Supporting educators and families with AI safety for children
Preparing Children for a Future Where AI is Everywhere
AI risks for young people include inappropriate AI-generated content, data collection, emotional reliance on chatbots, fake images and difficulty telling real from synthetic information, all while their critical thinking skills are still developing.
Child Safeguarding Online. Updated September 2026.
Table of Contents
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Thinking and learning
How AI can affect children’s thinking
Much of the education debate about AI centres on plagiarism and learning. Schools and families also need to consider how heavy AI use might affect the way children think.
When young people routinely rely on AI for instant answers, they get less practice at working things out for themselves, and less experience of sticking with a problem.
The research below mostly involves adults, so its effect on children is not yet proven. It is still a sensible basis for how schools set expectations about AI use.
Critical Thinking Atrophy
A 2025 Microsoft Research survey of 319 knowledge workers found that AI tools reduced the effort people put into critical thinking. Children who lean on AI for answers may get less practice analysing information independently during years when those skills are still forming.
The Risks of Over-Reliance
The same study found that people who trusted AI more did less critical thinking about its answers. Children, who are still learning to evaluate information, may be even more likely to accept what a chatbot tells them without checking.
Confidence Undermining
The study also linked lower self-confidence with greater reliance on AI. For children still building confidence in their own abilities, this could become a cycle where using AI makes them doubt themselves more.
Cognitive
Offloading
AI shifts effort from producing work to checking it. Adults may manage that trade-off, but children need practice across all kinds of thinking. Routinely handing over thinking tasks could leave them less prepared when they need to think things through alone.
Usage and adoption
Children’s rapid AI uptake
AI is now part of most children’s lives. Common Sense Media’s 2026 census found that 86% of 9 to 17-year-olds use AI, and nearly a quarter use it every day.
More than a third of young AI users have talked to a chatbot about their feelings or personal problems, and around one in six have come across inappropriate material. Over 4 in 10 say no parent or carer has ever talked to them about AI safety. AI companion apps and chatbots built into Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp make these conversations easy and private.
Content and safety
Synthetic risks to children
Generative AI creates new safeguarding challenges: convincing misinformation, fake images and video, and chatbots that can feel like a real friend.
AI is already being misused to create sexual images of children, including “nudify” apps that turn an ordinary photo into a fake nude, which are then used for bullying and sextortion. Schools should include AI-generated images in their child protection and anti-bullying policies, and treat them as seriously as real ones.