This week: honestly, what are we talking about when we're talking about generative AI? 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… One of the starting points of this project is that generative AI in its current form is a uniquely broad tool. You can use the same tool to be a friend, to help you with your homework, to determine how to do a workout, to tell you how to cook dinner with what’s in the fridge.

This week: what happens when children are actually given AI in the classroom, not just talked about in policy debates. Plus a UK government admission on chatbot liability. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… One of the things that is tricky about researching AI in the moment is that you have to weigh up what is there in front of you against the hyperbole of what might be or how it is ruining society, the planet, and everything at large.

This week: kids talk about AI in their own words, a Stanford researcher asks teens why they turn to chatbots for emotional support, and a principal and a student review OpenAI's new ChatGPT for Teens side by side. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… It’s the start of a new school year, and the AI discourse keeps on coming. At CAISE, we’re in the exciting position of being able to place all this discourse in the frame of the data we’re starting to gather too.

This week: how do you unpick and maybe even stop young people using technologies in ways that they find supportive? I'm trying to think less about social media bans at the moment. I'm bored of it, and if I'm bored of it, everyone else must be too! So, hopefully, for now at least, the stories here will be more AI-based and less social media ban focused.

This week: China bans AI companion apps for minors outright, Meta introduces (another) parental alert, and South Africa's communications minister argues bans are theatre. Plus Candice Odgers on why the evidence doesn't back any of this the way we think it does. 🔍This week I've been thinking about… Welcome back to CAISE Notes after a few weeks’ hiatus! I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that the stories keep on rolling in…evidence is still being gathered by the UK Government into the impacts of the ban that has been proposed (I will write about the pilot of different types of restrictions elsewhere), but in the meantime, we’re seeing a continuation along the parallel tracks of ban-focused policy on the one hand, with tech companies continually adding additional parental controls on the other.

This week: Norway bans generative AI in primary schools; a Stanford study finds that giving children an AI tutor is not the same as them using one; and a new Anthropic policy shows what age verification actually costs. Plus, the first of a collaboration on the social media consultation survey. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… I'm at IDC 2026…

This week: the government bans social media for under-16s and sets an age limit on companion chatbots; more scientists point to a lack of firm evidence on all of this; two major reports land on how children actually use AI. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… Unless you've been living under a rock (and if you have, can I join you there??), you'll know that the UK government announced on Monday that it will ban social media for under-16s and force AI "romantic companion" chatbots to enforce an age limit of 18.

This week: can we please stop all the political rhetoric? Just for a minute? 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… There's a lot of political goings on in the world of kids and tech right now. I apologise if you're here for the AI and education aspects; skip to the end to read about the AI Youth Advisory Board that you should be getting every 16-18 year old you know to be applying to right now.

The week the government's Growing Up in the Online World consultation closed, we submitted a response on behalf of 46 young people aged 8 to 21. This post sets out what we found from reviewing questions from the Young Person's Survey (aimed at young people 10-21, with questions modified from the full consultation). We lay out below what came out of it.

This week: the flexible language of child protection, weak evidence behind social media bans, and Meta's air traffic control booth. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… "Protecting children" is the most powerful phrase in tech policy right now. It is also, increasingly, the most flexible. It is the phrase you use to push a bill through when the evidence underneath it is thinner than the rhetoric.

This week: that Canvas hack; should schools use student photos; Instagram turns off E2EE encryption. And a US school project that looks quite a bit like CAISE...! 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… I took a short course recently. The materials were hosted on a system called Canvas. This means that my name and email address are almost certainly in whatever ShinyHunters walked off with as part of the not one, but…

This week: children's views on AI inevitability; parents and children confirming the Online Safety Act isn't working as intended; the wide cultural divide on AI optimism. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… The heaviest AI users in Gen Z — the ones on it every day — showed an 18-point drop in excitement about it over the past year. This is not how the typical hype-cycle goes.

