More and more children and teenagers are turning to AI chatbots to discuss emotional, personal, and relationship issues. For parents, this creates a new challenge: How do we teach our kids to use these powerful tools without allowing them to become a substitute for trusted adults, teachers, counselors, or real-world relationships?
According to an October 2025 study cited by the American Psychological Association (APA), the average age at which children receive their first smartphone is approximately 8½ years old. Most teenagers now have access to a smartphone, and many report being online for much of the day. Digital games, social media, messaging, video, and now AI-powered conversational tools have created an increasingly connected childhood.
AI chatbots and conversational agents have opened yet another frontier.
Unlike a person, a chatbot is available 24 hours a day. It doesn’t become tired, roll its eyes, show a negative facial expression, or change its tone because a child has asked an awkward question. Many AI systems are also designed to respond in ways that are supportive, encouraging, and validating.
Those characteristics can be useful. They can also create risks.
Research and commentary from organizations such as the APA, the National Library of Medicine, and other respected sources have raised concerns about the ways children and teenagers use conversational AI, particularly when discussing emotional or relationship issues.
So, what are parents to do?
First, don’t panic.
AI agents and chatbots can be valuable tools for children when they are used appropriately. Trying to completely isolate kids from technology is unlikely to be a sustainable strategy. More importantly, it can leave children unprepared for the technology they will inevitably encounter.
I once spoke with a parent whose strategy was to isolate her children, ages 8 to 16, from technology completely. No phones. No computers. No video games. Nothing.
She later discovered that her 9-year-old had created a Facebook page.
“How did he do that?” she asked.
He used a friend’s phone.
The lesson isn’t that parents should give children unrestricted access to technology. Quite the opposite. The lesson is that technology is part of our children’s world, whether we like it or not.
Our responsibility is to teach children how to use technology safely, responsibly, and intelligently.
And now we have to add AI to that conversation.
Start Talking About AI
Parents and families should make conversations about artificial intelligence a normal part of everyday life. It doesn’t have to be a formal lecture. Ask questions. Be curious. Let your kids explain what they are doing.
Here are some topics to get the conversation started.
1. What is a chatbot?
At its simplest, an AI chatbot generates responses based on patterns learned from large amounts of data and the instructions and context it receives. It is extraordinarily good at generating human-like language, but that doesn’t mean it understands the world the same way a person does.
A chatbot can be helpful without actually knowing something in the human sense.
2. A chatbot isn’t a person.
AI systems can produce language that sounds emotional, caring, angry, frightened, or even affectionate. That doesn’t mean the machine is actually experiencing those emotions.
A chatbot may say things such as “I’m sorry,” “I’m worried about you,” or “That hurt my feelings.” Those statements are generated language. They should not be interpreted as evidence that the machine has human feelings or consciousness.
This distinction is particularly important for younger children, who may naturally treat a conversational system as if it were another person.
3. AI can be a useful tool.
Used appropriately, AI can help children:
• Brainstorm ideas
• Explain difficult concepts
• Practice writing
• Explore subjects they are curious about
• Generate study questions
• Work through problems
• Get another explanation of something they don’t understand
The goal isn’t to keep children away from AI. The goal is to teach them how to use it responsibly.
4. AI can make mistakes.
This is one of the most important lessons children can learn.
AI systems can generate incorrect information while sounding completely confident. They can misunderstand questions, misinterpret context, combine unrelated information, or produce an answer that simply isn’t true.
The response may sound authoritative.
That doesn’t make it correct.
5. Confident doesn’t mean correct.
One of the most dangerous characteristics of conversational AI is that an incorrect answer may be presented in exactly the same confident tone as a correct answer.
AI can also produce what are commonly called hallucinations—fabricated information presented as though it were factual.
For example, an AI system may invent a citation, a quotation, a statistic, or even a source that doesn’t exist.
I experienced a version of this as a professor when a student submitted a paper containing citations to sources that didn’t exist.
That creates an important lesson for students:
If AI gives you a source, check the source.
6. Ask: “Where did that information come from?”
Children should get into the habit of questioning AI responses.
Try asking:
“Where did you get that information?”
Then check the answer independently.
This is especially important when the information involves health, safety, relationships, school assignments, money, laws, or other subjects where being wrong can have serious consequences.
7. AI can reflect bias.
AI systems are developed using large amounts of human-created information and are shaped by their training, design, instructions, and safety systems. As a result, AI can reflect biases or limitations present in the information and systems used to create it.
