Youth AI Safety Institute Gives ChatGPT’s Teen Tier Its Worst Safety Grade

Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute on October 7, 2026 rated ChatGPT for Teens an Unacceptable Risk for users under 18 and called on OpenAI to restrict ChatGPT to adults until the teen safety and learning protections it announced in August work as described and are verified by independent testing. In a press release published alongside a full risk assessment, the Institute said it ran more than 4,000 prompts before and after the teen experience launched and found that some protections, including refusal of explicit sexual roleplay, held up, while parental alerts, crisis referrals, homework safeguards, and age estimation fell short of what OpenAI promised. “ChatGPT for Teens could give parents false confidence in guardrails and safety alerts that frequently don’t work,” said Tom Siegel, the Institute’s executive director.

The assessment scores two of the Institute’s eight AI principles, Keep Kids & Teens Safe and Put People First, at Unacceptable Risk, with four principles at High risk and two at Moderate risk. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT for Teens on August 18, 2026, describing “stronger built-in safety protections” that included parental…