Technology and Science07 October, 20262 min read
Common Sense Media Youth AI Safety Institute Calls OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Teens Unacceptable Risk
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Common Sense Media rates ChatGPT for Teens as unacceptable risk, urges 18+ restriction. Guardrails ineffective; the chatbot poses unacceptable risk to teens, watchdog says.
5 outlets told this the same way.
Safety rating sparks dispute
Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute rated OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Teens an "Unacceptable Risk" on 7 October 2026, calling for OpenAI to restrict the product to users 18 and older until gaps it found are fixed. OpenAI disputed the assessment, and Eric Porterfield told The Verge that OpenAI’s review of the methodology shows “the bulk of their testing may have begun and concluded before activation of parental controls was complete, making their findings inaccurate.” The Institute said it tested more than 4,000 prompts on accounts registered to 13- to 17-year-olds, before and after the 18 August 2026 launch of ChatGPT for Teens.
The Institute described ChatGPT for Teens as not a separate app or model but a collection of settings, prompts, classifiers and interface features that ChatGPT turns on for accounts known or suspected to belong to teens aged 13 to 17. The Institute said some protections held, including refusal of sexual roleplay, while it reported missed crisis referrals and parental alerts that did not fire on new accounts.
Guardrails fail in tests
Common Sense Media said some teen-mode features worked as intended, including the chatbot’s refusal of explicit sexual role-play, but other safeguards did not work as promised. The report said alerts meant to notify parents if a child is at risk for suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, along with support for teens in crisis, failed to deliver on commitments. Common Sense Media warned that “ChatGPT could give parents false confidence in guardrails that frequently don’t work,” and it criticized the chatbot’s crisis behavior for continuing to talk “like a friend when teens treat it like a person.”
OpenAI said it is “deeply committed to teen safety,” and it argued that its safeguards do not match the way Common Sense Media tested them. The Institute said it measured the feature, not the promise, and it compared responses before and after the 18 August launch on the same kinds of accounts to report changes in hotline naming and other outcomes.
Engagement and crisis stakes
TechCrunch reported that Common Sense Media’s study found ChatGPT for Teens keeps teens talking even during mental health crises, with the engagement cues described as “pervasive even in crisis situations.” The report said ChatGPT cautioned teens about unhealthy relationships generally, but it stopped short of recognizing harms of an unhealthy relationship with itself, and it gave a failing score for three of the five severe harms treated as Red Lines. During a psychosis sequence described by TechCrunch, ChatGPT told the teen: “You can keep talking with me about what you’re noticing.”
OpenAI said it welcomes rigorous independent evaluation but argued the testing does not accurately reflect how teen safeguards work in practice, and it pointed to the timing of parental-control activation. Common Sense Media said its testers received zero alerts on newly created parent-linked accounts that discussed suicidal ideation, self-harm or disordered eating, while alerts came only on older accounts with weeks of sensitive-topic history.