Character.AI Safety Guide for Parents and Teens (2026)

Character.AI is a widely used consumer AI chat application, and it became one of the most scrutinized, culminating in a policy change in late 2025 that removed open-ended chat for users under 18. This guide explains what the platform does, what changed, what protections now exist, and what parents need to know in 2026. It reflects Character.AI's own announcements and help center articles as of October 15, 2026.

This is a non-Dawiso topic - we publish it because parents and educators ask the same factual questions repeatedly, and clear, current answers are not always easy to find. None of the recommendations below replace conversation with your own family or your school's safeguarding team.

What Is Character.AI?

Character.AI (sometimes written C.AI) is a web and mobile application that lets users chat with AI-powered "Characters": fictional, historical, or invented personas, from anime protagonists to therapists to celebrities. Users can also create their own Characters. The public beta launched in September 2022. The founders, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, came from Google, where De Freitas had led the development of the Meena and LaMDA dialog models. In August 2024, Google signed a non-exclusive license for Character.AI's model technology, and both founders, with some of the research team, joined Google; Character.AI continued as a separate company.

Status in October 2026. On October 12, 2026, Character.AI announced that it had started a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy process for a court-supervised sale of the company, citing "significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds". It said the platform remains up and running, and that if no buyer is found, the platform will be wound down.

The appeal is straightforward: Characters maintain memory across a conversation, hold a personality, and can roleplay scenarios. For many users - particularly teenagers - the experience is more engaging than a generic assistant chatbot.

Age Requirements

Character.AI's minimum user age is 13, or 16 in Europe, according to its Safety Center. Users enter a birthday at signup, and accounts below the minimum age are not permitted.

Until late 2025, that self-declared birthday was the main age signal, and anyone could type a false date. Age assurance, which Character.AI began rolling out in the US in November 2025, is meant to close that gap.

The November 2025 Under-18 Changes

Character.AI announced on October 29, 2025 that it would remove open-ended chat for users under 18 no later than November 25, 2025. During the transition it capped teen chat time at two hours a day and then lowered the cap, to one hour a day in the US. It began removing open-ended chat for under-18 users in the US on November 24, 2025, in two stages, with other markets following. Since then:

• Users under 18 cannot have open-ended chat conversations with AI Characters. The free-form, back-and-forth chat experience that defined the product is no longer available to minors.
• Instead, under-18 users are in what the help center calls reading mode: they can browse Characters and view content, keep their past chats viewable, and create Characters, scenes and videos. On November 25, 2025, Character.AI also launched Stories, a guided choose-your-own-adventure format and its first format built for teens.
• The change applies to accounts that age assurance places in the under-18 experience, whatever birthday was entered at signup.

Character.AI said it made the change because news reports and questions from regulators had raised concerns about the content teens may encounter in AI chat and about how open-ended AI chat might affect teens "even when content controls work perfectly". Weeks earlier, in September 2025, the FTC had ordered Character Technologies and six other companies to report how they evaluate and limit the risks of companion chatbots to children and teens. The company called its steps "extraordinary" and apologized to its under-18 users for removing a key feature. From a parent's perspective, the practical takeaway is simpler: a teen using Character.AI in 2026 cannot do what teens were doing on the platform in 2024.

How Age Verification Works

Character.AI's age-assurance program combines an in-house age estimation model with a third-party verification provider, Persona.

According to Character.AI's Age Assurance FAQ, the signals it evaluates include:

• Login information
• Activity on the platform
• Some signals from third parties (the company has not published which)

The FAQ says the check is not based on the birthday you entered. If age assurance indicates a user is under 18, the user can stay in the under-18 experience or verify with a selfie through Persona. Only if Persona cannot confirm from the selfie that the user is 18 or older does it ask for a government ID. Character.AI says it does not collect or store the selfie or ID, and that Persona deletes biometric data and IDs within 7 days. Users verified as under 18 stay in the under-18 experience; the help center says a user who turns 18 can contact support to verify again.

Safety Features

Beyond age assurance, Character.AI describes several built-in safety mechanisms. The dates show when the company announced each one.

• Content filters: classifiers that screen model outputs and user inputs against the content policies. The Safety Center says the under-18 model has additional, more conservative classifiers; since November 2025 that matters less, because under-18 accounts no longer have open-ended chat.
• Time notifications: since December 2024, users get a notification after an hour-long session, and users under 18 have more limits on their ability to change it.
• Self-harm resources: since October 2024, certain self-harm or suicide phrases trigger a pop-up that points to crisis support. In September 2026 the company said its detection considers the surrounding conversation and that it works with Koko and ThroughLine to point users to support services in their own country.
• Reporting tools: users can report Characters or content for review, and Character.AI says it removes Characters that violate its terms, both proactively and in response to reports. In September 2026 it said creators are now told when their content is moderated and can appeal.

