Jason Scharf, 44, isn’t your typical 21st-century parent. In an age of iPad babies, he’s “dropped the hammer” on social media, banning TikTok and YouTube entirely; he says Roblox, which lets kids make online games, is likely next to go. Instead, he insists on raising his three kids—who are 7, 10, and 12—in a way that equips them for the real world.
So when his eldest turned 9, he took him right to the range to learn how to shoot a bow and arrow.
But his son ran into a problem. Despite hours of after-school lessons in their neighborhood of Austin, Texas, and ample tutoring from his father, he could never get a handle on the complicated vocabulary of the shooting range. Until one day, around 2023, Scharf finally tried a technique that the loincloth-clad archers of old never would’ve dreamed of.
“I literally just threw it into Chat and said: Can you explain ‘The range is hot’ to a 9-year-old?” said Scharf, who’s a biotech professional. “It worked like a charm. All of a sudden, he got it.” They moved onto the next phrase he’d had trouble with.
Soon, Scharf’s son knew all about the terminology he needed to understand—plus the mechanics of a long bow, and what separates it from a recurve. Now, three years later, artificial intelligence has taken over his family’s life—and nothing feels impossible.
