ChatGPT for Teens Is Not Safe for Kids, Report Says

OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Teens — which the company rolled out in August as the default way for kids ages 13 to 17 use its popular chatbot — is too risky for children, according to a new report from Common Sense Media.

The report, published Wednesday by the California-based nonprofit’s Youth AI Safety Institute, found that in the group’s tests, ChatGPT for Teens often either took too long to alert or didn’t alert parents at all when teen accounts showed concerning behaviors, like engaging in lengthy conversations with the chatbot about suicide, self-harm or eating disorders. It also determined that when users engaged the chatbot in conversations about these high-risk topics, ChatGPT for Teens did not reliably suggest getting in touch with a crisis hotline or seeking professional help.

Common Sense Media’s testing found that ChatGPT for Teens only seemed to notify parents about concerning chatbot conversations if the account had “already been engaging in testing hundreds of prompts across a dozen-plus conditions over weeks, not from a single alarming conversation.”

“We call on OpenAI to pause marketing the product and to keep teens off ChatGPT until it can offer a safe, developmentally appropriate experience,” the group, which shared its findings with the AI startup before publication, said in its report.

An OpenAI spokesperson said, “We welcome rigorous independent evaluation, but we do not believe Common Sense Media’s testing accurately reflects how ChatGPT’s teen safeguards work in practice or expert perspectives on how AI can support teens.”

The spokesperson said that OpenAI’s review of Common Sense Media’s methodology for the report indicated that most of its testing might have started and finished before OpenAI completed its rollout of parental controls for teenagers; if so, that would make the group’s conclusions inaccurate and wouldn’t show whether the parent-safety notifications work as they are designed. The company said it asked the nonprofit to redo its tests.

“We are deeply committed to teen safety and to developing safeguards and giving parents meaningful tools to guide their teens’ use of AI,” the spokesperson said.

Robbie Torney, head of AI and digital assessments for the Youth AI Safety Institute, said that the nonprofit stands behind its testing methodology and results. He added that before carrying out its tests, the group confirmed with OpenAI that teen-related features for ChatGPT such as notifications related to eating disorders had been rolled out. For the parental notification feature, OpenAI told the group after its tests were completed that it can take several hours for its systems to activate on newly linked accounts; some test accounts were linked “within that window” and some for “significantly longer,” but still provided no adult notifications, Torney said.

“This new information does not change our conclusion that parental alerts are unreliable for crisis situations,” he said.

ChatGPT also fails to reliably identify interactions with teen users, Common Sense said. OpenAI has said its chatbot would switch to its Teens mode when it detects users in the 13 to 17-year-old age range. The nonprofit said that when it registered for accounts and claimed to be an adult, those accounts weren’t automatically switched to the teen experience — even if the user told the chatbot they were 13 years old.

OpenAI said its age-prediction software takes into account a number of different signals over time to ensure adult and child users get the right version of the chatbot for their age group. A user stating their age in a conversation with ChatGPT is one such signal, but that alone won't change how the account is classified, the company said.

OpenAI, which has more than 1.2 billion ChatGPT users, released ChatGPT for Teens with the aim of making its chatbot safer for younger people. The company said at the time that the teen-focused experience included increased parental controls and was designed to promote healthy AI use and encourage teens to learn and think critically.

The release is among a number of changes the company has made in response to scrutiny about how its products affect young users’ mental health and cognitive development. These concerns mounted after the parents of a 16-year-old user sued the company in last year, alleging that OpenAI’s technology aided in the planning of their son’s suicide.

In its report, Common Sense Media said it tested ChatGPT both before and after OpenAI released ChatGPT for Teens, trying over 4,000 prompts on accounts registered as users between the ages of 13 and 17. The group also shared the responses from ChatGPT with child psychiatrists and a pediatrician.

“I think the burden is now on OpenAI to demonstrate that their product is safe for teens to use,” Torney said.

The nonprofit, which focuses on rating and evaluating a range of media and technology for kids and families, gave ChatGPT for Teens an “unacceptable risk” rating. The group is asking OpenAI to improve how it estimates users’ ages and how it determines when to send an alert to a parent.

Common Sense Media receives funding from a variety of sources, including philanthropies and technology companies; the OpenAI Foundation is one of its donors. The group says that it has editorial independence over the work it publishes.