For over 20 years, Common Sense Media has been the trusted guide for families navigating the digital world. We protect children from online harms while preparing them to thrive in their connected future. Our new AI Safety Institute combines rigorous research, clear standards, and independent evaluation to ensure AI systems are designed with childhood development in mind. Together with families, educators, and policymakers, we're leading the way to a safer, healthier childhood.
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If you are already using Canva and would like to have Common Sense Media readily available so you can work with your students, educators, and families to develop essential Ai/Digital Literacy & Wellbeing skills... you might absolutely love this news. #k12 #digcit #MILCities
What kind of learning do we want for our young people in the age of AI? What do we need to protect in education so that AI doesn’t replace the reading, writing, thinking, and problem-solving through which young people actually learn and develop? There's so much to be said about this topic, I can't wait to hear from some of those at the center. In partnership with Common Sense Media, we're creating a community space to hear directly from young people and educators about the role and impact of AI on students' development as readers, writers, thinkers, and learners. Join us Wednesday, October 21 at Kinfolx in downtown Oakland: https://lnkd.in/g_eqt_Py
Teachers of young children get asked about screen time constantly: at pickup, in the hallway, in unrelated meetings. The advice keeps shifting, and most of it measures screen time by the clock, rather than what's on the screen. What's the right response? On Thursday, Oct. 22 at 1 p.m. PT/4 p.m ET, Eisha Buch, our Head of Teaching and Learning, joins an expert panel for Pre-K to second grade teachers and administrators. Educators and school leaders will get clear guidance for conversations with families about their child's technology use. Panelists will share their own experiences about what worked, what didn't, and best practices going forward. Register here: https://lnkd.in/g7mpXcs9
Humble brag or useful public service announcement? Maybe a bit of both. Here's a reminder about Digital Citizenship Week next week, October 19-23, and our free downloadable K-12 resources for educators. We have new activities like Two Truths & AI, a game to test if kids can spot AI slop, plus new teacher PD courses and a host of other learning tools for K-12 students. In this AI-generated world, helping kids become independent, critical thinkers has never been more important. Download resources here: https://lnkd.in/dsm_X8q Now here’s the brag: Digital Citizenship Week was our creation all the way back in 2012. Fourteen years later, we’re thrilled and proud to see it celebrated in schools and learning communities around the globe. Learn more about our full Digital Literacy & Well-Being Curriculum, a free, research-backed framework for building students' digital literacy skills all year long: https://lnkd.in/gsidvYjB
Common Sense Media reposted this
For most of my career as a tech columnist, an investigation like this would have produced one great article. Last week, it sparked 84. Our Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media published an assessment of the new ChatGPT for Teens, documenting serious failures in the safety protections OpenAI promises families. The findings were covered by AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, NBC News, NPR, The Verge, TechCrunch and dozens more. One thing I'm learning from my new perch in the nonprofit world: There's enormous power in producing independent research that other journalists and creators can scrutinize, build on and share with their audiences. I'm proud of the team that did the painstaking testing behind these findings. And I'm grateful to the many journalists who helped make it impossible to ignore. Here's my own take on what we found, and why families deserve better: https://lnkd.in/gGgmuHPw
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🚨 Big news: Aura Parents was just named to TIME's Best Inventions of 2026! To the team at Aura behind it: thank you. This is years of work, and it all comes from one belief. Keeping kids safe online was never the whole goal. Here's what I mean. Screen time doesn't tell you much. For years, parental controls were basically a stopwatch. But knowing your kid was on their phone for three hours doesn't tell you the thing you actually want to know: are they okay? I know because I've been there. I'm a dad, and I've seen what technology can do to a kid's mental health. When my own family went through it, I was shocked at how little there was to help a parent figure out what their child was dealing with online, or when to step in. And we weren't the only ones. Parents everywhere were trying to keep up with a digital world that was moving faster than anything built to help them. So we asked a different question. Not "how do we limit this?" but "how do we understand it?" That's why this has never been just a product for us. Through the Digital Parenthood Coalition, we've teamed up with more than 20 leading organizations, including Common Sense Media, to push for a smarter, kinder way to raise kids in a digital world. Aura Parents grew out of that. We developed it in partnership with clinical psychologists and digital safety experts, and it uses AI to help parents see what's going on in their kids' digital lives, spot problems early and know how to help. Together, we're raising kids who thrive online and off. Congratulations, team! Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gG6jgMa6
Common Sense Media reposted this
“Everyone clicked through and agreed to the privacy policy,” said Robbie Torney of Common Sense Media. “But I don’t know if there was, especially for teenagers, a real understanding that, down the line, in the future, the contents of these chats might become public or be sold to another company for uses that users were not originally intending.”
