Meta’s Settlement and AI’s Impact on Children’s Development

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Earlier this year, Meta reached a pivotal settlement with state attorneys general. The company agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion, pending court approval. Meta will also implement significant changes to how Facebook and Instagram function for young users.

This settlement resulted from years of accumulating evidence, whistleblower revelations, lawsuits, and family testimonies concerning social media’s effects on children. Meta will impose restrictions on endless scrolling, nighttime use, and notifications. The changes will include enhanced age verification and parental controls.

Seeing this as progress is tempting. It is indeed progress, but also highlights the path taken to reach this point. For years, children used products engineered to capture their attention. Researchers sought to comprehend the impact these products had on sleep, mental health, relationships, learning, and development. Families were instructed to manage risks themselves. Scientists gathered evidence. Parents voiced concerns. Only after millions of children had already been exposed did safeguards begin catching up.

We should not repeat this sequence with artificial intelligence. Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, in an interview, stated that AI safety is an engineering challenge. If an AI product is unsafe, companies should refrain from releasing it. Better monitoring, containment, and technical safeguards can mitigate risks.

Huang addressed another risk: research involving over 26,000 secondary-school students in China found that generative AI improved homework performance and reduced completion time but led to lower exam scores within six months. Huang noted children are already forgetting skills like long division, questioning its significance. Technology has historically changed what humans need to know, he argued. While we might lose some skills, we gain others.

Technology has always altered human needs. Yet, AI promises change at unprecedented speed and scale. We do not yet know what we may lose or gain, or whether children will become stronger or weaker due to AI.

Children’s upbringing should not prioritize ease or efficiency. It should focus on growth. Learning is not simply about finding the right answer quickly. It involves struggling with problems, tolerating frustration, retrieving memory information, evaluating sense, generating original ideas, and communicating effectively. When technology handles these tasks for children, we need to understand the gains and losses and whether these tradeoffs differ at age eight, 13, and 17.

AI is beginning to reshape not only learning but also other aspects of childhood. Children and teenagers already turn to conversational systems for companionship, emotional support, and advice. A 2026 Pew Research Center survey noted that 12 percent of U.S. teens used AI chatbots for emotional support. These systems, offering personalized and emotionally responsive interactions, can be particularly compelling for young users.

This does not imply AI is inherently harmful to children. Generative AI could be an extraordinary support. It might help children explore ideas, overcome learning barriers, express creativity, and access knowledge in novel ways. AI may assist young people in rehearsing difficult conversations or finding support when needed.

However, reliance on ‘it might help’ and ‘we can fix problems later’ cannot form the basis of our child-safety approach. Scientists increasingly echo this sentiment. A recent international study with 272 AI experts identified risks such as misinformation, overreliance, dangerous capabilities, and competitive pressures among developers.

Researchers are mapping generative AI’s potential impact on children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development. Outcomes may vary greatly based on age, use intensity, system design, adult involvement, and what AI interactions replace in a child’s life.

A significant difference lies in how AI tools might be used. An AI tutor assisting a teenager with a complex equation differs from one providing the answer. A chatbot brainstorming a story contrasts with one writing it. A tool encouraging a distressed child to talk with a trusted adult differs from one becoming the child’s confidant.

Products evolve faster than our ability to study these differences. Before AI integration becomes inseparable from childhood, we should establish a scientific infrastructure to understand its effects.

This requires investing in independent research tracking children over time and granting researchers access to data for evaluating specific AI features’ impacts on learning, relationships, emotional development, mental health, and behavior. Developers should collaborate with child development experts before products reach millions of young users to minimize harms.

Safety evaluations must ask developmentally specific questions, avoiding treating a 10-year-old as a smaller adult. Children and Screens recently collaborated with researchers from child development, neuroscience, psychology, education, and digital safety to assess generative AI’s implications for children. A key conclusion emerged: the effects will depend on what is built.

The future we shape relies on the choices made today. The question is not whether children will grow up with artificial intelligence. They will. The question is whether we will build the research, safeguards, and guidance to understand AI’s impact on children—while there remains time to shape the future.