Regulating AI for Minors & Chatbots

I’m a mother of two lovely little humans, 10 and 8.

Like every parent, I want them safe. But safe isn’t enough. I want them ready. Ready for a world where AI isn’t optional. Because AI won’t replace people—but people who don’t learn how to use it may get left behind.

That’s the paradox: protect them while preparing them.

We’ve been here before.

The printing press was going to ruin kids.

TV was going to rot their brains.

Social media was going to connect them—and then it consumed them.

Now it’s AI. And this time, it talks back.

Courts, lawmakers, and parents are circling the same questions:

Verification

Who’s really on the other end?

Emotional safety:

Can a chatbot exploit a child’s trust in ways no parent would?

Parental control:

Who owns the dashboard—the parent, the platform, or the government?

Our track record is clear: we regulate too late. After the harm, after the headlines. But AI is different. It doesn’t just entertain, it engages. The conversations are private, endless, invisible.

Which means this moment is different too. We can still decide what to build.

We can design with intention—assume kids will use AI, and safeguard them by design.
We can demand transparency—in words a 10-year-old (and their parents) actually understand.
We can choose trust over growth—because mining children is not the same as teaching them.

This isn’t about fear. And it’s not about banning the future.

It’s about asking a harder question:

If your child sat across the table from AI, would you trust it to teach, to mentor, to protect—and not to exploit?

Because the genie isn’t going back in the bottle. The only question left is: Who gets to shape it before our kids do?