The Need for Gravity in the Age of AI

Forging Their Mettle in a Weightless World

When I was 18, I fractured my foot chopping wood for a campfire. My bones were strong enough for walking, but not for anything more.

Then came the cast for six weeks. I couldn’t put any weight on the leg. The bone healed, but the muscles dissolved, having nothing to push against. When the cast came off, it was so weak that I could barely stand.

The support for the bones created another problem.

When I became a psychiatrist, this old memory made new sense.

I work with teenagers and their parents in Toronto. Emergency room, inpatient unit, outpatient clinic. I sit with families at their lowest — when a child has thought of ending their life, or has already tried.

The parents are often confused. From their perspective, they had done everything right. Having struggled themselves, they tried to remove every obstacle from the kids’ path. They stayed up helping with homework to make sure the child has a future. They remembered every friend the kids made to protect them from harmful influences and disappointment. Many of the parents I see are immigrants who survived war, poverty, and upheaval. They cannot understand how a child raised in safety could break.

But break they did. Not from a threat to their lives — from a disappointing grade, a breakup, a friend’s betrayal. Ordinary loads that a previous generation passed by without thinking.

Same pattern as my foot. Bone that was never loaded breaks. Unused muscles dissolve. A child without challenges cannot deal with life.

Gravity builds structure. Bones need it. Muscles need it. Character needs it. An astronaut’s skeleton dissolves within weeks in weightless space.

But gravity is hard. It makes us sweat, so we build machines to carry the load. We have been doing this for two million years — fire, shelter, engines, phones — each one removing a friction we no longer wanted to bear.

AI

One of my patients, a thirteen-year-old, got caught using ChatGPT to write his English essay. He doesn’t understand why struggle - a machine could do it better in seconds. His mother was upset with her son for cheating and with the school for failing him.

Here is what is wrong. When a student wrestles with an idea — re-reads, fails, tries again — the brain develops. The product isn’t learning – the struggle is. When AI hands them the answer, it removes the load.

But AI did not start this. Parents have been removing loads for twenty years. Every frustration intercepted and smoothed. Every boredom filled before it could be felt.
AI is just the latest weapon against gravity.

I keep coming back to one image.
A toddler on the stairs. They climb, and for a second they lose their balance, wobbling. You are right behind, only a second to act. That second is where development happens. The brain scrambles, trying to find balance. It fires frantically, correcting the body, building circuitry. Catch too soon — they never learn balance. Too late — they get hurt and never try again.

I call this the Wobble. Gravity applied to a developing brain.

We have been removing it — systematically, lovingly — for generations. We call it good parenting. And now we are confused that the bones are soft.

Welcome. Let’s find the gravity.