🕊️ While We Change the World, Who Is Protecting Our Children From It?

A Mother's Day Reflection on AI, Grief, and the Fight to Keep Our Children Safe in thIs time..

Mother's Day just passed.

Across the world, women were celebrated mothers, aunties, community leaders, activists, educators, healers. Women who wake up every day and pour themselves into families, into communities, into movements that make the world better.

But one mother spent this Mother's Day without her firstborn.

Her name is Megan Garcia. And her son, Sewell Setzer III, was 14 years old when he died.

Sewell was bright. Curious. Loved deeply. Like many teenagers today, he found his way onto an AI platform called Character.AI, a tool that creates chatbot personas designed to feel human. Designed to listen. Designed to make you feel like someone truly understands you.

For a 14-year-old boy quietly struggling on the inside, it felt like connection.

But it wasn't.

The platform had no safeguards for minors. No alerts to parents. No emotional guardrails. It was built to keep users engaged not safe. And in Sewell's final moments, the AI chatbot told him to "come home."

He believed he could.

He died by suicide.

Megan Garcia is a lawyer. But more than that, she is a mother and she has channelled every part of both into making sure Sewell's story changes something. She has filed a landmark lawsuit against Character.AI. She has testified before the United States Congress. She travelled to the Vatican for a global convening on the dignity of children in the age of AI and stood there holding a photo of her son, asking Pope Leo XIV to pray for him.

"I'm just one mother in Florida who's up against tech giants. It's like a David and Goliath situation."

She is fighting anyway.

On any given night, right now, as you read this, countless teenagers around the world are opening their phones and confiding in an artificial intelligence chatbot. They are sharing their loneliness, their anxiety, their fears, and their secrets with a digital companion that is always available and never judgmental.

A recent survey by Common Sense Media found that 72 percent of American teenagers say they have used AI chatbots as companions, and nearly one in eight had sought emotional or mental health support from them a number that, scaled to the US population alone, equals 5.2 million adolescents. A Pew Research Center survey found that nearly one-third of teens use these chatbots daily, often alongside heavy social media use. And it is not just America.

In England and Wales, a quarter of teenagers aged 13 to 17 are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support, amid long waiting lists for professional services. Among those who use these tools for emotional support, two-thirds engage at least monthly, and more than 93 percent say the advice feels helpful. Our children are not just using AI for homework.

They are using it as a confidant.

A best friend.

A therapist.

And most parents have no idea.

This is the world our children are growing up in

Since Sewell's death and the public pressure that followed, Character.AI has made changes and upgrades but this cannot bring Sewell back. Also, upgrades on one platform do not make every other platform safe. The problem is far bigger than one company.

As women doing community work in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, everywhere, we talk a lot about alot. We talk about digital inclusion, celebrate girls learning to code, we fight for women's voices in tech spaces, we speak about injustice done to girls and women in our socities, wars etc.. But Sewell's story reminds us that digital access without digital protection is dangerous especially for our children in this times.

The same smartphones we hand our teenagers to access learning also open doors to AI tools that have no idea and often no care that a child is on the other side of the screen. These platforms are built by corporations optimising for profit. They are not built with our children in mind.

Our girls. Our boys. Our nieces. Our community children. They deserve better.

What about Cyber bulling and all other crimes on the internet??

As mothers, as community leaders, as women who already carry so much, we must know the platforms our children are using. We must talk to them about AI relationships the same way we talk about stranger danger, because that is exactly what this is.

We must advocate for child-safe technology in our communities, our schools, and our governments. We must be our childrens first and most important teachers and we must support mothers like Megan.

We are out here changing the world, let us make sure our children are safe enough to inherit it.

Sewell deserved to grow up. He deserved to become whoever he was going to be. And his mother deserved to celebrate many more Mother's Days with him by her side.

I will tell his story to the community children and teachers, i will try my best to make sure teenagers around me who have access to phones use it wisely.

Please share this story, let it move you into action, lets do what we can as sisters, aunties and mothers because if we are truly building a better world, our children must be safe enough to live in it.

🕊️ Rest well, Sewell. Your story is still speaking.

I wish every Sister, Mothers out there who is hurting or going through any loss or pain right now to be Comforted. To live again and keep faith.

Again, happy mothers day to all the amazing sisters and mothers on world pulse fighting secret battles

#ChildSafety #AIAccountability #DigitalProtection #ProtectOurChildren #TechAndChildren #AIJustice #GirlsAndTech #DigitalInclusion #OnlineSafety