![\"Meta](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/meta-bans-teens-chatbots.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\tSean M. Haffey\/Getty Images\n\t<\/p>\n
Meta says it\u2019s cutting off teenagers\u2019 access to its AI characters \u2014 at least until it can build \u201cbetter\u201d ones.<\/p>\n
The Mark Zuckerberg company announced<\/a> the change on Friday, signaling at least some degree of hesitation at the company over how young users are engaging with its chatbots amid mounting concern over the tech\u2019s effects on mental health and safety.<\/p>\n \u201cStarting in the coming weeks, teens will no longer be able to access AI characters across our apps until the updated experience is ready,\u201d Meta said in an updated blog post. \u201cThis will apply to anyone who has given us a teen birthday, as well as people who claim to be adults but who we suspect are teens based on our age prediction technology.\u201d<\/p>\n The update follows an announcement from Meta in October, when it said that parents would be able to use new tools for supervising their children\u2019s interactions with AI characters, including the\u00a0 ability to cut off their access to the characters entirely. The announcement also described a feature that would provide parents \u201cinsights\u201d about the topics their teens were discussing in the AI conversations.<\/p>\n Meta originally promised to release these tools early this year, but that hasn\u2019t come to pass. Now, in its new announcement, the company is saying that it\u2019s building a \u201cnew version\u201d of AI characters to \u201cgive people an even better experience,\u201d so it\u2019s developing the promised safety tools from scratch and cutting off teen access in the meantime.<\/p>\n Concerns over teenage use of AI chatbots has fueled the broader conversation around AI safety and the phenomenon of AI psychosis, the term some experts are using to describe delusional mental health spirals that are encouraged by an AI\u2019s sycophantic responses. Numerous cases have ended in suicide, many of them being teenagers<\/a>. The bots remain wildly popular, with one survey<\/a> finding that one in five high schoolers in the US say they or a friend have had a romantic relationship with an AI.<\/p>\n Meta has come under particular scrutiny, with an internal document allowing<\/a> underage kids to have \u201csensual\u201d conversations with its AI \u2014 and chatbots based on celebrities including John Cena having wildly inappropriate sexual conversations<\/a> with users who identified themselves as young teens.<\/p>\n Meta isn\u2019t the only chatbot platform to buckle under scrutiny. The website Character.AI, which offers AI companions similar to Meta\u2019s and was popular with teams, banned minors from the platform last October, after being sued by several families<\/a> who accused the company\u2019s chatbots of encouraging their children to take their own lives.<\/p>\n