Is this a substitute for a legal compliance review?

No. It is a structured starting point that surfaces common gaps quickly. A children's product still needs an independent safety audit and legal sign-off for COPPA, GDPR, and the UK Age Appropriate Design Code before launch.

Why are some checks marked critical?

Grooming mitigations, age-appropriate content filters, and crisis routing protect against the most serious harms. If any critical safeguard is missing, the tool treats the product as not safe to ship regardless of the overall score.

How should I pick the age range?

Set it to the youngest realistic user, not the average. Safety filters and consent requirements must satisfy the youngest child who can access the product, especially for under-13s where COPPA applies.

What is dependency risk?

It is the danger that a child over-relies on the chatbot or believes it is a real friend or therapist. Children are especially vulnerable to anthropomorphism, so the product should discourage dependency and never claim to be human.

Does ticking everything mean the product is safe?

It means it clears this checklist, which is a strong sign but not proof. Real safety also depends on implementation quality, ongoing monitoring, red-team testing, and human review of flagged conversations.

Children's AI Chatbot Safety Assessment

Children’s AI chatbot safety assessment

Building an AI chatbot that children will use raises the safety bar far above a general-purpose assistant. Kids are more trusting, less able to spot an AI, and more vulnerable to grooming, manipulation, and unhealthy dependency. This checklist walks you through the safeguards that matter most — grouped by risk area and weighted so that the genuinely critical protections dominate the score.

How it works

You describe the chatbot, pick the age range (the bar is set by the youngest user), and choose the use context. Then you work through safeguards across six areas: grooming and contact risk, content filters, parental oversight, emotional safety, dependency and wellbeing, and transparency. Critical items — blocking off-platform contact, age-appropriate content filtering, and routing distress to a human — are weighted heavily. If any critical safeguard is unchecked, the result flags the product as not safe to ship to children regardless of the total score, and lists exactly which gaps to close.

Notes and limitations

Set the age to the youngest user. Under-13 triggers COPPA consent rules and the strictest content filtering; don’t average it away.
Tick only what’s verified. A planned feature is not a safeguard. Score what is actually implemented and tested.
Critical gaps are blockers. Missing crisis routing or grooming mitigations is a launch blocker, not a backlog item.
This is a starting point. It surfaces common failures fast, but a children’s product still needs independent safety audit, red-teaming, ongoing human review, and legal sign-off under COPPA, GDPR, and the UK Children’s Code.