AYO: A Safe and Privacy-Preserving Platform for Studying Children's Interaction with LLMs

Huiwen Alex Yang, Rachel Skwersky, Bill D. Thompson, Celeste Kidd

Children and adolescents are increasingly interacting with generative AI and large language models (LLMs), yet little is known about how these interactions may influence their development, beliefs, and behavior. Existing research has relied heavily on surveys, while direct study of children's interactions with LLMs presents substantial challenges related to safety, privacy, consent, and experimental control. We introduce AYO (AI Youth Open Science), an open-source platform designed for safe and systematic research on children's interactions with conversational AI. AYO provides a child-friendly interface, configurable age-based safety guardrails, researcher monitoring, and privacy-preserving data practices. These capabilities enable cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental research on how children use and respond to LLMs and how AI design may shape trust, epistemic judgment, curiosity, and other aspects of development. AYO provides the infrastructure to generate evidence that guides safer AI systems, educational practices, and policies for children growing up with AI.