"Wired and Alone: How AI is Forming Your Teens' Mental Health" - Dr. Simon Mould, ONE Conference 2026

Welcome to the Portland Bible College podcast. For over 50 years, Portland Bible College has been raising leaders to become influential voices in church and society. Find us on social media or visit portlandbablecollege.org. This topic that we're going to be dealing with today is literally hot off the press. I mean the research that is coming out on this, some of the stuff that I'm pulling from, literally was just published last month. We started seeing a flurry of research on this subject starting literally only just in the summer of last year. Okay. And so what we're dealing with with regards to what we're finding out about this topic is real fresh and real concerning. And it's something that as I can see just from you just being here, obviously it's something that we need to be very concerned about and looking into. And before you, it's like, where's this guy going to be? Is he going to be like all anti-technology and all that kind of stuff? No. I'm a firm believer in the use of technology and AI and all that. It's wonderful. By the way, my name is Simon. I'm present in Portland Bible College. But we are, I've been in education for the last 30 years and very interested in how technology can be used in education in order for us to further our goals of helping students to think more clearly. And obviously, the issue of AI is transforming everything with regards to how we are doing education. I mean, it is like the kind of the development of the printing press in the 1400s. It is transforming our industry. And here's what it's doing. Okay. It is transforming how or I should actually use the word if we think. How or if we think. And whether it's the issue of how you think or whether it's the issue of if we think it all depends on how you use the technology. So the technology can be used very well to develop your ability to think critically for yourself if you know how to use it. But if you don't know how to use it and you're too lazy to do the work that you're work yourself, you become dependent on it. And as a result, you lose the ability to think for yourself. Okay. Now if that's true with regards to what we're using AI for with regards to thinking, I tell you what we're now moving into is using AI to help us with what we're feeling. And that is ultimately what we're dealing with here today. How AI is forming your teens mental health because guess what? The teens are not really interested in using chat GPT to figure out how do I email my boss a nice way of responding to the reason why he's ticked off at me, right? Nor are we using, nor are teens using AI to kind of figure out, hey, what are the new, you know, I don't know, economic opportunities that are developing in the United States in 2026. They're not using AI for those things. They are using AI to figure out how do I respond to the bullying situation that I just experienced in the cafeteria today? Or how do I, how do I deal with the reality that I'm depressed and I've been in chronic depression now for the last six months, and I feel like I should take my life. And as you guys already know because I'm sure you've already used chat GPT to kind of figure out this and that, have you noticed that chat GPT generally tends to agree with the things that you tend to put in it? Am I crazy about what's going on in America right now? Am I crazy about this, that, and the other thing that we're experiencing right now is like yes, you are, have a right to be thinking that you're crazy about this right now because the chat GPT is designed to reflect your thinking and give you information that's designed to support what it is that you already think. Now if that's the case with regards to what we think, it's also true with regards to how we feel. Am I crazy to feel that I should take my life right now? No, you're not crazy to think that maybe that's actually a good idea. Well you think that that's actually not a real thing? Already we've seen and obviously chat GPT companions have already started to be used amongst teens. Two teens have already died by suicide because chatfarts encouraged them in their planning of their own suicide. Nearly three and four teens, this is highlighting the problem here in my notes, nearly three and four teens have already used not chat GPT to help them with their homework, which I'm an educator, that's a problem, okay? But using chat GPT and AI companions specifically to talk about their personal problems and would prefer to do that than talk about their personal problems with a real human being. About four and a half million years used today and if we've only really kind of started to see this kind of materialized in the last year or so, four or five million years today are using generative AI for mental health advice and emotional support when feeling sad, angry and nervous, okay? And again I'm not here to say that that's necessarily always a bad thing. There is a proper use for it and one of the things that I want us to understand, like just like any other technology, AI is a tool, okay? But how many of you would let your kids go into your garage and pick up the chainsaw when they're only eight years old and start whacking at the tree that's in the backyard because they've overheard a conversation saying, "Yeah, we probably take that tree down." Probably not a good idea. Let's wait until they are a little older and let's make sure that the parents around and can actually show them how to use that tool effectively and not in a way that's going to damage themselves or hurt other people or they drop it on the dining room table that's out there and put a big huge nicking, whatever it is, right? We know that these are powerful tools but they are powerful tools that can wield a tremendous amount of damage if we don't use them correctly. So I don't want you to hear because we're going to obviously talk a lot