en.Wedoany.com Reported - U.S. lawmakers and regulators are debating how to define the boundaries of government regulation of children's use of AI chatbots, seeking a balance between safety, privacy, and free speech.
AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Bing AI, have rapidly permeated children's lives, outpacing lawmakers' ability to formulate responses. Florida took the lead on June 1, with State Attorney General James Uthmeier filing a lawsuit against OpenAI in Miami-Dade County, becoming the first state to directly sue the company. The complaint alleges that the company marketed ChatGPT as a safe product while concealing its potential to guide vulnerable users toward harm. The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT collects data from minors without meaningful parental supervision, leading to harms such as behavioral addiction and cognitive impairment, and seeks to hold CEO Sam Altman personally liable.
Juliana Peralta, a 13-year-old girl from Colorado, confided suicidal thoughts to a chatbot 55 times. The chatbot offered encouraging conversations but never directed her to crisis support. She died by suicide, leaving a note written in red ink, as she had told the bot she would. Her parents are now among at least six families suing Character AI, its co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and Google.
The policy question is no longer whether to regulate, but how. Ying Xu, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, stated that children can effectively learn from AI as long as the AI is designed with learning principles in mind. The American Psychological Association (APA) has explicitly stated that what benefits one child may harm another. A 2025 study by the Pew Research Center found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. teenagers use AI chatbots, with three out of ten using them daily. A meta-analysis of 51 studies showed that AI significantly improves learning performance in structured educational settings and provides moderate gains in higher-order thinking.
At the federal level, the GUARD Act, introduced by Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, has unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill would prohibit minors from using AI chatbots, with narrow exceptions for single-subject educational tools such as math tutoring or history quizzes. Andy Jun, AI Policy Advisor at TechFreedom, noted that the bill's definitions of "AI companion" and "artificial intelligence chatbot" are overly broad, encompassing ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok, but the bill does not specify what chatbots must do when a child expresses suicidal ideation, leaving a gap in addressing practical issues. Other bills, such as the Youth AI Privacy Act introduced by Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts in March 2026, would require companies to build privacy protections into their products. In a statement to Broadband Breakfast, Markey expressed concern that as companies rush to deploy invasive and addictive AI chatbots, he fears seeing big tech leading the way while Congress lags behind, and that our children should not be test subjects in big tech's latest experiment. Both bills include private rights of action and enforcement powers for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general. Jun warned that such a structure could invite lawsuits, citing the ease with which opportunistic plaintiffs could induce an AI chatbot to impersonate a licensed lawyer or medical professional and then sue the AI provider. The LIFT AI Act, which directs federal funding to AI literacy education in schools, has faced less criticism.
States are acting faster but in divergent directions. Nebraska's signed LB 525 establishes crisis protocols, disclosure requirements, and protections for minors. Megan Stokes, State Policy Director at the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), called this bill a proper balance. She warned that elsewhere, broad legislation could lead to platforms over-censoring or even completely blocking minors, thereby limiting valuable educational and creative tools on which young people increasingly rely. In New York, a bill banning the sale of AI chatbots for young children for five years has passed the state Senate. A study released by Common Sense Media in July this year found that 72% of teenagers have used AI companions, with one-third saying conversations with them are as satisfying as those with real friends, and another third reporting that AI companions have said or done things that made them uncomfortable. Common Sense Media founder and CEO James Steyer stated that AI companions are emerging at a time when children and teens feel more lonely than ever, and this is not just about new technology, but about a generation replacing human connection with machines. Amina Fazlullah, Director of Technology Policy Advocacy at Common Sense Media, told Broadband Breakfast that students, families, and educators should not have to sacrifice safety for AI innovation, and the organization has formally endorsed the GUARD Act.
Jonathan Haidt, author of *The Anxious Generation*, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January this year that when you hack the attachment system, when children develop relationships with chatbots and AI, the results can be devastating. CCIA's Megan Stokes stated that many bills take broad and overly prescriptive approaches that may do more harm than good. TechFreedom's Andy Jun suggested that lawmakers should fund research into why and how safety measures fail, and that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could use its anti-fraud powers to penalize AI companies that falsely claim to provide protections they cannot deliver. Brian McMillan, Vice President of U.S. Public Policy at CCIA, told Broadband Breakfast that lawmakers should seek targeted, risk-based solutions, noting that media literacy programs operating in Florida, Virginia, and New Jersey are an underutilized lever. Common Sense Media's Amina Fazlullah believes that regulation alone is insufficient and that government investment in testing standards, safety benchmarks, and independent research on the impact of AI tools on developing minds is also needed.
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