{"id":450867,"date":"2026-02-28T20:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T20:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/450867\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T20:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T20:36:07","slug":"the-risks-of-childrens-use-of-chatbots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/450867\/","title":{"rendered":"The Risks of Children’s Use of Chatbots"},"content":{"rendered":"

With growing horror, we have been following news reports of AI<\/a> chatbots convincing troubled children and adolescents that suicide is a noble and acceptable release from their distress. Reading transcripts of these chatbot-child \u201cconversations\u201d literally brings tears at times\u2014tears of rage<\/a> that such dangerous devices are unleashed on unsuspecting and vulnerable children and adolescents. <\/p>\n

Suicide is the second and third leading cause of death for children and adolescents, respectively. The rate of youth suicide is rapidly increasing, with girls making more attempts but boys having almost three times the number of lethal completions (17.3\/100,000 males v. 6.4\/100,000 females) (Khushboo et al., 2026). <\/p>\n

What Do We Know about Adolescent Uses of Chatbots?<\/p>\n

Never in the course of human history have children and adolescents interacted with seemingly intelligent entities capable of generating individualized responses to their most deeply personal questions and insecurities. Children are developmentally primed to have intense \u201cpersonal\u201d relationships with inanimate entities, from teddy bears to Pok\u00e9mon. One of their primary developmental tasks is learning how to be in reciprocal human relationships where there are mutual expectations and accountability, both joy and disappointment. But chatbot relationships are notably \u201cfrictionless,\u201d without mutuality, expectations, or accountability. What children and adolescents learn from relating to chatbots will inevitably transfer into their human relationships.<\/p>\n

Chatbots are carefully crafted to be experienced by users as friendly, trustworthy companions. They are low-cost, always available, and perceived to be private. With their still-developing reality-testing, children and adolescents are susceptible to unquestioningly investing these computer-simulated companions with unwarranted omniscience and beneficence. <\/p>\n

The unrelenting exposure of today\u2019s youth to AI chatbots is inevitable. Encouraged by web developers who regard AI as essential to their platform\u2019s success, chatbots are increasingly embedded in all manner of applications. Surveys indicated that more than 95 percent of U.S. youth ages 13 to 17 report using the internet (Pratt et al., 2024). In a nationally representative survey, 13.1 percent of U.S. youth (approximately 5.4 million children) reported using AI for mental health advice (McBain et al., 2025). Of the mental health advice seekers, about two-thirds reported at least monthly use, and over 90 percent reported that the chatbot advice was helpful. <\/p>\n

Risks of AI Chatbots<\/p>\n

These types of \u201ctherapeutic\u201d interactions are just beginning to be studied. One flagrant red flag of the dangers posed by AI chatbots is that they can be easily \u201ctricked\u201d into giving children dangerous advice. For example, researchers posing as 15-year-olds were able to convince a commonly used chatbot to describe how to avoid detection of drug or alcohol<\/a> use, how to manufacture explosive devices, and how to outwit surveillance systems.<\/p>\n

Chatbots can create risks in other ways. As engaging companions, they may replace important human relationships. As commercial systems, they collect extensive information about users, including children, which may be exploited. Many educators are concerned that a growing dependence on AI to do school work may disrupt the powerful feedback that occurs when doing or solving a task by oneself.<\/p>\n

Problems for Parents<\/p>\n

Realistically, most parents have only a limited knowledge of what their children are doing and seeing on the internet. The older the child, the more parents tend to respect the child\u2019s privacy, and therefore the less they know about the content the child is exposed to. Parents often lack the technical knowledge to examine their children\u2019s digital devices or activate any parental controls that may exist.<\/p>\n

In news accounts of chatbot-abetted suicides, grieving parents frequently express shocked bewilderment at how incredibly intimate and irresistibly powerful the \u201crelationship\u201d was between their deceased child and the chatbot.<\/p>\n

Signs That a Child’s Chatbot Use Is Unhealthy<\/p>\n

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry<\/a> (AACAP) issued a one-pager listing signs that a child or adolescent\u2019s AI use may be unhealthy (AACAP, No. 145; July 2025). These include:<\/p>\n

Spending time with AI applications at the expense of other interests and responsibilities.
\nDecreased face-to-face social interactions.
\nEmotional outbursts, lying<\/a>, and rule-breaking when limits are set on AI or screen use.
\nSleep disturbances related to excessive nocturnal device use.
\nSharing inappropriate personal information or images with AI systems.
\nUsing AI to cheat on<\/a> school assignments.
\nUsing AI tools to bully<\/a> peers and creating sexual<\/a> or violent content with AI.<\/p>\n

Ways to Help Youth Use AI Safely<\/p>\n

The AACAP flyer includes recommendations that are shared by experts who study the influence of the internet on children and adolescents. Parents should: <\/p>\n

Explore the AI tools together with their child, both to look for questionable content and become familiar with an AI platform\u2019s features, such as parental controls and access to chatbot logs.
\nModel skepticism and how to adopt a questioning stance toward information offered by AI.
\nEncourage children to share and discuss online experiences and help them to understand that images, videos, audio, or depicted events may be fake.
\nDiscuss the difference between a chatbot companion and human relationships, as well as promote and support human social interactions.
\nSet and enforce clear boundaries<\/a> around AI and\/or screen usage.
\nLearn and enforce school rules governing AI use on assignments.
\nEnsure that their child\u2019s sensitive personal information or images are not being shared with AI systems.<\/p>\n

The Problem With These Recommendations<\/p>\n

The problem with these recommendations is that they put a great deal of the onus on parents, who are expected to stay up-to-date in a fast-moving, youth-oriented cyberworld that is outside of their experience and interest. Meanwhile, AI and social media<\/a> providers remain broadly immune from legal liability under a 1996 law (CDA in 47 U.S.C. 230). This 20th-century law was originally intended to protect providers from accountability for libelous content created by others but posted on their platforms (Walker, 2023). <\/p>\n

Thirty years later, the internet is a very different world. No longer composed of simple bulletin boards passively accepting user posts, AI-based websites are highly interactive, covertly, but profoundly, influencing users through sophisticated algorithms that are not well understood even by the providers.<\/p>\n

In many respects, the situation has the feeling of a runaway train, and the nation\u2019s youth are tied to the tracks ahead. It is past time for Congress and AI chatbot providers to meet their moral and societal obligations to actively deter dangerous AI-driven interactions, such as chatbots that enable suicidal<\/a> impulses or risky behaviors, especially as they involve minors.<\/p>\n

If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24\/7, dial 988 for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. Outside of the U.S., visit the International Resources page for suicide hotlines in your country.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With growing horror, we have been following news reports of AI chatbots convincing troubled children and adolescents that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-450867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}