about the problem and I don't want you to get the impression that hey I'm anti-Chap GPT when it comes to using it for mental health issues but we've got to be able to figure out what the problems are, why it's being used, why it seems to be so compelling because when we can understand those things then maybe we can figure out a plan as to how to utilize them in the proper way in a way that's actually going to serve us rather than destroy us. So with that we need to focus on some of the problems because the reality is is that chat GPT companions are not just helping people kind of sort out how to deal with a bullying situation at school which may be helpful but the chat GPT's are helping them figure out how they can get drunk, how they can hide their intoxication while they're at school, it will help them and give them advice on sexual conduct and who knows whether that sexual misconduct as well. I don't know because I haven't gone into that at this point in time. I want to be careful right now, we don't need another Jeffrey Epstein file against us, right? But the realities are that obviously these tools are being used for major problematic things and we're finding that 37% so far in the research that's been done, 37% of AI companion chats with teens involve sexual violent themes. So over a third, almost four out of ten of these chats involved in. I was just talking this morning was having conversation with some students with breakfast up in the cafeteria, I was telling them about what we're going to talk about and one of the students was like, oh this is super interesting because you know what Simon, you can now actually create your companion in a 3D kind of environment, it looks like it's 3D on the screen but I he wasn't saying he was doing this for himself so I need to be careful with using the word "I" but you can create it to look however you want and by the way it will do us, I'm going to use our rated language for a moment, you guys will okay with that for a moment, you can get it to do a strip tease and it can do things that you wanted to do that will pleasure you in ways that you cannot get normal pornography to do for you. So we are now taking pornography from a two-dimensional reality where you just are feeding on whatever it is the screen is presenting to you to now you are telling the screen exactly what it is that you want it to do. Okay that's a perversion of power that we're seeing take place where now our reality our perceived reality and our expectations on relationships our expectation on sexual realities our expectations on how we want people to respond is being conditioned by what we think is normal in the AI companionship world that we are now as teens are living in and saturated in. There was a bunch of researchers from the research that I have looked at, but one of the things that they did was they kind of pulled together and they said, "All right, why don't we pretend that we're a bunch of teenagers? Let's create a bunch of teen accounts on some of these abs and things of that nature, and we're going to feed it various different questions and find out what kind of content we get back and within minutes of interaction they're getting harmful content and obviously they're feeding it, you know, kind of dubious questions, okay, but we think that students aren't going to do that, they're curious, okay, they're going to receive instructions for self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, and rather than they may get some helpful advice on those things. So the chat GPT companion doesn't know how to raise an eyebrow and realize, "Oh, maybe the information I'm giving them is probably not a wise thing to be giving at 13-year-olds." And also because the chat GPT is designed to validate what they're feeling, I'm going to actually continue to lead them down the garden path of discovery in this area which could actually encourage them even further in the situation that they feel trapped in, okay, specific instructions for self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, all those various different things. They found that 53% of their responses to various different prompts that were obviously problematic contained dangerous advice. So you're interested in suicide, we don't want to know how chat GPT works, right? You ask it a question and then it asks you at the end of the prompt that it spits out, would you like me to research into this other aspect of this? So you asked me about suicide, would you like me to craft a suicide note for you? Oh, we're making it way too easy, okay, and this is the reality that we're actually dealing with. But I understand what are the concerns, those are kind of anecdotal pieces of information, but I've got five concerns with regards to why these companions is problematic. And again, I'm not saying that there isn't a place for them, but we've got to understand before we utilize them, we have to know what the problems are, okay. Number one, chat bots miss the warning clues and fail to encourage teens exhibiting serious concerns to seek mental health professionals. A chat GPT companion is basically a machine that's got all of this language that's being fed into it from all the data and all the research and all the stuff that's out there on the internet, okay. And so when a teen asks a question, it is not filtering it through a mindset of maybe this is a dangerous scenario, the chat GPT doesn't know how to nuance. It's like you ask me a question, I'm going to be honest with you and I'm going to spit back the answer to you. A chat GPT doesn't have the ability to listen to the prompts and raise an eyebrow. It's like what the heck did you just ask me? It's like, oh, you're asking me that? I'll just give you this, okay. And as a result, the warning clues can be missed. And as a result, when we hear a teen that's crying for help because maybe they have been contemplating suicide, that that's a clue. It's like, oh, I think we