The first 3A1Z Family Digital Safety Conversation brought together a Stanford researcher and two Virginia nonprofit leaders to talk about AI, social media, monitoring and trust.
When a child runs into something troubling online, what should a parent do first? Monitor more closely? Take away the phone? Block the app?
Dr. Sabine Charles, founder of the TAPA Institute, opened the first 3A1Z Family Digital Safety Conversation with a different question.
“If something online made your child uncomfortable tonight, would they feel safe coming to you?”
That question set the tone for an hour-long virtual discussion on September 16 about raising children in a world shaped by artificial intelligence, social media and digital technology.
Charles moderated a panel of Dr. Sunny Xun Liu, director of research at the Stanford Social Media Lab; William Willis, executive director of AI Ready RVA, a Richmond, Virginia, nonprofit that teaches AI literacy; and Ramona Taheri, executive director of the Peace Operations Training Institute, which trains peacekeepers online.
The conversation did not settle on one app, one device or one set of screen-time rules. It kept returning to a harder question: How can parents protect children online while building the trust, judgment and digital literacy children need to handle technology themselves?
Trust matters as much as technology
Parental controls alone will not solve the problem, panelists said. Every app and every phone has its own control system, Liu said, and once parents figure one out, children often find a way around it.
Liu, a mother of two, said children need different things at different ages. How much freedom a child should have, and how much support a parent should give, changes as the child grows.
Her team surveyed teens across the United States and asked what they wish their parents knew about technology. The top answer: Do not take my phone away as punishment.
It is also the number one thing parents do, Liu said.
Teens told the researchers they use their phones for homework and school, not only for games and social media. Parents’ worries are just as real, Liu said, and so are the harms and risks.
In another survey, the top reason teens gave for turning to AI for emotional support was that they did not want to burden friends or family, Liu said. The real question, she said, is whether adults have something better to offer young people in the real world.
Her advice was small and daily. Take even five minutes a day to ask how your child is doing and what they saw online. Share screens instead of fighting over them.
A CALMER approach to digital safety
Liu introduced the CALMER framework from A Parent’s Guide to Digital Safety, a free guidebook for parents of teens and preteens from the Stanford Social Media Lab, the Family Online Safety Institute and the California Partners Project. It covers risks from AI companions and social media to gaming, sports betting and sexual extortion, she said, with conversation starters for parents.
CALMER stands for:
Communicate. Talk with your child about life online and offline. Ask out of curiosity, not to judge.
Assess and Address. Find out how much your child is exposed to a specific harm and how it is affecting them. Then work on a fix together.
Listen and Learn. Hear what your child thinks about the apps they use, and ask them to show you how they use them.
Monitor and Manage. Know which apps and online spaces your child uses, and set realistic limits together.
Educate and Encourage. Learn how the technology works yourself. Encourage your child to use their own judgment online and to stay active offline.
Report and Use Resources. Know when to flag content to a platform, when to go to the authorities and when to seek professional help.
The guide is clear that monitoring does not mean watching a child’s online activity without their knowledge. Doing that can backfire and damage trust, it says. It also urges parents to let children know they can ask for help without being punished.
Liu said the research behind the guide pointed to one protective factor above the rest: a strong relationship between parent and child.
AI literacy, at the right age
Cutting children off from AI will not prepare them for the world they are entering, Willis said.
“We don’t want to just cut them off from it,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re regulating how they’re exposed to it.”
Age and readiness matter, he and Liu both said. AI Ready RVA has not given talks to children below middle school age, Willis said, because he does not want to push AI on a child who is not ready.
Liu said the products children already use, from crayons to Lego, come with basic safety built in. Until parents know an AI tool is safe for children, she said, they may want to wait. What children need is AI literacy: understanding the tools, using them ethically and safely, and learning to regulate their own use.
Parents and children can also learn together. Willis described a mother who brought her 14-year-old daughter to one of the group’s community events. The girl later built a working game in under 30 minutes at an AI coding workshop, he said, and AI gave a busy mother and daughter common ground.
When does a useful tool start doing the thinking?
Taheri said AI can be a real learning tool. It can turn long, dense texts into flashcards and practice quizzes, clean up the grammar in a paper, and translate material for children who do not speak English as a first language.
The risk is what she called cognitive offloading: relying on AI to do the critical thinking, such as reading the summary of a hard text and never reading the text itself.
Her institute tells peacekeepers and humanitarian workers in the field not to ask ChatGPT what to do, Taheri said. She worries about children who grow up with that habit and carry it into serious decisions as adults.
A useful question for parents: What is this technology helping my child do, and what is it doing for them that they still need to learn to do themselves?
Parents cannot carry the responsibility alone
Charles asked whether too much responsibility is being placed on parents.
“Totally,” Liu said.
“With no federal regulation, yes,” Willis said.
Earlier in the hour, Liu said many parents are stretched by work and money pressures and lack the time and energy to sit down and really listen. “I don’t think it’s a tech problem,” she said. “It’s fundamentally a human infrastructure problem.”
Teachers are overwhelmed too, she said. She pointed to after-school programs, libraries, trusted adults and older teens as others who can help.
Taheri said parents are being asked to compete with large technology companies whose products, in her view, are designed to be addictive. She called for more transparency and accountability from AI companies, and for rules like those emerging in California and Europe.
“We have an enormous responsibility to our kids, and even more so, to keep these companies accountable, because we cannot compete with them,” Taheri said.
Liu, who lives in California, said she is hopeful that child online safety laws signed there this month will set a safer baseline for families.
No single rule, but a place to start
In the final minutes, Charles asked what one thing an overwhelmed parent could do this week.
Willis said to sit down for an honest conversation about AI. Ask what your child knows about it and how they want to use it. Then agree on guidelines together.
Liu said to start by listening. She feels most hopeful, she said, when she talks with young people themselves.
Taheri said to offer real-world alternatives: your time, an activity, or a counselor a child can talk to in private. With a chatbot, she said, people often do not know where their information goes.
Charles said her takeaway was that every child is different, so no single answer fits every family. Her own rule is “trust but verify.”
The September 16 discussion was the first in the 3A1Z Family Digital Safety Conversation Series, which brings parents, educators, researchers and community voices together around raising children in the age of AI and social media. 3A1Z Stories will keep turning these conversations into practical resources, stories and tools that families can use after the live events.
The goal is not to raise children who never encounter risk online. It is to raise children who know how to respond, and who know they have someone to turn to when they need help.
