twenty five kicks off. It's
not actually AI versus teachers. Teachers are navigating this incredibly well,
but my goodness, it's hard for them. It's really the
industrial education complex versus the personalized, individualized learning revolution that
(08:00):
AI is going to enable. There's one more thing that
I'd highlight around this as well, and that is that
the schools and the teachers and the students who will
flourish are those who become massively AI literate and they
use it to enhance and improve thinking and an idea development.
Too many people are going to continue to use AI
(08:22):
as the one true answer, like a glorified Google that
is not going to provide an enhanced education. But people
who learn how to engage with the AI and argue
with it and find the mistakes in it and improve
what the AI puts out, they're the ones who are
going to do the best learning, and they're the ones
who are going to find the most educational advances occurring.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Recently, I had a conversation with one of our kids
who was putting together a cover letter for her resume.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
She was adamant that she would not use chat GBT
because she felt like it was a cheat. And I
said that's okay, and so she left the room and
she left me with the cover letter and I tried
to do it normally, but I could just tell that
I was being verbose and everything that she had said
and that I was trying to kind of fix was appropriate,
(09:11):
but there was just it was too much. And so
I pulled up chat GBT and I said, this is
what we've got and I said, but it's just a
bit too verbose. What would you, you know, take out
to make this really succinct and you know, kind of
attention grabbing as a cover letter. And anyway, I pulled
it up and I was just like, oh my gosh,
this is this is good?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
How good?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So I caught our daughter back in and I said,
I know how you feel about chat GEBT, but I
just wanted to give you an idea of what it's
capable of. I said, so this is what we wrote together,
and I read it to her and I said, it
just feels a bit messy, doesn't it. And she said yeah,
I said, listen to what we've now got with the
help of AI. So I read her what we had
(09:54):
and even like literally the first line it took like
a paragraph of our work and just was so succinct
up and she looked at me and I said, so
it's saying exactly what we were trying to say. It's
just made it better. And she said, uh huh. And
I kept reading and by the time I was finished,
(10:15):
I said to her, you don't need to use it.
I'm just showing I'm just showing you the advantages of
what it's capable of doing. And she said, no, that's okay,
you can print.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
That up right, So let me build on that. When
it comes to schooling and education, we're not just talking
about a cover letter for a resume. We're talking about
being able to analyze and describe and contrast and empirically
examine different things. The AI will give great answers, but
the people who are able to then read it and
(10:46):
identify what's right and what's wrong and enhance it further
in conversation with the AI, they're the ones that are
going to do the best, which means that they're going
to have to do the work first. There is not.
Everything can be instant and brilliant, and when it comes
to building great people, there's no such thing as an
instantly great person.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
No, but it's not like I said to AI, I
need a cover letter.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Correct, you'd already done the work. We've done all the
that's my point.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
We've done all the work, and that it enhances Prediction
Number four is an education one as well.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I'm predicting that homeschooling is going to rise in twenty
twenty five here the.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Is this just about our loundroom?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
No, no, it's not. But the experience that we've had
enhances my belief that it will rise. So the reasons
that parents went out of the school system. There's bullying
in school, violence says school refusal, and anxiety. There's enormous
discomfortable education department policies, specifically around what a lot of
parents are claiming is woke brainwashing of kids. There's a
degradation of standards, there's sexualized aggression, there's name calling, and
(11:45):
whether you agree with what I'm saying here or not,
there are parents who absolutely absolutely sit very very squarely
in what I'm saying. Homeschooling used to be the domain
of the deeply religious or the alternative hippie, maybe even
slightly wacky people. But now homeschooling is moving closer and
closer and closer to the mainstream, and parents are looking
for alternative ways that they can protect their kids well
(12:09):
being and maintain their educational standards.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I know that in twenty twenty four they saw a
massive influx big families coming into.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Coming off a load base, but really building.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
And what was mostly interesting to me is the majority
of parents who are pulling their children out of school
are not pulling them out because they're concerned about their
education as such. It's not about a learning issue. It
is entirely about an environment. It's an environmental thing, yeah,
and a social thing. It's a really, really big problem
(12:43):
that our children are experiencing.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, the pandemic was just the trailer. Twenty twenty five
is the feature film for homeschooling. That's my prediction, and
I'll tell you why. Going back to AI. The technology
that we now have means that every parent with a
laptop is sitting on a potential private school right there
in the dining room or in their study. And it's
not just about escaping problems. It's about embracing all of
these incredible new possibilities for personalized learning. I think parents
(13:08):
are seeing it and embracing it.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
It's interesting you said that the pandemic was I guess
the initiator right for it. I think for so many parents,
they've actually seen that it's possible. I think before then,
we didn't have an idea of what it would look like.
We couldn't conceive of what it meant to have our
children at home and actually help them through their learning.
(13:31):
And now we've had that taste and we've recognized that
we can actually do it.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
After the break, how the cost of living is going
to affect my predictions for what happens in your family,
especially around family holidays and intergenerational contact. We're also going
to talk about social media and phone bands and the
Year of the Boy.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Number five, a prediction around the cost of life and
adaptations to it.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Right, So you and I both know and everyone who
does this, everyone who goes to the grocery store, it's
just an exercise in pain. We went down to pick
up a couple of things the other day and it
was over one hundred bucks. And they weren't big things,
they weren't expensive things. It was just a handful of
bits and pieces to get through a day's worth of food.
