By Jesse Adams, SPECIAL TO THE ADVANCE
I’ve finally had enough. With a career in technology that spans almost 25 years, I’m ready to retreat to a simple lifestyle rooted in nature, magic, creativity, and exploration. I am beyond grateful for where I have landed and what I’ve become; please don’t get me wrong here. Since starting my career automating mundane, manual tasks with Perl scripts alongside my good friend Rick around 2002, I’ve been successful and fortunate. This age of AI, however, has left a bad taste in my mouth. Yes, it is an amazing advancement in the world of technology, but as with anything else, it should be used in moderation. Too much of anything will always lead to undesirable consequences.
In the case of AI, I feel as though we are slowly losing the very things that make us human. We are losing things that make us us. While I do appreciate the ability to use an agentic, AI-powered coding assistant to write a variation of code or a script I’ve already written hundreds of times before, I’m sick of watching AI replace more creative areas such as music, art, and everyday conversations. I would not be surprised if a significant percentage of people out there spend more time conversing with a large language model than they do living human beings. Even though I am introverted and somewhat of a recluse, I recognize that we are a social species, and I find this potential reality alarming.
So how does one retreat to nature and embrace a more simple life? It’s easy: Disconnect! Globally, the average person spends roughly 4 to 5 hours a day specifically on their smartphone. If you add in total screen time (including computers, TVs, and tablets), this number increases to almost 7 hours a day. Even more alarming, Gen Z (ages 13–28) averages closer to 7 to 9 hours per day on phones and digital devices. So the answer to break this cycle is to stop doing this and disconnect. While it may sound simple, it is actually a really hard thing to do.
While humanity as a species isn’t strictly addicted in a clinical or medical sense, modern software design directly undermines human self-regulation, making healthy boundaries difficult for people to maintain. This claim is grounded in substantial empirical research across behavioral psychology, neuroscience, and human-computer interaction (HCI). The Fogg Behavior Model states that behavior occurs when Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt all happen at the same time. Modern platforms streamline “Ability” (removing all effort via infinite scroll, single-click reactions, auto-play, etc.) and generate algorithmic “Prompts” at the precise moment a user’s attention starts to drift away.
B.F. Skinner’s research around “Operant Conditioning” illustrates that when rewards are delivered after an unpredictable number of responses, they produce the highest rates of habit formation and the strongest resistance to stop the behavior. Kent C. Berridge’s work established that dopamine drives wanting (anticipation/seeking) rather than liking (pleasure). Social media notifications, feeds, and refresh mechanisms mimic the exact architecture of slot machines. The uncertainty of what you will see next releases a spike of dopamine before you even commit to checking, thus overriding conscious choice and causing you to continue.
Furthermore, a study published in 2022 evaluated cognitive and behavioral self-control deficits in users with “highly problematic” smartphone use. The research found that frequent device interactions led to very poor self-regulation. This was linked to the unpredictable reward loops (via messages, feeds, and alerts) generating a high frequency of cognitive interruptions that disrupt our sustained attention networks in the prefrontal cortex.
So what am I personally doing about it? I am disconnecting—first by trading in my fancy Pixel 8 Pro smartphone for an old-school TCL FLIP 4, only capable of phone calls and text messages. For GPS and travel navigation I’ll be using my Garmin Montana 710. I’ll be using my Kindle Colorsoft for reading books and listening to audio books. I am completely losing access to a high resolution camera, as my phone only comes with a 5 megapixel one.
If I need to send an email, look something up on the internet, or look at social media, it will simply have to wait until I’m on a computer. I am hoping to limit my computer time to Monday through Friday with a hard 5 p.m. cap at the end of the week.
With all my extra distraction-free time, I plan on being a more present father and husband, spending more time with my wife, family and kids. I also plan on doing more of the crafts I enjoy such as knitting, wood carving, skinning, tanning hides/furs, and leatherworking. I will also be exploring the magical, spiritual, and enchanted world of nature in our backyard and other areas both in Virginia and all around the world.
I know it’s not going to be an easy transition, and will come with a lot of sacrifice. I also know that in the long run, I will be much better for it. If you are a friend reading this and want to get in touch with me, please either call (best), send a simple text message (good), send an email (fine), or send a hand-written letter (slow, but preferred).
Also, by the way—F*ck AI.
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Jesse Adams is an environmental steward and conservationist who lives in Stafford County, Virginia with his wife and two young kids. He is an aspiring, self-taught wetlands and soil citizen scientist and has been protecting waterways for more than a decade. He is the Founder and President of Waterway Cleanups, a 501c3 non-profit organization in Stafford County with a mission to protect our local waterways, and he serves as the chairman of the Agricultural and Land Conservation Committee for Stafford County. He recently launched an online publication platform for Northern Virginia residents called Cultivate NoVA where you can find an earlier version of this essay.
Thanks to Jesse Adams for writing this timely article on AI, including the B. F. Skinner reference to 'habit formation and the strongest resistance to stop the behavior' as well as Kent C. Berridge's work that established 'dopamine drives wanting'. Those words reminded me that Fredericksburg City Public Schools (FCPS) is misusing its students in a classic B.F. Skinner 'operant conditioning' experiment as guinea pigs. The ones who signed the 'Alongside' contract and are tolerating the use of this 'speculative' app drank the snake oil of the 'Alongside' AI mental health app 'marketing' and are selling out the privacy and mental health status of generations of students attending FCPS.
FCPS uses the Alongside AI mental health app beginning with its 4th graders. There is no peer-reviewed research behind this program or any indication that this is EBP/Evidence-Based Practice. We city residents and children's advocates have got to voice more concern that the FCPS personnel who authorized this expenditure are out of touch/causing harm to a class of children who use it in believing the hogwash Alongside marketing that this 'experiment' on our students is 'the FCPS way'.
