Ever wonder what happens when toddlers grow up binge-watching AI-generated garbage on YouTube? Child development researchers are raising red flags now.

Their concern? If a kid's neural pathways get wired by endless streams of synthetic content, their grasp on what's actually real versus fabricated could get seriously warped. We're talking about a generation whose baseline understanding of reality might be fundamentally different—and not in a good way.

The stakes are higher than most people realize. Early childhood is when brains build their foundational models of how the world works. Flood that critical period with algorithmically-generated nonsense, and you're essentially teaching developing minds that fake is the new normal.