Electricity bills are off off the charts, and Australian households
(14:23):
are carrying what we can only describe as historically high debt,
particularly mortgage debt, which is putting so much pressure on
family budgets and it's influencing living arrangements. So my prediction
for twenty twenty five, I'm going out on a limb here,
but I'm predicting that multi generational living is going to
make a comeback. Your parents are moving in with this, Kylie,
maybe my mine are okay for now. And while they're
(14:45):
not actually, but while they're going to be strange relationally
for a lot of people, I just think it's in
that positive in terms of the impacts on family support
and connection. My other prediction around cost of living is
that we're going to make the backyard the new Bali
or Byron Bay. I just people can't afford to go
on holidays anymore. Travel is out. Staycations are in number six.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Predictions around the dominance of YouTube.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah, in fact, predictions six and seven are both tech related.
We'll start with YouTube. It's really fascinating when you look
at the data. Today's kids they don't dream of being
a Hollywood star or staler. They don't believe that they're
going to become rock stars. You know what they want
to be. They want to be influencers. They dream of
having a million subscribers on YouTube. And it's not about entertainment.
These are massive career aspirations, says Studies that show a
(15:36):
third of kids aged eight to twelve saying that being
a YouTuber is their dream job. We have a daughter
who is ten who literally says that to us on
a pretty much on the daily. We've got research showing
that eighty one percent of Gen ALFA on YouTube compared
to sixty two percent who are watching traditional I say,
traditional streaming services like Netflix, Like that's so traditional, right,
YouTube has a bigger market share than Netflix, has twice
(15:58):
the number of monthly users as tick Talk. Watch YouTube
boom in twenty twenty five. This is Alphabet's, their parent
company of YouTube and Google and so on. Watch YouTube
boom in twenty twenty five, and Alphabet continues to go
from strength to strength.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Well, you said number seven was tech base. We're to
looking at mobile phones and social media bands.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Right, Okay, so when we look at I can't believe
back in the day cigarettes in hospital, cigarettes on aeroplanes,
cigarettes in elevators, and future generations will be as shocked
as I am that people smoked where they smoked. They'll
be that shocked that we allowed phones into our children's
(16:39):
hands at such young ages. Last year we got phones
out of state school classrooms. I don't think we've removed
enough tech from schools for my liking, but the evidence
is compelling. Schools who have implemented phone bands are seeing
at least a six percent improvement in test scores. Teachers, principal, students' parents,
everyone's recognizing the value of this decision. At the the
(17:00):
end of last year, the Australian government said that legislation
comes into play in twenty twenty five, saying that under
sixteens will lose access to social media In Australia. We
are leading the world in this revolution. It's thanks very
much to Jonathan Hate's book The Anxious Generation. The rest
of the world is watching and following, and I think
(17:20):
this is going to be one of the biggest movements
in tech related to parenting globally this year.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Where you promised us eight the Year of the boy.
What is your predictions?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So my final prediction relates to masculinity. The game console playing,
bedroom dwelling boy isn't just a parential headache. He's a
canary in our societal coal mine, whether we're talking about
Bendigo or Bunbury or anywhere starting with something other than
be our young men are retreating from education, they're moving
(17:52):
away from work relationships at really, I think concerning rates,
over the last several decades, we focused and quite rightly
on lifting or removing the glass ceiling, but we've forgotten
about the quicksand that's been pulling our boys under. So
I'm not suggesting that twenty twenty five is the year
that we will reverse or switch, but rather that we're
(18:13):
going to expand our focus on who we're helping and why,
because the stats are telling a really i think confronting
story in that is that workforce participation in young men
is not great. Mental health challenges are undeniably soaring, Educational
engagement is at historic lows, particularly for boys. It's a
global thing. It's definitely on Australian shores, and it's not
just a society thing. It's a family crisis, because when
(18:35):
you're the parent of a teenage boy who is in
his room gaming for eight hours straight, all of the
complex social debates like toxic masculinity and feminism, they just
fade into the background. Parents, especially mums, they're watching their
boys struggle and they're desperate for solutions. And what we're
seeing right now and through twenty twenty five is the
increased acceleration of names like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn.
(18:58):
This is I think Jordan Peterson, even Andrew Tate. I
hate to bring him up on the podcast, but what
the rise of these guys tells is something really compelling,
and that is that people are searching for solutions to
what I'm going to compassionately call the boy problem, and
the path forward is going to be debated and discussed
ad nauseum throughout twenty twenty five as we try to
(19:19):
help our boys to find purpose and connection in a
world that seems, in some ways to have forgotten them.
I think twenty twenty five is going to be the
Year of the Boy, the Year of the man. Changes coming.
I'm writing a book right now, I'm in the process
of finishing it about raising boys I think this is
an issue whose time has come.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
There's some big predictions you've got there. Are we planning
on checking in throughout the year on these ones?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Well, we won't checking on during the year, but at
the end of the year or early next year, we'll
talk about how right I was or how wrong I was.
They're my eight big predictions for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Well, have you got room for one from me?
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I didn't know you had predictions. I thought that you
weren't into predictions. Let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Well, my prediction. It might sound a bit cheesy, but
if you can find a way every day to connect
with your kids, to see to really see them and
hear them and value them, your relationships will be better,
your love for them will build, and family life will
be so much happier.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I think that that's probably the most likely prediction of
all of the works that we've talked about to come true.
The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Rulan from
Bridge Media. We would love it if you would leave
us a five star rating or review. Wherever you're listening
to the podcast, you get a warm, fuzzy We get
to reach more people because the algorithms like it. When
you do this stuff, can you please take thirty seconds
(20:33):
and let everyone know that you love the pod. Five
star ratings and reviews wherever you're listening make a big
difference for us reaching more people. If you'd like more
information and resources to make your family happier, visit us
at happyfamilies dot com dot au.
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