Decision Making: Skills for the Future

Points clés

• More everyday choices will arrive with a machine's suggestion attached, so teach children to notice when a choice has already been made for them.
• Framing, weighing trade-offs, checking evidence, thinking in chances and owning the choice stay useful whatever tools your children grow up with.
• Before following machine advice that matters, ask what the tool is trying to do, what it does not know and what happens if it is wrong.
• When the future is uncertain, try something small and cheap first instead of making one big bet, and say so aloud to your children.
• Let children make a first choice of their own on paper before any app suggests one, then compare the two and talk about the difference.

À l'intérieur de ce bit

1. More choices will arrive with a suggestion attached

   A decision is a choice between two or more options, made with some idea of what you want. Over the next five to ten years, more of those choices are likely to arrive with a suggestion already attached.

2. Five decision skills that stay useful

   Tools will change many times before your children finish school, but some decision skills stay useful whatever the tools. Framing means working out what you are really deciding: which gift should we buy Grandma is really a question about how to show her we care, and a visit might answer it better.

3. Follow, question or override machine advice

   Machine advice will be everywhere, so a key skill is knowing when to follow it, when to question it and when to override it, which means deciding against it. A simple trust check has four questions.

4. Thinking in chances when the future is uncertain

   Nobody knows which jobs, tools or places will matter most in ten years, and that uncertainty worries many families. Uncertainty simply means not knowing what will happen.

5. Practising decisions with and without screens

   Children growing up with suggestions everywhere need practice at deciding before a screen offers an answer. The simplest habit is a screen-free first draft: for any choice that matters, such as a project topic, a gift or a weekend plan, the child writes a first choice and the reasons on paper, and only then checks what an app suggests.

6. Risks, opportunities and a family learning plan

   The coming years bring real risks for young deciders. Persuasive design will get better at holding attention and nudging purchases.