Six parents describe tighter rules for children’s social media and AI use

The Guardian published interviews on October 12 with six parents in the UK, US and Spain who described growing caution or tighter limits around their children’s social media and AI use. Their accounts show the choices individual families are making; a separate U.S. survey suggests parents’ comfort with AI depends heavily on what teenagers use it for.

Most people who responded to the Guardian’s call for accounts said they no longer wanted their children to use social media, and many were trying to steer them away from AI too. Those responses came from people who chose to share their experiences. They do not show how common such restrictions are among parents generally, or whether parents as a whole have become more cautious.

How the six parents are setting limits

Caroline Gray Ford, 42, an artist and regional leader for Smartphone Free Childhood in Cambridge, described parents working together to delay children’s access to smartphones and social media. She said she was wary of giving technology companies children’s time and data. Her account points to a collective approach: families coordinating a decision that can be difficult to make alone.

A 43-year-old London parent who works in AI described a different tension. He wanted his children to learn about the technology but was concerned about its future effects. In his household, social media was off limits, with WhatsApp allowed for connection. The distinction matters: his rule addressed social platforms separately from a messaging tool he considered useful.

An anonymous parent in the Scottish Borders who works in AI said their caution had increased over what they saw as a gap between product marketing and risks to children. They also questioned the use of AI tools in schools without meaningful parental choice, and argued that schools and local authorities should teach digital literacy and critical thinking alongside technology use. Those are the parent’s concerns and proposals, rather than outcomes established by the interviews.

Another anonymous parent, in Kent, said frustration with government action had prompted tighter household rules and campaigning for restrictions. They opposed children’s use of both social media and chatbots. In Madrid, a parent described difficulty enforcing device limits for a 12-year-old who used social media, YouTube and Discord. The parent said the child had a school Chromebook and a gaming laptop and had found ways around household limits.

What a U.S. survey says about parents and chatbots

Pew Research Center’s survey offers a broader, but narrower in age and geography, comparison. Pew surveyed 1,458 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 and their parents online from September 25 to October 9, 2025. It recruited the teens through parents on Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel and reported an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points for parent and teen findings. It does not measure the views of the Guardian’s interviewees or parents of younger children.

In that survey, 51% of parents said their teen used AI chatbots, 18% said their teen did not, and about three in ten were unsure. Among teens themselves, 64% reported chatbot use, a 13-percentage-point gap from the share of parents who said their teen used them. Just over half of parents said they had ever talked with their teen about chatbots; roughly four in ten said they had not.

Parents’ answers also changed with the purpose of use. About eight in ten were comfortable with teens using chatbots to search for information, and roughly six in ten were comfortable with schoolwork use. Fewer than a third were comfortable with casual conversation. Only 18% said they would be comfortable with a teen getting emotional support or advice from a chatbot, the use Pew identified as least acceptable to parents among those it asked about.

What remains uncertain about safeguards

The Guardian reported that social media companies have argued their platforms are safe for teens, introduced measures including parent-linked teen accounts, and denied claims made against them. The interviews do not establish whether those safeguards work. Nor do parents’ accounts alone establish that social media or AI caused the harms they worry about.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory said evidence was insufficient to conclude that social media was sufficiently safe for children and adolescents. It identified gaps in knowledge about which content is most harmful and what protects young people, and called for action involving families, companies, policymakers, researchers and young people. That advisory addresses social media and mental health; it is not a finding about chatbot safety. For families weighing rules now, the interviews document practical decisions while the survey shows that views about AI are far from uniform.