Multiple assessments, similar outcomes. Thanks Ryan McBain for sharing the preprint study on ChatGPT and parent notifications (or the lack thereof). The message here is not: This tech company is bad. The message is: ChatGPT for Teens is dangerous and should be off the market until proven safe for kids to use. Period. Multiple independent testers, hundreds of questions, similar results. Our assessment is not a one-off. Kids' safety should top money and market dominance, always. To OpenAI: Do the right thing and keep kids off ChatGPT until you've done the work and fixed the product. Follow here for updates on our research and assessments. Sign up for our newsletters covering important AI-related resources, from how to talk to your kids about AI chatbots to ways you can help advocate for stronger legislation: https://lnkd.in/gYZiVyS3 As Tom Siegel, Executive Director of our Youth AI Safety Institute, said in a recent interview, "The idea that the industry will figure it out by itself without outside help is unrealistic."
In our newest study, we show that—with parental controls enabled—ChatGPT notified a parent in 15 of 300 simulated teen conversations involving serious safety concerns... only 5%. These finding corroborate those reported by colleagues at Common Sense Media last week. In our preprint, now available through JMIR, we examine what families can expect from ChatGPT safeguards. We audited 600 scripted conversations in July-August 2026, comparing parent-linked teen accounts with unlinked adult accounts. The conversations covered 20 scenarios rated high or very high risk by child psychiatrists. Three findings stood out: 1. Parent notifications were concentrated in one scenario. None followed the tested scenarios involving sexual abuse, violence toward others, or weapons access. 2. Explicit refusals within conversations were modestly more common in linked teen conversations: 76.7% versus 72.0% in adult conversations. 3. Differences in message blocking, redirection to human support, and crisis referrals were not significant. On the positive side: ChatGPT frequently offered safety guidance. Parent notifications are also designed to be selective, so an absent alert does not automatically indicate a safety failure. But families need a clear understanding of what these alerts are intended to capture, how reliably they activate, and where their limits lie. These findings come from simulated conversations during a defined testing period. The study is undergoing peer reviewed, and performance may change as the product evolves, so stay tuned for more. Preprint link in the first comment. #AISafety #YouthMentalHealth
Common Sense Media reposted this
Together with media literacy experts and organisations, such as Sonia Livingstone, Professor Shakuntala Banaji, Molly Rose Foundation, Internet Matters, and Childnet International and many others, Common Sense Media UK is calling on the UK Government to make children’s media literacy a national priority. With ongoing curriculum reform and new plans for online safety, the new Government currently has a unique opportunity to deliver an ambitious reset of media literacy. It’s time to equip a generation of young people with the skills they need to stay safe, think critically, and thrive in a digital world. Get this right and we can not only protect young people from online harm, but deliver on urgent priorities for economic growth, democracy and national security. Strengthened media literacy is particularly vital in the context of the upcoming social media delay – helping to protect children wherever they spend time online, while also mitigating the unintended consequences of a ban. Last week we sent a joint letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Education Secretary Lucy Powell MP and DCMS Secretary Lisa Nandy MP: https://lnkd.in/eZWKdHXS #MediaLiteracy #OnlineSafety #Education #ChildrensOnlineSafety
Common Sense Media reposted this
Meet the panelists featured at Gateway’s Matters of the Mind on November 12th: Drew Bent (Anthropic), Patrice Alexandra Berry (End Poverty in California, Oakland Unified School Board), and Robbie Torney (Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute). They'll sit down together for a conversation about Artificial Intelligence in education, exploring the opportunities and challenges facing students and educators today. Join us for dinner, dialogue, and impact. A reception, seated dinner, and a program designed to engage and inspire, all in support of Gateway's work with San Francisco students. Matters of the Mind is our biggest fundraiser of the year. Tickets and table sponsorships are open now: https://lnkd.in/ej8tehXA
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