Our Story
My daughter asked to download an AI 'chat friend' app
The parental controls paused it, but they couldn't make it safe. Here's what I did instead.
A year ago, my daughter asked if she could download an AI friend chat app on her iPad. Because of our approval settings, she had to come to me first. And that conversation changed everything.
The controls worked. They paused the download and brought her to me. But they also made something clear.
What became clear
If the content itself isn't safe for kids, parental controls can catch it. They can’t make it safe.
So we sat down and talked about what AI actually is and what it isn't. I told her that if she has feelings she wants to get out, she can talk to her family, her friends, or write them down.
She journals now, she writes in a diary, and she loves it.
The takeaway
Sometimes the fix is finding them something else to do rather than taking the thing away.