What you will learn
- Teach the one-line rule until it is automatic.
- Help your child recognise what should never be typed in.
- Set accounts and settings so privacy is the default, not the exception.
Privacy learned as a reflex at nine is a shield that protects your child at nineteen. This short module makes it a habit, not a lecture.
The one-line rule
Teach this until it is automatic: the chatbot is a stranger, and we do not tell strangers our private things. Name, school, address, phone number, and photos never go into a chatbot. A child who holds the tool as a stranger will protect themselves without you in the room.
Make a game of spotting it
Try this
Play "would you tell a stranger?" Read out things one might type into a chatbot, your full name, your favourite colour, your home address, a made-up story, your school's name, and have your child sort them into "safe to share" and "keep private". It takes five minutes and it sticks.
Set privacy as the default
- Where the service allows, keep your child's account under a parent's email and turn off chat history or training on your data in the settings.
- Prefer tools with a proper child or teen mode, and read what they say about data before you trust them.
- Remind your child that "delete" does not always mean gone. The safest data is the data never typed in.
Why this matters more than it looks
Public chatbots can retain and learn from what is typed into them. For an adult that is a manageable trade. For a child who does not yet understand permanence, a habit of oversharing set now can follow them for years. The one-line rule is small, and it does more to protect your child than any setting.
What the research says
Data privacy is the single most common theme across school AI guidance, according to The 74's reporting on more than 30 US states, and Common Sense Media's guidance for families puts protecting personal information at the centre of safe AI use.
- A Step-by-Step Guide to AI in Schools (The 74)
- AI and families research (Common Sense Media)
Sources for this module
- A Step-by-Step Guide to AI in Schools, The 74. https://www.the74million.org
- AI and families research, Common Sense Media. https://www.commonsensemedia.org