Explainer: Why a child-safe ChatGPT might not be enough

What is ‘ChatGPT for Teens’?

‘ChatGPT for teens; is a version of the popular chatbot from OpenAI, designed for children in the 13-17 years age group with stronger built-in protections. The additional protections are around self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, violence, dangerous activities, sexual content, graphic material, and risky challenges.

It also has break reminders and other cues intended to reduce excessive use and reinforce that the user is interacting with AI rather than a person. OpenAI has said “serious self-harm” user prompts would be flagged and reviewed by its full-time employees before parents with linked accounts are notified within an hour of the prompt.

The company said teen accounts would become the default for those who identified themselves as teenagers when they signed up, and others whom the firm itself identified as aged under 18.

A Pew Research Center survey in 2025 had said 59% of teenagers in the US use ChatGPT. OpenAI itself says nine out of 10 youngsters use ChatGPT to complete their assignments. More than 70% of teens in the US turn to AI chatbots for companionship, said a 2025 study by Common Sense Media.

What prompted OpenAI to launch this now?

The launch comes as legal pressure mounts on OpenAI to make its chatbot safe for youngsters to use. OpenAI has been trying to address growing concerns about AI’s impact on young people for the last couple of years. It has been regularly coming up with new guidelines on how its AI models should behave with users under the age of 18. But that hasn’t appeased parents or lawmakers.

A number of families in the US have sued OpenAI, alleging that their children were exposed to dangerous content by ChatGPT and engaged in self-harm or died by suicide as a result. In June, Florida became the first state in the US to sue OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman over claims that ChatGPT harmed children.

While proving these allegations would be an uphill battle, these could potentially cost OpenAI billions of dollars in damages and even derail its plans to go for a public listing.

Will this keep teenagers safe?

While it looks like a step in the right direction, there are still a lot of things to be worried about. First, will OpenAI’s automatic age-gating system really work? Creative workarounds by teens or simply using a VPN cannot be ruled out. Again, monitoring teen conversations comes with its own set of issues.

Critics say OpenAI’s safety playbook ends up creating a version for youngsters with guardrails while still encouraging use. This shifts the responsibility for any harm onto parents rather than the companies who created the roadway to them. Finally, that parents and teenagers need to link their ChatGPT accounts is seen as the biggest weakness in the feature’s design since these oversight tools are usually difficult to find and use.

Meta grapples with lawsuits too

Meanwhile, Meta too is facing heat over alleged harm to children. As many as 29 US states are currently suing Meta, alleging that it intentionally sought to addict children to its Facebook and Instagram platforms in pursuit of profit, besides improperly collecting and using children’s personal data.

The lawsuit seeks potentially tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties and changes to how Meta does business. Experts have said the trial is the biggest legal test yet of social media’s effects on young users.

Other social media companies including Snap, TikTok parent ByteDance and YouTube parent Alphabet have also faced lawsuits in the US over whether their products harm young users.

Is it easy to ensure child safety online?

Child safety features aren’t unique to OpenAI or Meta. And likewise their limited ability to keep children safe online. Engadget quoted a recent report by Cybersafety Research Center that vetted 86 safety features across four platforms — Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

It found nearly 60% of those features either did not work as described or were difficult to use. Again, a report by child advocacy group Fairplay published in 2025 found that many of the safety features associated with Instagram’s teen accounts left parents tapping through multiple pages of options: a sure-shot way of discouraging parents to keep track of what their children are doing online.

The increasing difficulty in keeping youngsters safe has prompted many countries to ban social media for certain age groups. Australia was the world’s

first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking them from platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Several other countries including the UK, Germany, Denmark, Italy, France, Norway, Malaysia have followed suit or are in the process of keeping teens away from social media.

Earlier this year, India’s chief economic adviser V Anantha Nageswaran called for age restrictions on social media platforms, describing them as “predatory” in how they keep users engaged online.