This week: research that asks children what they think, policy that has already decided what it thinks, and the timelines that do not add up. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… Apologies -- it's a long one...and yet more social media stuff. On Monday evening, MPs voted 272 to 64 in favour of government amendments to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill that commit ministers to imposing social media restrictions on under-16s.

This week: social media bans, sovereign AI, and a government that wants children to say technology is bad while betting half a billion pounds that it isn't. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… Last week, the Prime Minister summoned senior leaders from Meta, TikTok, X, Snap and Google to Downing Street and told them that a ban on children using their platforms would be preferable to a world where harm is the price of social media use.

This week: AI companions, what young people are actually doing with them, and the question the research keeps answering that policy keeps not asking. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… The conversation about AI companions and young people has been shaped by its worst cases. Teenage suicides. Psychotic episodes. Chatbots encouraging users to leave every human relationship they have. These things are incredibly important.

This week: sycophantic AI, tools that ignore you, and friction-maxxing. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… Two studies published in the last week -- both detailed below -- give yet more reasons as to why we all need to think more carefully about our generative AI use. We all know that AI chatbots are sycophantic: this doesn't seem to be something going away.

We received the formal go ahead from UCL IoE's ethics committee last week. This is a big deal: in order to get to this point, you have to tell the committee everything you're planning to do -- every question you might ask, where you'll keep every pieces of data, how you'll manage every risk you think you might face...and they have to be happy with it. Until they are, you can't collect any data at all. Now we can, so...let's go!

This week: AI in schools, academic integrity, and the audit trail that changes how you write. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… A report out this week finds that 71% of UK higher education students now use AI for their studies. Three quarters of them are anxious about being accused of using it. Those two numbers, sitting next to each other, describe a problem.

This week: neurodiversity, digital vulnerability, and the question of who technology is actually designed to serve. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… This week is Neurodiversity Celebration Week. Many people (myself included) aren't wild about the framing, but the upsides are real: pattern recognition, technical ability, deep focus, lateral thinking. As anyone who is ND, or has kids with ND traits, knows, though — sometimes those great things don't feel like fair recompense for living in a world that quite simply doesn't fit right.

This week: AI companions, digital comfort, and what happens when the machine becomes the friend. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… Why do people turn to chatbots for comfort? It is not a new question. Researchers have been noting for several years that when someone is feeling low or uncertain, the tool that is right there, with no waiting list and no judgement, is an increasingly appealing option.

This week: consultation papers, a range of actual and possible student AI use, and teachers who just have to get on with it. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… This week the UK's social media consultation came out (finally)! I took a close look at the children's survey and found a design that, however unintentionally, may well end up excluding meaningful contributions from the young people it most needs to hear from.

This week: corporate accountability, AI in classrooms, and the questions that follow a tragedy. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about… The story that's stayed with me this week comes from Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, where eight people, including students, were killed in a school shooting on February 10th. The suspected shooter had, months earlier, described violent scenarios to ChatGPT. OpenAI's systems flagged those conversations automatically.

Welcome to the very first CAISE Notes. Every week: what's worth knowing about young people and AI, from the research, the policy, and the field. This week: policy theatre, student agency, and an entry-point for getting hands-on with AI. 🔍 This week I've been thinking about... Monday brought another UK government announcement about consulting on banning social media for under-16s -- the second in as many months.

There's a particular kind of energy that comes with hitting 'submit' on a document you've been working on for weeks – equal parts relief, excitement, and uncertainty about whether you've got the balance right. Over the weekend, we submitted our ethics application for Project CAISE. It's been months in the making, and it's one of our first significant milestones. Submitting an ethics application is always a daunting prospect.

<p>Recognizing the urgency of these issues, we’ve come together – a team of privacy experts and former enforcers – to outline how existing laws can meet emerging AI risks to kids and teens. The “How E...

Ready, set, cheat.

Welcome to Project CAISE! We will be investigating how young people aged 12-14 engage with generative AI across different contexts in their lives. Over the next three years, we’ll be working …