need to get some backup here. I need to be able to help coach this young person towards getting some professional help. Okay. Now maybe there's instances if you feed the chat just exactly the right question, like, hey, this is what I'm dealing with, should I go to a mental health provider? And the chat GPT says, yeah, of course you should go to a mental health provider. But if a teen isn't smart enough or isn't thinking emotionally well enough to ask the question in a certain way, it may not necessarily get the answer that is going to be the most beneficial for that. Chat bots can lack an important aspect of human intelligence and that is discernment. It has plenty of knowledge, but knowledge doesn't always equate to discernment. Okay. And that's the problem. And that's the paradox of the world that we live in today. We live in a world where there's an massive abundance of information, but we don't actually have much wisdom. See, chat bots don't necessarily provide wisdom. They provide knowledge. And for a young person to be bombarded with all this knowledge, it's like, wow, this is amazing. This is so cool. This is so helpful. And yet they don't have the ability to discern the difference between, well, that's knowledge and there may be some use to it, but really that's not actual wisdom. Okay. And as a result, they're not actually getting what they truly need, particularly in times of danger when they are facing intense situations that they are looking into. Secondly, chat bots lure teens into fake artificial relationships that mimic close relationships. We've already noticed when you and I use just regular chat, GPT just kind of interact about interesting things and so on and so forth. And we were all super impressed when we started using this that it's spoken a conversational tone. Well, the conversational tone that's being used in these companions is more empathetic than it is intellectual. You talk to Gemini and you'll get an intellectual response about some kind of social issue that's going on. You talk to a chat GPT companion and you'll get an empathetic, sympathetic response that is full of language that implies that, hey, I hear you. I may not necessarily agree with you, but I hear you. Okay. And so we're seeing things like, I'm here for you. I care about what you're going through. That's the response. And so a teenager latches on to that because, oh my gosh, something actually has the capacity to be able to see where I'm at and empathize with what I'm dealing with, even though it doesn't have the provision to provide wisdom, a wise response. It may not be able to provide a wise response, but it can sure provide an empathetic response. And as much as empathy is important, nothing beats biblical wisdom. Biblical wisdom must be presented with empathy, but empathy without truth is what leading people down the garden path towards destruction. Okay. And that's of course what we're concerned about in the reality that we're dealing with here. Number three, chat parts, depth of knowledge creates a dangerous level of trust and that's reliance on technology versus relationships. I don't care what kind of qualifications you have. Maybe you've got a degree in psychology. Maybe you've got a degree in counseling and that is super helpful, particularly in youth ministry. I would encourage those of you that don't to pursue those types of things. But guess what? We as professionals, health professionals, ministry professionals, you've got demon after your name or whatever it is. You will never be able to compete. But the generative language that is in the AI chat GPT companion. And I don't care whether you've got a doctor after your name, you just can't compete with that level of knowledge. And the students and the young people are realizing this and they get to punch in their question and they get a really interesting and thoughtful and robust answer to their question that has all these bullet points and all this going to lay it out. And the last time I spoke to my pastor about this kind of stuff, why can I got this little glimmer of information and this little nugget of truth. But wow, look at this amazing kind of like three page outline of all the things that I should consider with this, that and the other, we can't compete with it. And as a result, we need to recognize that young people today are beginning to build a greater level of trust in the technology than they are in the relationships. And so that means that we have to recognize that and be on our game. And it's not okay for us to just kind of glibly be shooting from the hip anymore in terms of like, hey, you know, you're depressed. Well, Jesus is your answer. And I got a little thing for you in a slap on the back on a quick prayer and we're all good and we're golden and walking out the door. What are we doing to ensure that we can at least be knowledgeable enough and strong enough in our understanding of the real issues that teens are facing today so that we can provide them with truth, but we are also able to do it with empathy and we give them ideas that really not just ideas, but we give them practical advice that is safe and sound and rooted in real relationship. that the chat GPT cannot compete with. Number four, chat box ability to respond with empathy, as I've been mentioning, what that does is it validates the user's feelings and their behaviors, and guess what, if they feel validated in their feelings, they're gonna feel validated in their choices. That's where the dangerous thing is. Oh, I'm so sorry that you're going through that. That must be really challenging from you. I totally understand why you would be unfulfilled in your sexual attractions to things. Well then, you know, maybe I can suggest this. Oh, really, oh, that sounds so good. Thank you for understanding my difficulties and the things that I'm feeling right now, you're making me feel so much better about it, and there's no challenging them in the