A reckoning on social media addiction came late for many kids. Will AI safety be different?

Years after the risks of social media for kids first became apparent, U.S. states this summer reached an accord hailed as a turning point for child safety. Meanwhile, a new generation of children has begun engaging with an even more potent technology: artificial intelligence.

While the efforts to make social media safer are still taking shape, they offer some lessons for those looking to protect children using AI — technology that is growing so quickly, the extent of its risks for young people and their development is just emerging.

When Meta agreed to changes to its social media platforms and enhanced safeguards in an $18 billion settlement, it made progress by “getting at what we’ve known for years” about the dangers, said Kristin Bride, a parent advocate who has fought for social media reform since the death of her teenage son. “How are we going to get at what we don’t know is coming?”

AI companies have begun rolling out some safety features introduced first by social media companies, including age assurance measures and restricted experiences for minors. But advocates say the most important takeaway from the efforts of parents, tech companies and regulators to find a way forward on social media safety may be to act sooner on mitigating AI’s harms for kids.

“The greatest legacy from the social media experiment and learnings is that hopefully we’re not going to sleepwalk into this next tech revolution,” said Dr. Dana Suskind, a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, and author of “Human Raised.” “We learned that we had it all backwards, right? You don’t unleash something on a population, figure out if it does harm or not in real time, and then go back and say, ‘Oops.’”

AI and social media pose different risks, but some solutions overlap

Concerns around social media have centered on the amount of time kids spend on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, and the consequences for their mental health. Advocates also have focused on data privacy and kids’ vulnerability to cyberbullying or predators who find them online.

Artificial intelligence can be more pervasive for kids. Children not only see AI-generated content on social media platforms, but they can also readily communicate with AI chatbots, including some on social media apps. Many use it for help with school and homework. Some have formed unhealthy relationships with chatbots, and experts have raised questions about how access to AI is affecting children’s brain development. Companies are pushing AI-powered toys for kids as young as 2.

Campaigns for social media and AI safety for kids are both playing out on legal and legislative fronts. Individuals and states have sued tech companies over concerns around their products’ safety and both state and federal lawmakers are grappling with how to regulate the tech.

Compared with social media companies, AI giants have been moving somewhat more quickly to add safeguards, motivated perhaps by the growing regulatory and societal scrutiny of social media’s effects on kids’ mental health.

OpenAI introduced teen accounts in August, about four years after launching ChatGPT, with restrictions that include a ban on romantic chats and any suggestions that the chatbot has personal feelings toward the user.

Meta, which bought Instagram in 2012, didn’t launch teen accounts on the platform until 2024.

In announcing the settlement agreement this summer, Meta said that “ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative” for the company. Meta also urged its competitors, TikTok and YouTube, to adopt some of the standards it is implementing as a result of the settlement.

One challenge is balancing the benefits of AI with dangers

The protections outlined in the Meta settlement cannot easily be applied to AI because of the differences in the way young people interact with AI versus social media, experts said.

One of the challenges of restricting AI for minors is that it’s “much easier to point to the upsides” for teens compared with social media, said Sarah Kreps, a professor and director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute. While there are concerns about cheating, for instance, kids are also using AI for tutoring and legitimate homework help.

“It’s not a matter of just saying ‘let’s limit this to two hours’ or ‘let’s limit this between the hours of 10 at night and 6 in the morning’ because there are these salutary uses of AI that I think are harder to justify in the context of social media,” Kreps said.

A majority of U.S. teens — 64% — say they have used AI chatbots, according to the Pew Research Center. Looking up information and getting help with schoolwork tops the list of uses, though 47% say they’ve used chatbots for fun and 42% have used it to summarize an article, book or video. About 12% have turned to bots for emotional support or advice.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation,” said he is most worried about the relationships and attachments young people can build with chatbots and the “cognitive offloading” that happens when people defer their thought processes to a chatbot.

“I have long thought that AI is a much bigger threat to children even than social media,” Haidt said. “But if we can’t win on social media, then it will be hopeless on AI.”

Congress has just begun to look at AI safety for kids

While recent litigation has held social media companies responsible for harms to users, federal legislation of social media has meandered and AI legislation has lagged.

The Trump administration has said regulation, especially across states instead of at a federal level, could hinder AI companies’ growth and sacrifice American labs’ lead in the global AI race, but some lawmakers are trying to move the needle.

Some AI legislation specific to children’s safety issues — like youth privacy, chatbot interactions and AI toy safety — have passed through Senate subcommittees with bipartisan support, but there’s still a long road for any such legislation to pass. Legislation at the state level is moving faster, as seen also in the role states have played in pushing Meta on social media harms.

“One of the things we’ve seen with social media, which I think will still be true with AI, is that we live in a federal system where states make laws on everything from e-bikes to driving permits to gun laws and that federal legislation or federal rules are much more difficult,” Kreps said.

Some say the biggest win from the progress on social media safety this year has been heightened awareness of online dangers for kids.

Bride, whose son Carson died after experiencing severe cyberbullying on Snapchat, said it’s encouraging to see legislators wrestling with how to regulate AI, but acknowledged the reality that legislation can’t keep up with the technological developments — and that kids will continue to experience AI-related harms in the meantime.

“I don’t think we can afford any more mea culpas when kids are concerned,” she said.