Practical advice on teaching children about generative AI.

Parenting

Practical advice on teaching children about generative AI.

Posted October 22, 2026 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley

Key points

• In our study, children who knew about AI correctly identified more videos.
• Children were better than chance at identifying AI videos, but fewer than half identified every video correctly.
• Children often decided whether a video showed something that could happen in real life. Few noticed labels saying that a video was made by AI.
• Parents can teach children to question scenes that seem impossible and look for things that do not look or sound right.

This post was written together with Lydia Rowley, a student at Brigham Young University.

Imagine this: You unlock your phone and open Instagram. The first post you see is a video of a famous person making rude, racist comments. You are shocked. You never thought this person would support those ideas. Just as you are about to stop following them, you watch the video again and notice a few small details that change everything. The person's hair and skin look too shiny. Their movements look too smooth. Some people in the background disappear from one shot to the next. You check the comments and find out what you suspected: AI made the video.

You close Instagram, feeling relieved that you found out the truth. But the fear stays with you. Would you spot a fake video next time? More importantly, would your children spot one?

How Videos Can Fool Us

Generative AI makes more realistic content with every update. This makes it harder to tell AI-made content from real content. Some studies say that children are not as good at telling AI content apart from real content as adults are. However, adults do not do especially well at this either. New findings from our paper, which is still being reviewed, show that 9-year-old children were better than chance at spotting AI-made videos. However, fewer than half of them (46.5 percent) correctly identified every video. Children's knowledge of AI was linked to how well they could spot it. In our study, 54.7 percent of the children said they knew what AI was. These children correctly identified more videos than children who knew less about AI.

Parents are often the first people who teach children about the world, so teaching them at home about AI-made content is important. But what should we teach children to help them recognize this new technology? In our research, which is still being reviewed, children were best at spotting an AI-made video that showed babies riding animals in a fashion show. They explained that this could never happen in real life. Some children noticed mistakes in the lighting, skin, or hair. Surprisingly, very few noticed a caption that said the video was made by AI. These findings give us ideas about how to teach children to spot AI-made videos.

Teaching Children to Spot AI

How can we teach children to recognize AI-made videos? Here are some suggestions based on our findings.

1. Start early. The children in our study were 8 and 9 years old. Most understood our explanation of AI, and many already knew about it. Not many could explain exactly what AI means, but children of this age are ready to learn about AI and can understand what it is and what it does.
2. Keep explanations simple and use examples. Children can understand AI, but they are more likely to remember and understand a short explanation that suits their age and includes examples they know. For example, parents could explain that AI is a computer system designed to think and learn in ways that are similar to people. AI can answer questions, solve problems, spot patterns, and create text, pictures, sounds, and videos. Examples children may know include Siri, Google, Alexa, Netflix's recommendation system, and chatbots such as ChatGPT. Showing children the names and logos of specific image and video generators, such as Sora and Seedance, can also help them recognize the watermarks that appear on many AI-made pictures and videos.
3. Start by asking if it could really happen. The most common reason children gave for deciding that a video was made by AI was that the events could not happen in real life. So, start by helping children check whether a video shows something that could really happen. Ask whether what they see, hear, or watch people do seems realistic. Also explain the difference between a movie scene and an AI-made video. A movie may show something that does not happen in real life, but real people still act in it.
4. Talk about signs that a video might be AI-made. Some children noticed specific digital mistakes, or clues, in the videos. Pointing out these clues can help children know what to look for in the future. Teach them to look for words that make no sense, body parts that look wrong, strange lighting, blurry details, surfaces that look unnaturally smooth, voices that do not match mouth movements, and objects, backgrounds, or movements that change in ways that do not make sense.

Conclusion

AI-made videos and pictures are becoming more common on the internet. Parents can help children learn to think carefully about what they see. They can explain AI in simple, age-appropriate words, give examples children understand, discuss why some AI-made scenes could not happen in real life, and point out signs that content may be fake. These lessons can help children learn to tell real content from AI-made content. AI-made content is not going away anytime soon. But when parents teach their children how to recognize it, they can feel less worried about being fooled by it.