Parental Insights

Character.AI launched Parental Insights in March 2025. The first version sent a parent a weekly email with the teen's daily average time on the platform, the Characters they interacted with most, and the time spent with each, without chat content. The current version, described in the Parental Insights FAQ updated in August 2026, is narrower: a linked parent sees only the teen's screen time, as daily totals in a dashboard called Family Connect plus a weekly digest, and cannot see messages or set limits.

Parental Insights only works if the teen sends the invite: the teen enters a trusted adult's email, and the adult must prove they are an adult before the link is complete. It is optional, and either side can disconnect at any time. In practice, this means Parental Insights is most useful when it is part of a broader parent-teen agreement, not when it is imposed.

Known Risks

Even with the November 2025 changes in place, parents should be aware of the following residual risks:

• Misrepresented age: age assurance replaces the self-declared birthday, but it relies on estimation, and no estimation method is perfect. Character.AI says it is constantly working to improve its accuracy.
• Emotional attachment: Characters are designed to feel like companions, and prolonged use can foster parasocial relationships that displace human contact. Character.AI cited questions about how open-ended AI chat might affect teens as a reason for its change, and the risk remains for any teen who reaches the adult experience.
• User-created Characters: the platform filters and removes problematic ones, but user-generated Characters remain a long-tail risk, because removal depends on filters and reports.
• Other apps: other AI companion services may not have Character.AI's safety controls. A teen who is frustrated by the limited experience may move to a riskier alternative.
• Privacy: messages and account data are processed under Character.AI's privacy policy, and age verification data goes to Persona. Read the policy together and discuss what is appropriate to share before the first use.

Tips for Parents

• Have the conversation early. If your teen is interested in AI chat, talk about it before they install the app. Banning is rarely effective; agreeing on rules of use is.
• Use device-level controls. Character.AI's parent connection shows screen time but cannot set limits. Apple Screen Time and Google Family Link can both restrict the app to defined hours.
• Encourage Parental Insights. Frame it as transparency, not surveillance: you see screen time, not private conversations.
• Watch for displacement. If the chatbot is replacing human friendships, sleep, or schoolwork, the issue is not the platform - it is what the platform is filling in for.
• Know what to look for. Sudden secrecy, declining mood, or comments that mirror chatbot phrasing are worth checking on.
• Make a path back. Teens who feel watched will hide their use. Make clear that telling you about a bad experience will not get them banned from the app.

Resources

For up-to-date safety information, refer directly to the platform and to independent child-safety organizations:

• Character.AI safety announcements, published on the company's blog, and its Safety Center
• Internet Matters, independent UK guidance on Character.AI for parents
• Common Sense Media, US-based reviews and conversation starters for parents
• National crisis lines: in the US, 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline); in the UK, Samaritans on 116 123

If you have questions about how AI tools handle data, or are an organization considering AI for younger users, see our guides to AI governance and responsible AI.

Sources

• Character.AI Support, Safety Center, updated October 2025.
• Character.AI Support, Age Assurance FAQ, updated August 2026.
• Character.AI Support, What is Age Assurance?, July 2026.
• Character.AI Support, What happens to my data during age assurance?, updated July 2026.
• Character.AI Support, What is Reading Mode?, updated July 2026.
• Character.AI Support, Parental Insights FAQ, updated August 2026.
• Character.AI, Taking Bold Steps to Keep Teen Users Safe on Character.AI, October 29, 2025.
• Character.AI, An Update On Changes to Our Under-18 Experience, November 21, 2025.
• Character.AI, Introducing Stories, November 25, 2025.
• Character.AI, Community Safety Updates, October 22, 2024.
• Character.AI, How Character.AI Prioritizes Teen Safety, December 12, 2024.
• Character.AI, Introducing Parental Insights: Enhanced Safety for Teens, March 25, 2025.
• Character.AI, Continuing To Build Upon Our Safety Priorities, September 3, 2026.
• Character.AI, An Update on Character.ai, October 12, 2026.
• Character.AI, Introducing Character, December 5, 2022.
• TechCrunch, Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer returns to Google, August 2, 2024.
• Federal Trade Commission, FTC Launches Inquiry into AI Chatbots Acting as Companions, September 11, 2025 (6(b) orders on companion chatbots).