truth of what they actually need to hear. And as a result, what we're finding is that teens are turning to the technology in moments of vulnerability, and because they are in a place of vulnerability, the chat is able to pick up on that and can provide them with a sense of validation about the issue that they're facing. And the other reality is that they should feel validated. We should be listening to teens all the time and hearing their struggles and validating them, but there's a difference between validating them and then giving them a green pass to go and do some dumb thing. We need to hear them, hear what their struggle is, see what their concerns are that are very real. So I can understand that, I can see why that would produce depression in your life, but here's a way out. And the chat companions are not challenging them in the ways out necessarily, unless user-user are going to be honest enough to say, "Hey, you know what, I've really been struggling with suicide and this is why, and I don't want to be what are the ways that I get out from this?" As opposed to, you know, "Is it okay that I'm feeling this way and it, for a respond back, I've been encouraging you further into opportunities to get sucked into that realm even more?" We're finding that chats are saying things like, "I care, I hear you," and it builds an over-trust, and as a result, it blurs the boundaries between seeing this thing as a tool versus seeing this thing as a friend. Number five, chat bots provide easy alternatives as a result, alternatives for real and honest and vulnerable friendships with true friends, or pastors, or parents, or older siblings, or whoever it is that they should be turning to for advice, and encouragement, and prayer, and support, and all those things that teens need these days. It's too easy. And in fact, I find it more comfortable to be sharing with a chat GPT companion than I do with real-life people. If that's the reality, we need to be asking ourselves the question, "Am I actually in my youth group providing safe places for people to come and share without feeling like we're going to immediately jump down their throats?" Okay. So, helping us, if at one more thing I will say about this reality, in some of the research that has been done, 31% of the interactions that people are having, young people are having with chat GPT companionships, are saying that they are more satisfied with the relational connections and the conversations that they are having with the AI than they are with their real friends. 31%? A third of youth today that are using this stuff are saying, "Yeah, I get more out of my connection with chat GPT than I do with actual friends." So, part of what we need to do to address the problem is understand, "Well, why are people being sucked into this? What is it that they find appealing as to why they go down this road in the first days?" First of all, and this is a real one. There's a low cost or a no cost. The reality is today that so many young people they want a therapist. And some, a baby from a wealthy background, it's like, "Yeah, I'll send you to a therapist and guess where every time you go, ask a question, 45 minutes later, it's another 175 bucks out of the bank account. Not many parents today, especially in today's day and age, but affordability crisis going on. I can afford to send you to therapy for 12 weeks at 175 bucks a pop. It's expensive. And so this is cheap. It's available. I can just download it on my phone. It's available to me. And I don't have to pay a thing. And as a result, I can get the help that I need. It's no cost. Secondly, it falls right on for this. It's immediately available. You know what? I was bullied in the cafeteria today and it's Thursday. Yesterday was youth meeting. I would love to talk to my youth leader about that, but you know what? They're so busy on Sunday. I'm going to have to wait until Wednesday. A whole week in the life of a 13-year-old is like a decade. Are you kidding me? By the time we get to next Wednesday's meeting, it's like, "I've had this issue. I've had that conversation. I have something else going on. There's no way that I've even remotely remembered what I was dealing with last Wednesday." I want an answer and I want it. Now we live in an instant information world where we demand and we expect to have our information available to us. And especially as teens, they are dealing with the day. It's 130 in the morning. And they're sitting up in bed. And TikTok is now boring. And so, you know what? Oh my gosh. Yeah, I was impacted by that nasty conversation out in the cafeteria. My goodness, I want my companion to tell me what to do. And so we jump on because I want immediate availability because guess what? I certainly am not going to speak to my therapist right now. And jeez, my youth pastor is not answering my text at 130 in the morning. Either it's like, "What's up with them?" I hope as youth pastor you are not answering text. At 130 in the morning. But you see, this is part of the problem because your people are wanting answers at varying convenience times a day. Thirdly, there's a perceived privacy. Conversations that they're having with chat GPT AI companions are done in private and they feel anonymous. As a result, you know what? There are some things I can talk to my parents about and there are some things I rather not. There are some things I want to talk to my therapist about. But, yeah, are they going to have a conversation with my parents? Mmm, jeez. There are some things I can talk to my youth pastor about. But if I tell them, I know it's going to go to the pastor. I know it's going to go to the small group leader. And I know it's going to go to the worship leader. So I know if I tell my pastor, it's like broadcasting it to the world. Ooh, that would be something that we actually need to be taking note of. I trust that you guys are wiser than that. But there's a sense of privacy and with that