Children should understand that an AI answer isn’t automatically neutral simply because it came from a computer.
A useful family rule is:
Helpful doesn’t always mean correct.
Teach Kids to Think Like a Detective
One way to make AI safety more interesting is to turn it into a game.
Instead of simply telling children, “Don’t believe everything AI tells you,” teach them to investigate.
8. Ask questions about the answer.
Encourage children to ask:
• Where did this information come from?
• Can you provide sources?
• How certain are you?
• What information might be missing?
• What would someone who disagrees with this answer say?
The goal is to develop AI skepticism, not AI fear.
9. Does the answer make sense?
Kids should learn to pause before accepting an answer.
Ask them:
“Does that make sense?”
If something seems strange, contradictory, or too good to be true, investigate further.
They can also ask another AI system the same question—but with an important warning: getting the same answer from two AI systems does not prove that the answer is correct.
Independent verification is still necessary.
10. Verify important information somewhere else.
For homework and everyday questions, AI can be a useful starting point.
For important information, however, children should learn to verify the answer using reliable sources.
That might mean a textbook, school resource, library database, government website, teacher, parent, doctor, counselor, or another qualified adult.
The more important the decision, the more important independent verification becomes.
11. Remember the Stranger Rule
Here’s a concept that many children already understand:
Stranger danger.
But we can update that idea for the AI age.
Tell your child:
Treat an AI chatbot like a friend you’ve never met.
That means asking:
“Would I trust this advice if a random person on the Internet gave it to me?”
If the answer is no, don’t automatically trust it just because it came from an AI.
And remember: a chatbot may sound friendly, supportive, and understanding. That doesn’t make it a trusted friend.
Children should be especially cautious about sharing personal information, family information, passwords, school information, photographs, locations, or other private details with AI systems.
12. AI should be a tutor—not a substitute for learning.
For schoolwork, one of the best ways to teach responsible AI use is to establish a simple rule:
Use AI to help you learn—not to do the learning for you.
AI can explain a difficult math problem. It can help a student brainstorm ideas for a paper. It can quiz a student before a test.
But having AI write the entire assignment defeats the purpose of the assignment—and can create serious academic problems.
As my earlier example illustrates, AI-generated work may even contain fabricated sources or incorrect information.
Used properly, AI can become a powerful learning assistant.
Used improperly, it can undermine the very skills students are supposed to develop.
And What About Emotional or Relationship Questions?
This may be the most important conversation parents have with their children.
A child who is embarrassed, lonely, angry, confused, or worried may find it easier to type a question into a chatbot than to approach a parent, teacher, counselor, or other trusted adult.
The chatbot won’t interrupt.
It won’t look surprised.
It won’t judge them.
And it will answer immediately.
Those characteristics can make AI feel remarkably safe.
But feeling safe isn’t the same as being safe.
Children need to understand that an AI chatbot should not become their only source of guidance for serious emotional, relationship, health, or safety concerns.
A good family rule is:
If something is important enough to worry about, it’s important enough to talk about with a trusted person.
AI can help a child think through a question. It should not replace the human relationships that help children grow.
Keep the Conversation Going
These are only a few of the conversations families should be having as children begin using artificial intelligence.
As a grandparent, I talk with my grandchildren about AI regularly. When they come home from school, I ask them about their day—and I also ask whether they used AI.
Sometimes I turn the conversation around and ask them to teach me something they learned about AI.
That changes the dynamic. Instead of the adult being the person who supposedly knows everything about technology, the child becomes the teacher.
And that’s a powerful way to keep the conversation going.
Parents don’t need to know everything about artificial intelligence.
They just need to stay involved.
Don’t leave your kids alone to wander through the AI forest. Have their back.
Further cybersecurity resources by Tom Arnold here on Wandering Educators
Cyber Hygiene While Traveling: Top Tips from a Cybersecurity Expert
Tom Arnold is a Cybersecurity Professor at UNLV and is the author of The Digital Detective: First Intervention and The Digital Detective: Dark Web Descent. His Digital Detective series was inspired by a real-world cybersecurity scare involving his grandson, who was approached online by a stranger on Roblox despite parental controls. That experience helped launch Arnold’s mission to help families and schools recognize hidden online dangers and give young people practical tools for navigating the digital world safely.
Arnold brings professional cybersecurity experience to his fiction and educational work, using real-world cybercrime and technology issues to help parents, educators, and young people better understand the rapidly changing digital landscape.
