Young Adult · Personal Growth
Irreplaceable
Who You Are Becoming in a World of Algorithms
by May Lee
This is not a book about what’s wrong with young people. It’s an honest, warm guide to growing up human while AI changes everything around you.
Publishing 20 November 2026
About the book
Ethan knows the answer. His phone is four seconds away. Priya takes fourteen photos to hold on to a forty-second moment. Lin stops eating lunch, and nobody notices.
Today’s teenagers are growing up with feeds that seem to know their mood, scoreboards that never switch off, and AI that can finish their homework before they’ve finished reading the question. What they rarely get is someone willing to sit down with them and talk honestly about what all of it means.
Drawing on twenty-five years of working with young people, and on life with her own two children, educator May Lee does exactly that. Through the stories of twelve students, Irreplaceable explores attention, social media, friendship, body image, the pressure to perform, identity and values, and keeps coming back to one quiet truth: the things that make us human are the things no machine can replace.
Written for readers aged 12 to 16, with passages that speak directly to parents, and illustrated by students themselves, this is a book to read on your own or together.
Book details
About the author
May Lee
May Lee
Founder, Edtivate Learning · Educator · Author
May Lee is the founder of Edtivate Learning, where she teaches the thinking skills that exam grades do not measure. She has taught for more than 25 years, the middle decade of them on weekends while she worked at Estée Lauder, LVMH, an edtech company, and finally at Persol, where she delivered training solutions and supported outplacement. Hearing what employers wanted in new hires, and what people said when their roles disappeared, convinced her that the test schools prepare children for is not the one that matters most. She resigned and opened her own centre.
She writes and speaks on AI, education and what stays human, most recently on CNA938 in 2026. Irreplaceable is her first book, written for readers aged 12 to 16 and the parents reading over their shoulder, illustrated by her own pupils.
May lives in Singapore with her husband and their two children.