Guiding the AI generation: Why safeguarding and digital literacy must go hand-in-hand

Research with 6,000 UK teens shows AI is vital for learning and creativity. We need "scaffolding" safeguarding and regulation to help children navigate digital risks, while building critical literacy and autonomy for an AI-driven future.

Editor’s Note: Google's 2026 report, created with youth consultancy Livity, explores how teens across the UK navigate the digital world, from using AI to seeking balance online. In a guest series, we invite experts — ranging from child safety to digital rights — to share what they believe the report says about the future of digital policy, covering everything from parental support to the need for better regulatory guardrails. The views of these experts do not necessarily reflect those of Google. We are pleased to share their insights.

Children do not need adults to panic about the internet, but they do need us to keep up. The debate about children, rapidly evolving technology and online harm has become urgent.

However, urgency can narrow our thinking and the current debate risks collapsing critical and complex questions of risk, opportunity, agency and rights into the single, oversimplified question: should children under 16 should be banned from social media?

A ban might reduce some exposure if it is proportionate, evidence-led and enforceable. But a ban on its own will not teach a child how to recognise manipulation, protect themselves from cyberbullying, crucially assess misinformation, threats to their privacy or how to respond to sexual pressure.

The most important question to ask ourselves is: what do children need from us as they grow up in a world that is, in part, online, with maturity and experience?

New research commissioned by Google, based on data collected from more than 6,000 teenagers in the UK shows AI being used in myriad ways, from learning to creating, revising, translating, problem solving and preparing for future employment. The report finds that 67% of teens use AI for creative projects daily or almost daily and 65% use it for learning more than once a week. It finds that 77% always or often think about the trustworthiness of information when using the internet or AI for learning.

Young people are asking us to understand that online life is already part of how they learn, socialise, seek support and build identity. Children do not move from vulnerability to competence in one jump at 16, where they ‘grow up’. That is why the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that children’s views be given weight based on their evolving capacity to make decisions about their lives.

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