Children and AI: The Rules That Matter When the Technology Keeps Changing

Insights / AI & Content Systems Children and AI: The Rules That Matter When the Technology Keeps Changing A practical framework for privacy, verification, relational AI, schoolwork, consent and family communication. Olena Soinikova · Research & field notes · 8 September 2026 On this page Age limits Privacy and identity Fluency and reliability Relational AI The disclosure rule Learning and schoolwork Creation and consent What AI displaces Ten family rules The parent’s role Sources In 2025, I wrote about children and AI mainly as a digital literacy problem. Children needed to understand that AI could make mistakes, that algorithms influenced what they saw, and that personal information required protection. I would write that article differently in September 2026.   The technology has moved from recommendation systems and occasional chatbot use towards something more personal. Generative AI can hold a long conversation, remember context, create realistic images, imitate voices and respond to a child’s worries in language that sounds attentive and reassuring.   The evidence around children has moved as well.   UNICEF updated its Guidance on AI and Children to Version 3.0 in December 2025. The framework now explicitly addresses AI companions, children’s well-being and AI-generated sexual abuse material alongside established concerns about safety, privacy, transparency and discrimination.   In June 2026, UNICEF published separate recommendations on AI chatbots and companions. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has since reported research involving 1,950 children aged 10–17 and their experiences with AI assistants and companions.   Working with AI professionally has made one thing unexpectedly clear to me at home. Adults tend to explain the system. Children need to know what to do at the moment when the system gives them something convincing, personal or uncomfortable.   That has changed the way I think about AI safety rules for children. The rules need to survive the next software update. Age limits tell parents something important, but not everything My earlier article used a simple formulation: children under 13 should use AI with adult supervision. I would remove it now. There is no universal minimum age for “AI”. There are age conditions for particular services, in particular countries, under particular account arrangements. OpenAI’s current European Terms, for example, require users to be at least 13 or the minimum age required in their country to consent to use the service. A user under 18 needs permission from a parent or legal guardian. OpenAI also states that ChatGPT is not intended for children under 13; in an educational context involving children below that age, the actual interaction with ChatGPT must be conducted by an adult. Other platforms have their own rules. I do not think there is a clean universal answer to the age question. Terms of service can establish when an account may be used. They cannot tell a parent when a particular child is ready to recognise persuasion, protect somebody else’s privacy or notice when a chatbot is becoming too important. That is why I would check the current rules of a service before a child starts using it rather than put a permanent platform age table on the family fridge. The family principle has a longer useful life: before starting a new AI service, check whether it is appropriate and available for that child’s age and account. Privacy becomes harder to see inside a conversation Children usually understand that a password is private. A home address is also relatively easy to classify.   Conversational AI makes privacy less obvious.   A child can mention the name of a school, describe an argument with a friend, explain where the family is going at the weekend, discuss something about their health or upload a photograph to ask a seemingly harmless question.   None of these interactions feels like filling in a database. That is precisely why the distinction matters.   UNICEF’s child-centred AI framework treats children’s data and privacy as a specific requirement, rather than something that can be left to general digital literacy. For families, I think the practical boundary should include information about other people as well.   There is another reason for extending the rule beyond names and passwords. Generative systems can do something with the material they receive.   A photograph can be altered. A voice can be imitated. A classmate can be placed into an image they never agreed to appear in.   UNICEF reported in February 2026 that, across research covering 11 countries, at least 1.2 million children aged 12–17 said their images had been manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes during the previous year.   That number changes the conversation about children’s images. Consent is no longer an abstract digital citizenship lesson.   A child who understands “ask before using another person’s face or voice” has a rule that works across image generators, video tools and whatever arrives next. Fluency still creates a reliability problem The older version of my article compared AI with a very smart parrot. I still think the metaphor can work with a younger child, although I would not build the adult explanation around it.   The more useful concept is fluency. Generative AI can produce a wrong answer in exactly the tone in which it produces a correct one. It can invent a source, misstate a historical fact or confidently explain something it has misunderstood.   Children therefore need a verification habit before they need a technical explanation of hallucinations.   What needs checking depends on consequence. An idea for a fictional monster can remain an idea. A quotation for homework needs a source. Health information or something that could materially affect another person requires a much higher level of caution.   This is closer to the kind of AI literacy I want a child to develop: not permanent suspicion, but judgement about when an answer needs another source or another person. Relational AI changes the conversation at home This is the part I would add most substantially to the original article.   In 2026, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner published research based on 1,950 children aged