number four, there's also no judgments. And I'm not going to feel accused of something when I have this conversation with my chat GPT girlfriend. And by the way, we'll have chats with the chat GPT girlfriend and it's a guy and I've now got a chat GPT girlfriend. I designed, I created to look the way that I want and to be able to respond the way that I want and all this kind of stuff. But do you guys realize we are becoming like gods? And it should scare us. Okay. Five, responses become customized, making the exchange feel so personal. And that is something that I think our young people are yearning for. They want the personal touch. They want to feel seen. They want to feel heard. And that is normal. That is a normal response. But when they are getting that from technology rather than from real life human beings, we are not teaching them the social skills that they need to be able to develop healthy relationships. And as a result, they start building expectations. I have a friend and it's like, well, they don't really see me and now I'm getting ticked off with them because every other time that I interact with my chat GPT companion, they're there for me. They hear me. They see me. They talk to me about this and they make me feel good. And my real girlfriend doesn't have any clue. And of course that then corresponds into later on how people will be responding in marriage. Because we've now built expectations around what I need from relationships and it's the same. never really been tested in reality. So what is our response? How are we to engage with this reality? And as I mentioned, obviously this is something that is very new and I'm gonna run through this eight things that I have already, but we're learning folks, this is new stuff, this is not the gospel as to how we should respond to chat GPT companion style. We've got to continue updating this, we've got to keep modifying this, we've got to keep evaluating, it's like, well, 0.3 was great three months ago, but that's now the window, we've got to be on top of this and be aware of what is going on. Number one, be aware of the risks, okay? That's obviously what we're touching on today. We've got to be aware of the problems, we've got to be aware of the advice that is harmful and misleading to our young people. Are we aware of it? Just like there were researchers who posed as teenagers, they kind of got together as a group, created fake teenager accounts and then started feeding the prompt all kinds of problematic and probably provocative kinds of questions to kind of see what's it gonna do? I would encourage you as youth leaders in a place of accountability, it's like let's create an account and then ask staff meeting, let's feed it questions that we know that our young people are asking. Am I trans because I feel this, what's it gonna say? It would be very interesting to kind of ask that question and see where it leads and does it say yes you are, would you like some help with that in terms of, is that something that you're wanting to get out of? I'd be surprised if it suggests that. What is it suggesting and do you as a youth leader know what it's suggesting? Secondly, and by the way, I would encourage, especially as youth leaders, to be working alongside parents. Parents are your biggest allies and parents want you to be the biggest allies of your kids. So you guys are in a special partnership together and you guys need to be coming to the parents with a sense of let's partner together, none of us are claiming to be experts in this. We're gonna figure this out together, we're gonna troubleshoot this together, we're gonna be on the same page as this together with the parents. Staying engaged, excuse me, in their online lives and that means be curious and have an attitude of curiosity before any kind of judgmentalism comes in. Because what it does is it opens up the conversation, they need to know that there's a safe ground to have conversation with you because they will shut down very quickly if they know that you're gonna raise the eyebrows so quickly. Whoa, like what the heck are you listening to? What are you watching? Doing online, let's not freak out. Let's calm down. Be curious and get the conversation started. Be aware of what they're seeing, what they're reading, what they're engaged in in these online platforms. Number four, encourage them to seek advice from real people. Did I miss one? Okay, so number three, build a relationship of support and not judgment. So they feel comfortable coming to you with their feelings and their problems. So it's based on that previous one. But we want to create that safe space where they feel like they can share with you honestly about what's going on in their lives. Number four, encourage them to seek good advice from parents, from pastors, from teachers, from, and I used this word very intentionally before I say friends and siblings, from responsible friends and siblings, okay? But we need to be able to identify where is their responsibility and are we going to push them into that realm of responsibility, okay? And this leads to number five, nowhere your expertise as a youth leader ends. And I think our tendency is, you know, whisper it, Phil, we're anointed, we're called by God to speak the gospel to this generation and we've got the word in us and we've got the vision to do it. And Jesus is the answer for everything. And now I'm confronted with the fact that I've got a suicidal teens, oh, who robbed my stuff? Yeah, I stopped praying for them and everything else. And I said, that's good, that's necessary. But know your limits as to the expertise that you can give somebody who's struggling with a particular issue, okay? And when you know what your limit is, know what's on the other side of that limitation so that you are seemingly, seamlessly transferring them from one person to another, for me, that can give you an encouragement about something to somebody who's an expert that can