A billion people use AI every month. Almost nobody can direct it well — and the ones who can are already worth more. On Makery, kids aged 10–18 learn to direct AI young, by making games they love, and carry the head start for life. Here's the honest case, number by number.
Usage went straight up. The skill to steer it stayed flat. That gap is the clearest opportunity of your child's generation.
A billion users, no standard way to prove the skill, and a real premium for the few who have it. That's not a hole in the story — it's the head start waiting for a kid who starts now.
Not a projection — measured on over a billion real job postings, and it has grown every year it's been measured. Depth pays more than dabbling.
The same tool raises one person and quietly lowers another. Both findings are rigorous — they describe two different ways of using the same machine, and the line between them is one skill: directing it, or handing it your thinking.
When you decide what you want, the machine drafts, and you judge what comes back, AI raises your control and confidence. That's the pattern behind the 62% premium and the 4× productivity number.
The trick is staying in charge: you know what you want before the model speaks, and you reject what misses it. That's a skill — and skills are learnable young.
PwC · Lightcast · task-complexity studiesMIT Media Lab put writers under EEG: those who let the model do the thinking showed lower engagement — and later did worse without AI than people who'd never used it. They named it cognitive debt.
A 666-person study links heavy passive use to weaker critical thinking. And when everyone runs ideas through the same model, everyone starts sounding the same.
MIT Media Lab · Gerlich 2025 · Doshi & Hauser 2024A billion people are handing the machine their thinking.
The head start goes to the kids who keep theirs.
Directing AI is really six habits of clear thinking. On Makery, your child grows every one of them by making games they actually want to make — never a worksheet, never a fake score.
A game with a fox that jumps and grabs coins. To make it good, they have to say exactly what they mean, judge what the AI gives back, and fix what's wrong — the same habits that pay off for life. It just feels like play.
Bigger builds, and a record of how they actually work: what they asked for, what they rejected, what they changed and why. That record is the closest thing there is to proof of the skill everyone's hiring for — started young.
Say exactly what you want, so you get it.
Break big into small, then keep improving.
Imagine something of your own, first.
Judge the result — don't trust it blindly.
Notice how you think and learn.
Direct the tool; own the result.
We keep this honest. The wage premiums are measured on what employers advertise — strong evidence, but not a promise of anyone's paycheck. Makery makes no job or income guarantees, least of all for kids. What we promise is real: your child learns to direct AI by making things they're proud of, and keeps a record of how they think while they do it.
It takes five minutes to make a first game. No card, ages 10–18, and nothing goes public until you say yes. Your child directs the AI in plain words — and starts building the habit that will matter most.
Start free — no cardHow a plain-words prompt becomes a real game, how the six values grow with every build, and how the whole thing stays safe by design — with a parent in the loop from day one.
See how it worksSources · Statista · Microsoft · McKinsey · Gartner · PwC AI Jobs Barometer 2025/2026 · Lightcast · Pew Research · MIT Media Lab · Gerlich 2025 · Doshi & Hauser 2024. Premiums are measured on advertised job postings; Makery makes no income or job-outcome promises. More reading on the Recipes blog.