OpenAI has addressed complaints around teens’ use of its ChatGPT system by introducing ChatGPT for Teens, a version of the AI assistant designed specifically for users aged 13 to 17. But will it prevent determined kids from bucking the system?
It brings together several protections OpenAI has introduced over the past year, along with new features intended to encourage healthier and safer use.
What ChatGPT for Teens does
The system brings together various protections that OpenAI has built into ChatGPT over the last year into a more unified experience. For example, last September it added parental controls that enabled parents to set Quiet Hours, when kids couldn’t use the chat system, and turn off memory so it won’t use previous conversations when responding. It also built a notification system to warn parents if chats with teens took a bad turn. ChatGPT for Teens adds extra notifications for parents around eating disorders.
Study Mode, one of the main features, is designed to stop teens simply using ChatGPT to do their homework for them. Instead of giving direct, easy answers, it uses guiding questions and step-by-step prompts to encourage them to think through the problem themselves. OpenAI introduced Study Mode in July 2025.
What is new is the ability to set specific hours for Study Mode, along with responsible homework reminders. The system will spot when a teen appears to be using AI answers to shortcut an assignment and redirect them towards Study Mode.
OpenAI also says ChatGPT won’t use romantic language or encourage emotional dependence, and neither will it pretend to have feelings or to be conscious. It is introducing reminders not to upload sensitive images, and there will be an onboarding user interface for teens.
The record that forced the changes
That all seems positive, if long overdue. The parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine filed a lawsuit claiming that ChatGPT walked their son through suicide methods and offered to draft his goodbye letter before he took his own life.
Families in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, sued OpenAI in April this year after a school shooting there. The teenage shooter had allegedly held extensive gun-violence conversations with ChatGPT after reopening a banned account. In a controlled test where researchers posed as 13-year-old boys planning attacks, ChatGPT offered help 61% of the time, including specific advice on which shrapnel would be most lethal in a synagogue attack.
The lawsuits are stacking up. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sued OpenAI in June 2026, alleging that the company knowingly released an unsafe product.
The gap the launch does not close
Our Head of Consumer, Mark Beare, says ChatGPT for Teens is a positive step, but parents need to understand where the controls begin and end.
“[This is] directionally a good move, and more proactive than most social platforms were at a comparable stage. There is a clear adjacency to the parental controls space here. The controls are useful, but only when a parent configures them correctly, and only on a linked account.
“This is a bigger deal when you factor in how tech-savvy kids of this age are. The default teen protections lean on age prediction, and the stronger parent-set controls like Quiet Hours and safety notifications only apply once accounts are linked. Kids in this band are smart and tech-savvy, and they will look for the seams.”
The simplest loophole is an account that isn’t linked to a parent. OpenAI’s age-prediction system may still identify the user as under 18 and apply teen protections automatically, but parent-set controls such as Quiet Hours and parental safety notifications only work once the accounts are linked.
Last November, testers from the Family Online Safety Institute concluded that account protections in ChatGPT were “optional, easy to bypass, and inconsistent in blocking harmful content.”
Since then, OpenAI has rolled out age prediction on ChatGPT, which will check a user’s behavior to try and guess whether they are under 18. It will then move them to a ChatGPT for Teens account.
Adults will be able to present proof of their identity if they think they have been incorrectly categorized.
Beare says that still leaves parents with something to think about:
“Age verification exists as a backstop, but it runs on ID and selfie checks that carry their own privacy questions, and a teen who confirms as an adult moves out of teen mode entirely.”
As OpenAI acknowledged in its parental controls announcement, “guardrails help, but they’re not foolproof and can be bypassed if someone is intentionally trying to get around them.”
Safeguards around what content ChatGPT delivers to teens are also unlikely to be foolproof. OpenAI has admitted that its safety guardrails become less reliable the longer a conversation runs and says it is working to improve them.
What parents can do
By all means use ChatGPT for Teens as an assistive technology in a broader effort to protect your kids. Link their account to yours and set the Quiet Hours schedule. You can also set Study Mode as the default for new conversations to encourage children to use it responsibly. Make it your job to understand what the alerts do and don’t cover.
But be aware that parental controls need configuring and only apply while the parent and teen accounts are linked.
Most importantly, keep talking to your kids about how they use AI and what they use it for. No parental-control system can cover every account, conversation, or AI service they might encounter.
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