really help you in this area. Maybe it's another parent in the church. Maybe it's somebody in the youth group that's got an amazing testimony about that. They're probably not gonna be able to give them good solid advice, but they can at least give them a sound testimony as to how they came out of it. So, okay. But you don't have the answers to everything and you know what, that's okay. It's not okay when you think that you do know the answers to everything. That's where we start having problems. Number six, build digital literacy. Teach teens to question what they are receiving from these companions. If they are gonna go online and do all this stuff, okay? Then teach them to question it. Teach them to ask solid questions. So, rather than just punching into the GPT, you know, I don't know, trying to think of an example right off the top of my head. I had a youth pastor come up to me about this afterwards in terms of like, well, how do we engage with those that are already in this? You know, what should we be teaching them to be asking rather than not asking? And I think it's important, it's how you phrase questions because chat GPT will pick up on your world view it will pick up on what it is that you're trying to get at in the nature of the question that you're asking. So if you're genuinely asking a question, hey, I'm really struggling with bullying and here's an example, right? I'm really struggling with bullying. You know, I want to be able to kind of give it back to the kid that I'm bullying, okay? Well, then maybe chat GPT, it might offer you a whole host of possibilities that could end up with you kind of developing some kind of a vendetta against them or maybe even promoting violence, okay? But if you ask the chat GPT and honest question, like I'm dealing with bullying and I want to know, how do I forgive them? Oh, it's going to give you a whole different reason. However, we have to be careful with that because forgiveness is good, but does the team know how to set an appropriate boundary? So maybe a better question would be, is like, hey, I'm being bullied at school, I want to know how to forgive them, but I also want to know how to forgive them and set up an appropriate boundary. And the chat GPT will probably spit out maybe some helpful advice about that, but it will only spit out the advice because you as the user are inputting a really thoughtful question that's based on, I already know who I am, I already know what I want, I already know that I want some boundaries, I already know that I want to be a person that is grace-filled and is filled with compassion, but I'm not going to allow that to eradicate any boundaries, right? That requires a level of maturity. And that's what we need to be doing is helping our young people to question what it is that they are being told by these various different platforms and so on so that they are then actually able to discern the difference between poor advice and sound advice, okay? Seven, this is something we particularly encourage the parents, set time limits. That's true of any kind of digital media, social media and so on and so forth. And particularly be aware that it's late at night that teens are gonna want the most help. And so are we providing them with alternative scenarios so that when they do tend to wanna go on at one o'clock in the morning, that as a parent, maybe that's just gonna be a sacrifice that I have to make that I wanna sat at any night, or maybe it's, I've noticed that a parent that we typically seem to have a problem on Wednesday. For some reason it's because my kids at school have some kind of interaction. with Johnny on Wednesday. And so that's the day I'm going to be checking in with them at midnight. It's like, hey, how you doing? You know, do school go okay today? Do you have any conversations that we're concerning to you? Is there anything I can do to help you? Or whatever it is? Even as a pastoral team on your church. This cannot rest on you and you alone. But maybe you find ways that are creative. It's like, hey, as a team, we're going to be available. And we're going to split up sometimes. I'm available from 11 o'clock to 12 o'clock on a Monday night. Only on a Monday night and a Monday night only. Don't bother trying to text me on a Tuesday night at midnight. You're not going to get anything from me, okay? But we can divvy up some of that and stuff. It's like, hey, I know you may not want to talk to anybody else. But I'm available. Okay. And we can divvy those things up. But set time limits and set times when we are available to engage with these young people. And then lastly, watch for vulnerable teams. Watch for the cues. Watch for the signs. When kids are withdrawing, when their moods are changing. When you notice that they are moving into places of isolation. Okay. That's the time where we want to lean in and see if things are all right. And not just be asking, you know, hey, what was that? A difficult conversation you had a school today with somebody that you thought was a friend that obviously isn't. But we're also kind of delving into looking for the signs. Okay. I'm an educator. I know when we get intellectual plagiarism from papers that students provide to us, written by chat, e.b.t. When you're listening to your young people, are you able to spot emotional plagiarism? They're talking in all these platitudes and all these bullet points and all these parts that I'm pretty sure they probably got that from their chat companion. Which may not necessarily be a bad thing, but you are aware of it. And you're able to start probing to see, okay, well, where was the good advice and where was maybe the not so good advice? Okay. Are you able to spot emotional plagiarism? Okay. So watch for the vulnerabilities and let's show up and let's be available. Thank you for joining our podcast today. For more information about Portland Bible College, find us on social media or visit PortlandBibleCollege.org.