These staff and the school board members, if involved in the decision, have got to be held accountable. Apparently, they really believe they are providing 24/7 mental health and skill-building support to students and to catch kids who might be slipping through the cracks.
Nope. Not true.
Fredericksburg City Public Schools is the ONLY school system in Virginia publicly documented as using the 'Alongside' mental health and skill-building app. The other school systems know better. They have safeguards in place in their school board policies on only using vendors that have peer-reviewed scientific evidence in legit journals that a product works. 'Alongside' does not have this scientific rigor.
What FCPS is doing to its students who have not been opted out by their parents is documenting a child's feelings in a 'data mining' attempt to teach its AI. Many parents do not fully realize the extent of data collection or the legal limits of parental control when their children use digital mental health platforms like 'Alongside'.
Platforms like 'Alongside' collect child-inputted information, including names, contact details, journal or chat entries, device information, and specific care or survey responses.
Under 'Alongside' Terms of Use, users, the FCPS (and parents?) grant the company a "worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license" to access and use student user data, beginning with a FCPS 4th grader's mind, to improve their business company's services, which explicitly includes training artificial intelligence models.
When the 'Alongside' app is accessed through Fredericksburg City PS, the educational institution—not the parent—often holds primary ownership and oversight of the student record data under frameworks like FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act).
Data can be shared with service providers handling cloud infrastructure, communications, analytics (such as PostHog), and legal or school authorities. While analytics tools claim to strip out direct free-text notes or names in certain pipelines, third-party vendor access remains a core privacy concern.
If a Fred City PS student flags high-risk content (such as thoughts of self-harm on assessments like the YP-CORE), the app links the user ID to their name and email to trigger real-time alerts and dashboard visibility for school wellness staff and counselors. Parents may not realize that school staff see these crisis notifications rather than through the family.
Under federal rules like the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), app developers require verifiable parental or school consent for users under age 13. However, research shows that many parents do not read or fully comprehend dense privacy policies or how data is retained and repurposed.
More Fred City PS parents need to opt out of 'Alongside' so the FCPS leadership and staff wake up that this app is not EBP/Evidence-Based Practice.
FCPS purchased the 'Alongside' app for $10,000 using a portion of a $15 million federal mental health grant awarded to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) in 2023, which Fredericksburg received as one of eight selected school divisions.
We residents, taxpayers, child advocates need to ask who the staff are behind this decision to purchase the 'Alongside' mental health app. Not one of them seemed to know that they should have looked into peer-reviewed research to see that 'Alongside' does not make the cut.
It's more than concerning that Fred City PS initially enrolled ALL students automatically unless parents opted out. Informed, vigilant families in Fred City PS took advantage of the opt-out option. Do you know what happens to their opt-out student, while their peers are playing with their 'Kiwi the Llama' chat companion, and in a classic 'operant conditioning' scenario, building dependence on this engagement?
The wise parents' children have to wait it out; no instructional time happens during the "Kiwi the Llama' chats. Some childhood memory, sitting at a desk, and watching peers 'play' on a device, and later learning that their peers are becoming addicted to an app.
Anyone remember 'the panic' of 'subliminal messaging' during the late 1950s and 1960s. The talk that a movie frame flashes too quickly for the conscious brain to register, but it is captured by the subconscious mind? Well now, we have a much deeper version going on in Fred City PS with precious time set aside during the instructional day to be 'Alongside' AI friend Kiwi the Llama for chats during school hours.
Since when, has any school system in Virginia had the luxury to shut down instructional time in an entire system so their students can engage with a slick marketing/snake oil device? Only in Fredericksburg City Public Schools, VA.
Fred City Public Schools is wrong to use this mental health app. All the FCPS staff had to do, rather than sell out our students' privacy is look to Fairfax Co PS, who have the experienced staff, teams of legal counsel, and school board policies in place that they would NOT have given this AI mental health app the time of day: 'Alongside' with Kiwi the Llama is NOT EBP/Evidence-Based Practice. NO OTHER SCHOOL SYSTEM IN VIRGINIA USES IT.
Here is how Fairfax Co PS protects its students' privacy while supporting their mental health needs:
Hazel Health: Offers free, confidential virtual teletherapy and mental health services for high school and middle school students via live video sessions from home or school (expanded to middle schools starting July 1, 2026).
School-Based Staff: Provides daily crisis intervention, consultation, and short-term support through in-school school counselors, social workers, and psychologists.
Fairfax County Community Services Board (CSB): Partners with FCPS to run School-Based Teams, the Student Assistance Program (SAP) for substance use and behavioral health screenings, and outpatient therapists in select schools.
Healthy Minds Fairfax: Connects families to short-term behavioral health services (including free short-term counseling sessions).
Parent Resource Center: Offers free educational workshops and mental health support guides for parents.
Fredericksburg City PS has lost its way with contracting with 'Alongside' AI mental health app. No wonder parents are leaving the system for homeschool, private/parochial schooling. Repeat: 'Alongside' app with its AI friend Kiwi the Llama has NO scientific evidence by peer-reviewed legit journals/research on a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT). Instead a study relied on pre-post SELF-REPORTED measures WITHOUT a traditional CONTROL GROUP. It used a nonrandomized pilot evaluation. Broader, LONG-TERM RANDOMIZED trials are still needed to establish definitive causal efficacy.
Until that happens, the students in Fred City PS should not be used as guinea pigs to train AI models. Fred City PS should stop using up instructional time with 'Alongside' AI Kiwi the Llama. Restore instructional time to those students who have informed, involved parents looking out for them and opted them out of this quackery.