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Researchers found AI could help with creativity and education, but that it can confuse young children and generate harmful misinformation.
FILE – The ChatGPT app icon is seen on a smartphone screen, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, file)
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Artificial intelligence could be used to improve learning, creativity and social interaction among kids and teens, early research shows.
But the technology can be harmful to childhood development without the right safeguards, according to a new review study published in the journal Pediatrics earlier this month by experts at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“Right now, many of us are participating in this natural experiment of figuring out how these tools might be useful and in what ways they might be harmful,” said Dr. Robert Grundmeier, a CHOP primary care pediatrician. “What we really need is some organized and rigorous research to really help to answer those questions.”
AI is rapidly becoming part of everyday life and is used in children’s toys, games, social media, behavioral health programs, school classrooms and elsewhere. Nearly two-thirds of teens surveyed by the Pew Research Center last fall reported having used an AI chatbot.
These experiences inspired Grundmeier and a team of CHOP pediatricians, psychologists and AI experts to compile data scattered across several early studies on the subject and identify the technology’s greatest benefits and risks on children of different ages.
“And notably, we are also all parents and are navigating this world about artificial intelligence in our own households,” Grundmeier said.
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Researchers found that in very early childhood with kids 5 and younger, interactive AI storytelling programs and toys could support language development and vocabulary, and even improve interaction among family members.
Grundmeier, who is also director of clinical informatics at CHOP’s Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics, uses the example of an exhausted parent whose child asks for an original bedtime story before they go to sleep.
“Maybe you’re not feeling your most creative at that moment,” he said. “So you as a parent can use an AI tool fairly easily to help generate an individualized story that you can then read to your child and promote that engagement in your household.”
But when children in this age group are exposed to other forms of the technology, they may have difficulty telling the difference between what is AI and what is genuine human interaction.
“When you’re interacting with artificial intelligence, although it can appear to be empathic, it can in many ways pretend to be human, it fundamentally is not human,” Grundmeier said. “It is just a lot of mathematics happening behind the scene. And there are differences in the way these tools present themselves than a real human being would.”
As children get older, they may interact with AI programs at school or home. The technology has a lot of potential to help tailor education to an individual child’s needs and address learning gaps in reading, math and other subjects, Grundmeier said.
But researchers and health care providers worry exposure to these types of programs without the right safeguards could lead to issues like “de-skilling,” where kids lose the ability to do something they could previously do because of an overreliance on AI.
“Or in the case of early childhood education, we might worry about ‘never-skilling,’” Grundmeier said, “meaning that they never learn how to do a particular task because they’ve actually asked the AI to do it for them as opposed to using the AI as a tool to help them learn.”
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As teens begin to use or see AI more, they may also struggle to identify when the technology is producing misinformation or false interpretations of events, ideas and facts.
Health providers say this can be especially dangerous when children and teens consult AI-involved programs or chatbots on mental health issues, including for thoughts about suicide.
“There’s research that shows that some of these AI tools when discussing mental health care topics, they can provide really very bad advice,” Grundmeier said, “which really speaks to the need for more guardrail development to help ensure that these tools really support positive interactions and, if there’s an interaction that’s going badly, can transition to make sure that people are getting the help they need.”
On the upside, researchers said they’ve seen teens use AI tools in creative and positive ways, including working on their social skills, improving relationships with friends and family, and learning new things.
“For example, teens might be using them as a coach to figure out how to handle a difficult conversation with a friend,” Grundmeier said. “They might be using it to learn about an area that they’re interested in, but just don’t have other ways to really learn about it.”
Ultimately, many of the families Grundmeier sees at CHOP in South Philadelphia just want help in understanding how AI works and what they can do to ensure their children are using it safely.
“I hear a lot from parents is this idea of, ‘I don’t really understand this, it scares me. My child is getting exposed to it, but I don’t know how to guide them,’” he said. “And I think that really needs to be a focus for future research and guidance is how to really help people teach their children to understand the difference between real information and potentially incorrect information from an AI.”
Pennsylvania is joining other states across the country in establishing AI literacy programs, safety standards and reporting tools for people to identify AI technology that could be harmful to children, seniors and other vulnerable populations.
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