Don't Just Trust It: A Teen's Guide to Thinking Clearly About AI

Your AI chatbot sounds sure of itself. That's the problem.

It can explain a hard concept in seconds, help you get unstuck on homework, and feel like it actually gets you — right up until it's confidently, fluently wrong, and you have no way to tell.

Don't Just Trust It isn't a book about being afraid of AI. It's a book about actually thinking your way through it.

Most teens have been taught to check a source — is this person credible, is this website legit. But an AI chatbot doesn't have a source you can check. No author, no outlet, no byline. The old media-literacy checklist breaks the moment you need it most.

This book replaces it with one habit that actually works: not "who's behind this," but "who can confirm this." A practical, four-step routine you can run in under a minute, every time an AI tells you something that matters.

Inside, you'll learn:

• Why AI "hallucinates" facts in the exact same confident tone it uses for the truth
• Why an AI agreeing with you is never proof you're right
• The real line between using AI for homework and letting it think for you
• What actually happens to everything you type into a chatbot — and the privacy gap that applies specifically to teens
• How to spot an AI-faked photo, video, or voice clip before you believe or share it
• A side-by-side look at how Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Character.AI actually perform on independent safety testing — not marketing claims
• A repeatable method for checking any AI claim, in under a minute

Written for teens who use AI every day, and for teens who haven't started yet — because the earlier this habit forms, the better it works.

Includes a glossary, a full index, and citations you can check yourself.