AI, Technology, and SEL: How Can We Support Digital Awareness?

Key Points

• From AI to social media, new and existing technologies are an increasing part of young people’s lives, both inside and outside of the classroom.
• While there is great promise in these technologies, there are also significant perils, as reflected in calls for setting limits and even outright bans.
• Social and emotional learning (SEL) has a key role to play, offering a powerful means to leverage these technologies in ways that can transform how students think about learning, media, and their role in society.

Are AI and technology a benefit to education, or a bane?

Today’s students spend much of their time online, especially on social media, and they are increasingly turning to AI to do school work. But they’re also using the internet to do research, hear a broad range of perspectives, and connect with friends. Teachers, with training and support, can use AI-infused technology carefully and productively to streamline their work, power up their lessons, and expand their skills so they can focus on their students.

So, while there is great promise in these technologies, there are also significant perils, as many have recognized. Parents and politicians have demanded a moratorium on AI in schools and limits on social media use, calling on companies to account for the impact of their products. Even AI industry leaders have recently called for a slowdown in the development of these tools.

At CASEL, we hear these cautions, but also believe bans and punishments can’t be the final answer. After all, what is the best way to change behavior? Should we force change through prohibition, or inspire new attitudes and beliefs that reshape that behavior? Most likely, we need both. Social and emotional learning (SEL) has a key role to play, offering a powerful means to leverage these technologies in ways that can transform how students think about learning, media, and their role in society.

What Do We Want in Classrooms and Schools?

Before we can consider what we want technology to do in classrooms, we need to take a step back and ask a more basic question: What do we want students to experience in the classroom? The answer is two-fold:

●        We want students to experience a sense of belonging and engagement. To be ready to learn and thrive socially and emotionally, students must feel they are part of a community where they are known, cared for, and accepted.

●        We want them to develop the kinds of skills and mindsets they’ll draw on for the rest of their lives. Things like self-awareness, collaboration, empathy, agency, efficacy, creativity, and critical thinking are essential to students’ future readiness and postsecondary success.

There’s already been plenty of discussion about how social media and screen time impact young people and how those impacts come into the classroom. Bullying, the loss of social skills, distraction and disruption, cognitive overload, and disruption have all been traced to these technologies.

AI raises similar concerns, as students face the temptation of shortcuts that rob them of the experience of meaningful struggle and learning.

For technology to play a role in the classroom, it must at the very least not interfere with positive outcomes; at best, it will support them. As educators, we need to be very deliberate about how we use these technologies and how we prepare our students to use them. We must empower them to make smart, responsible decisions about their wide-ranging uses, think carefully about their own values, and consider the impact of their actions on both themselves and others.

That’s where SEL comes in. 

A Key Role for SEL

We already know SEL is fundamental to learning and development. It’s equally central to preparing students to benefit from current and ever-evolving technologies. To that end, we’ve outlined how each of the fundamental SEL skills in the CASEL’s wheel (the “CASEL 5”) can play a role in helping students make the most of technology and avoid its pitfalls:

1. Self-Awareness

Leading yourself in a digital world

Recognizing your emotions, values, and blind spots as you interact with AI and technology—and letting your own identity, not an algorithm, define you.

2. Self-Management 

Staying regulated in a fast-moving reality

Managing habits and goals as technology accelerates the pace—exercising agency over when and how to use technology, as a co-pilot rather than a replacement.

3. Social Awareness

Reading the room and the system

Understanding others’ experiences and cultural contexts, including the ways technology elevates some voices and overlooks others.

4. Responsible Decision-Making 

Exercising curiosity, caution, and care

Making thoughtful, ethical choices about using technology—asking how it works, who it serves, what data it draws from, and what its impact might be.

5. Relationship Skills 

Maintaining human connection

Building trust and collaborating across differences—setting shared norms for technology use and practicing transparency with digital barriers exist.

A First Step in Our Tech Journey

There’s a long way to go in developing the thinking about the ever-shifting landscape of tech in education, but the CASEL 5 offer a powerful first step on that journey. There are other resources as well. Common Sense Education worked with us a few years ago to share some thought-provoking ideas about the connection between SEL and technology. It’s a great starting point for those who want to learn more.  

A ban on technology may feel like action, but motion without movement isn’t just exhausting; it’s ineffective. We know social media and AI-infused technology aren’t going anywhere. And we know there are real dangers. This complexity demands a different frame centered on how we manage to live and thrive within our current ecosystem. SEL is the place to start.  

Related Posts

• Co-Authoring School Policy for AI: How to Use SEL to Navigate Digital Citizenship
• Join the Conversation: What’s Being Said About AI in Education and SEL’s Role Alongside it?
• How AI-Powered Tools Can Enhance Our Human-Centered Work

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