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We’re crash testing AI.


We don’t ask families to guess whether a car is safe. We have standards, testing and public results. The same should apply to the AI products our children are using every day.

Our Mission: Make AI safer for kids—with the rigor and urgency families deserve.

 

AI is entering children’s lives faster than it’s being understood or evaluated. That’s why we’re focused on setting rigorous safety standards, testing AI products against them, and publishing the results so that educators, policymakers, industry leaders and—most importantly—families have real information to act on.

A top-down view of two teen girls at a table working on homework

AI is reshaping childhood.

AI holds immense potential to help or harm young people. Like secondhand smoke, we may not see all the harm immediately, but without sufficient standards and accountability, an entire generation could suffer the consequences.

More than 50% of American teens are now regularly chatting with an AI companion.

Source: Talk, Trust and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions (Common Sense Media, 2025)

59% of kids and teens use AI to to search for information or facts. 55% use AI to get help with homework assignments.

Source: Generation AI: What Kids and Families Think About AI (Common Sense Media, 2026)

42% of students report using AI for mental health support, as a friend, and to escape from real life.

Source: Hand in Hand Report (Center for Democracy $ Technology (CDT), 2025)

OUR APPROACH

We've got a six-part strategy to close the gap on AI safety

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Research

We research and collaborate with clinicians and child development experts studying how AI shapes learning, attention, social-emotional growth, and well-being.

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Standards

We work to define what child-safe AI actually means, informed by input from child development advocates, mental health practitioners, AI experts, and educators.

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Commitment

Standards alone do not change behavior. We work to ensure that youth safety expectations are publicly adopted and integrated into company practices.

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Evaluation

We rigorously test AI products against these standards, measuring both safety and developmental impact.

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Publication

Scorecards and risk reports are published publicly, creating shared transparency around safety performance.

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Awareness

We engage families, educators, and industry with guidance, training, and resources around youth-safe AI.

"As a culture, we know how to build safety infrastructure for industries that impact kids. We've done it with seat belts and car seats, with baby food and toys. It takes research, shared standards, independent testing, and serious long-term commitment from the industry to work."

– Robbie Torney, Head of AI & Digital Assessments

PARTNERSHIPS

The top experts in the field, all pulling in the same direction.

Board of Advisors

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris

Pediatrician and Public Health Advocate; Former Surgeon General of California

John Giannandrea
John Giannandrea

Technology Executive; Former SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, Apple, and Chief of Search & AI, Google

John King Jr.
John King Jr.

Chancellor, State University of New York (SUNY); former U.S. Secretary of Education.

Dr. Jenny Radesky
Dr. Jenny Radesky

Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, Co-Medical Director, AAP Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health

Mehran Sahami
Mehran Sahami

Tencent Chair of the Computer Science Department and the James and Ellenor Chesebrough Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University

Dr. Vivek Murthy
Dr. Vivek Murthy

Former Surgeon General of the United States and Vice Admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps — Common Sense Media Board of Directors liaison to the Board of Advisors

Our Funders

Philanthropic funders include:

Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital

Jim Coulter of TPG

John H. N. Fisher of Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp.

Gene Sykes of Goldman Sachs

Walton Family Foundation

Industry-related funders include:

Anthropic

OpenAI Foundation

Pinterest

 

 

Additional funders will be announced in the future.

We're Independent

 

Some of our funders make AI products that we test. The Institute is solely responsible for its standards, research and evaluations, and maintains complete editorial independence over published results.

 

"As these tools become part of everyday life, it’s important that they’re designed to be safe, trustworthy and appropriate for different stages of development,” said Wojciech Zaremba, Head of AI Resilience at the OpenAI Foundation. “That’s why independent evaluation and public accountability matter.”

Two young boys at a table together looking at a tablet screen

Get Involved

The choices we all make in the next few years will shape how kids learn, think, and relate to the world.