OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Teens with study controls and parental supervision following psychological safety lawsuits
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OpenAI has announced the launch of a dedicated product called ChatGPT for Teens, coming as the company faces a series of lawsuits over the lack of adequate safety measures in generative chatbots and resulting serious concerns regarding mental health and teenage suicides. The new offering aims to provide additional safety controls while addressing the educational friction caused by the use of artificial intelligence tools for school and academic cheating.
On the educational front, the application introduces a new feature called Study Mode alongside other tools designed to encourage young users to channel their curiosity and break down and solve problems themselves, rather than simply relying on direct, ready-made answers. The company explained in a blog post that the Study Mode option provides students with guiding prompts and step-by-step support to help them understand coursework, while the experience also includes homework alerts that appear when a student seems to be trying to cheat rather than comprehend the material, prompting the chatbot to steer them toward Study Mode.
The system seeks to reset educational and parental interaction within the application,supporting short quizzes and visual aids that assist the learning process, while providing parents and guardians with controls to determine whether Study Mode is enabled by default for their teenager. Doubts remain over how well these restrictions will hold up in practice, given that teenagers are adept at circumventing parental controls and navigating around digital restrictions, making the success of the initiative contingent on more rigorous real-world testing.
The move raises parallel questions about why such safeguards were absent when the primary platform launched, with ChatGPT first appearing in late 2022 and expanding its user base to 900 million weekly active users before meaningful protections tailored specifically to teenagers were added. OpenAI maintains that age-appropriate protections will be enabled by default to reduce exposure to harmful or developmentally inappropriate content, pointing to its Under-18 Principles in its model specifications, which were developed using developmental science and specialist consultations.
These features integrate with the family tools and parental controls introduced previously,allowing parents to manage settings, receive safety notifications, and schedule quiet hours. To support technical literacy, the company announced a partnership with Code AI to help teenagers learn more about how artificial intelligence works and how to direct, question, and use it, alongside the company continuing to offer ChatGPT for Teachers to enable schools to manage secure, institutional access to AI tools within classrooms.