Key Elements:

• AI’s Influence on Children: As AI becomes embedded in everyday life, it affects children’s cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral development.
• Critical Growth Periods: Children’s brains undergo essential development from birth to 25 years. Unmonitored AI interactions might harm cognitive growth if they replace vital human experiences.
• Understanding AI’s impact: It is crucial to leveraging AI for supporting growth while managing potential risks.
• Social Skills & AI: AI mimicking human behavior can distort children’s understanding of social norms, affecting communication and social skills without proper oversight.
• Ethical AI Design: AI for children must be developed with input from child development experts, ensuring systems support learning and well-being rather than undermining them.

Factually, generative AI is transforming how humans interact with machines. Though these interactions are merely based on advanced probabilistic algorithms, they mimic human language and behavior. This raises particular concerns for children, who are still developing their understanding of social norms, the complexities of human relationships, and crucial social skills needed for healthy relationships and effective communication—skills that cannot be learned through interactions with chatbots and robots. Moreover, due to the biological constraints of their still-developing brains, children lack the cognitive and socio-emotional skills to critically assess AI interactions and the experiences they present. Without sufficient life experience and judgment, they are not yet equipped to fully understand or make the best use of AI technologies, making it imperative for adults to guide them through this complex landscape and safeguard their well-being.

Given the paradigm shift introduced in human-machine relationships, both human sciences and AI experts must collaborate. AI has the potential to support cognitive and socio-emotional development, but achieving this requires combining deep insights from neuroscience, psychology, and education with technical innovation. By gaining foundational knowledge in these fields and working with independent experts, product developers can design AI systems that foster growth, support key developmental milestones, and minimize risks. This collaboration is crucial to ensure that both the benefits and risks of AI are fully understood. Through continuous research and learning engineering, AI solutions can evolve responsibly as our understanding of their impact deepens.

Furthermore, while responsible AI design is crucial, it alone is not enough to ensure the long-term cognitive and socio-emotional well-being of individuals under 25, who represent over 40% of the world’s population. Safeguarding their development is not only a moral duty but also an international obligation, as outlined in Article 6 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which emphasizes every child’s right to “develop to their full potential.” Therefore, policies about safety should now encompass intellectual, emotional, and social growth, to ensure AI systems support children’s long-term development rather than hinder it. Policymakers, AI engineers and product designers must prioritize child development as a fundamental aspect of responsible innovation, ensuring the technologies we create today do not harm the very generation that will one day shape the future of our society.

Schools, parents and educators play a vital role in guiding children through both the physical and digital worlds. Nevertheless, the rapid pace of AI development makes this increasingly challenging. To fulfill this role, they need clear guidelines to understand the potential impacts of AI on children at different age levels. While the duty for safe AI solutions lies with developers and policymakers, schools and educators must be equipped with the tools and knowledge to guide children in thoughtfully engaging with AI in a way that will support their sound intellectual development and long-term well-being in the AI era.

Scientific evidence has already established that when not tailored to the younger population’s needs and left unmonitored, the use of technology negatively impacts their cognition, academic performance, and mental well-being. This is no longer a distant concern, but a pressing reality. It is now the shared responsibility of everyone—leaders, developers, educators, and citizens alike—to anticipate, prioritize and safeguard children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. The choices we collectively make today will define not only their future, but the future of society as a whole.

We must act today to create, design, and shape environments where AI serves children’s needs, empowering their growth and potential rather than exploiting their vulnerabilities or dictating their futures. Join us in signing to ensure that the urgency of this issue is recognized and that children’s well-being is prioritized in the development of ethical AI.