This guide from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the National Crime Agency (NCA) is here to support you. It will help Parents and carers to understand more about how AI can be misused, why it matters and what steps you can take to feel confident and help keep your child safer online.
It used to be far easier to spot computer-generated visual creations - often used by fraudsters - because AI would make blunders, like adding an extra finger or something else that was obviously weird.
But AI learns from its mistakes.
"Training on visual artifacts, like looking for a sixth finger or odd earrings, has had limited success, partly because the AI is getting too good, and fraudsters may avoid using pictures with obvious flaws anyway," explained Prof Amy Dawel.
A few years ago, AI was still just an idea. Today, it's everywhere. And it has moved into kids' lives faster than anyone planned for.
Ofcom's annual report.
The importance of children’s media literacy continues to grow as online services and functionalities
evolve. It is important that we track and seek to understand children’s use and attitudes towards the
media they use, so that we can work with partners to help support children’s media literacy needs.
Think about radicalisation as a process of change where a person undergoes a transformation over a period of time. This can be a gradual change or because of the increasing threat of online radicalisation, one that can also happen quite fast.
To better understand parents' and youths' experiences with and reactions to AI, Lake Research Partners and
Echelon Insights conducted two surveys on behalf of Common Sense Media in late 2025—one among parents of
children of any age, and another among kids and teens age 12 to 17—examining how they feel about AI today, how
they think it will affect their futures, and how they perceive the safety and security of AI tools for minors.
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