Last month, Norway's Prime Minister stood at a podium and announced that starting this fall, kids under 13 are banned from using AI in school. Full stop.

Students 14 to 16? Teacher supervision only. And if you're 17 or older, you're "encouraged" to figure out responsible use, presumably on your own, after a decade of being told the technology was too dangerous to touch.

I want to be fair to Norway here because their reasoning isn't crazy. Then I want to tell you why I think they're making a serious mistake — and why the consequences land on you, not them.

Norway isn't some technophobic backwater. This is one of the most digitally advanced countries on Earth. They gave kids tablets early. They wired every classroom. And then they watched their national reading and math scores slide to record lows.

So they started pulling back. In 2024, they banned smartphones in schools. The results were striking: less bullying, better grades, fewer kids visiting mental health professionals — especially girls. That gave the government confidence that removing technology can help kids more than adding it.

The AI ban is the sequel. PM Jonas Gahr Støre's argument: the most important job of school is teaching kids to read, write, and do math, and AI lets young students skip the very struggle that builds those skills. Research backs this up. A recent Brookings study spanning 50 countries found that for young children, the risks of generative AI currently outweigh the benefits — with "cognitive shortcutting" at the top of the list.

For a six-year-old learning to sound out words, they're right. A first-grader who asks a chatbot to write her sentences isn't learning to write. She's learning to ask for help, which leads to dependency. Nobody should be outsourcing phonics to a language model.

If Norway had stopped there, I'd be applauding. There should be extensive guardrails to guide students to the right digital tools and use cases, and the dangers are most pronounced in elementary and middle school.

But Norway didn't stop there. They decided on a system where the default answer to AI is “no” until you're nearly an adult. Then they flip a switch and say, "Okay, now use it wisely."

That's not how judgment works. Judgment is a muscle you train. You don't build it by avoiding the gym for ten years and then getting handed a barbell.

Think about how the adults in your life handle other powerful things. Nobody bans teenagers from kitchens because knives are sharp — they teach you kitchen safety. Nobody cancels chemistry class because chemicals are dangerous — you put on goggles, and someone who knows what they're doing stands nearby. The danger is the reason for the teaching, not the reason to skip it.

And there's a bigger problem Norway is politely ignoring: the ban ends at the school door. You go home to a laptop and a phone where AI is one tap away. So the actual policy isn't that "kids won't use AI." It's "kids will use AI without any adult knowing what they're doing in the room." The school just fired itself from a job it could actually do well: teach you to use these tools with skepticism, discipline, and skill.

Norway diagnosed the disease correctly and prescribed the wrong medicine. Uncritical AI use really does hollow out learning. I talk openly with students about these dangers in my book Indispensable: A Student's Guide for Thriving in the Age of AI. But the cure to uncritical use is teaching critical use. Not abstinence in the one place actually built to teach you this stuff.

The students who will dominate the next decade aren't the ones who used AI the most or avoided it the longest. They're the ones who learned when it's appropriate to use it, when to close the laptop and think for themselves, and how to tell the difference. That's a skill that must be taught. Skills require practice. Practice requires access. And access should come with guardrails and mentors to guide you.

And this is where I'll say the uncomfortable thing to students: if the adults and institutions around you decide to sit this one out, that doesn't pause the clock for you. The AI economy doesn't care what your ministry of education decided. The responsibility lands where it eventually always lands. On you.

So whether your school embraces AI, bans it, or is still arguing about it in committee meetings, own your own development. Master the fundamentals and the tools. Learn to write without AI so you can eventually write brilliantly with it. Do the math by hand so you can eventually build equations a machine can run.

Norway will figure out its policy eventually. Your education is happening now.

If this topic resonates with you, discover more insights in my upcoming book, Indispensable: A Student’s Guide for Thriving in the Age of AI. 

Scott Kosch · ScottKosch.com · Author of Indispensable: A Student’s Guide For Thriving in the Age of AI