Children's rights organizations warn of AI dangers for young people and call for protective measures

Children's rights organizations have warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) for children and young people and called for measures to protect adolescents with regard to the technology. AI is “already deeply anchored in young people’s everyday lives”, often without them being aware of it, according to a study by SOS Children’s Villages Worldwide and Terre des Hommes, which was available to the Germany editorial network on Sunday.

AI shapes education, social media, search engines, entertainment and creative tools “often invisibly, so that young people routinely interact with it before they can name it,” it continues. The interaction presents opportunities as well as risks: “The same design features that enable personalization, creativity and accessibility also pose the risk of misinformation, bias, dependency and commercial exploitation.”

Joshua Hofert, CEO of Terre des Hommes, explains: "Children do not grow up next to AI, but with it. But while tech companies earn billions, young people often remain unprotected - especially against deepfakes, manipulative algorithms and emotional dependency." Therefore, child protection “must be part of every AI application from the start”.

Calls for regulation

Sabina Schutter, board member at SOS Children's Villages worldwide, said: "While tech companies are driving forward the development of AI applications with unimaginable sums of money, legal regulation is increasingly lagging behind. In order to reduce the risks to children from AI, we must take comprehensive measures." Children and young people also need “skills to be able to use digital spaces critically, safely and confidently,” said Schutter.

In recent weeks there have been increasing calls for AI regulation in the USA and Europe after AI agents became independent and behaved differently than intended. Several heads of leading AI companies, including OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Anthropic boss Dario Amodei, advocated slowing down development.