U.S. political leaders across parties are moving to restrict how children can interact with AI, citing lessons from social media regulation failures.

In March, the Trump White House recommended Congress consider 'commercially reasonable, privacy protective, age-assurance requirements' for AI products, following a failed attempt to block state-level regulation the prior year. Meanwhile, Senator Josh Hawley (Missouri) is leading an effort with Senator Chris Murphy (Connecticut) to impose tough age restrictions and criminal penalties on companies whose AI products have sexual interactions with minors or steer minors toward hurting themselves.

Political leaders view AI regulation as an opportunity to correct mistakes made with social media companies. Governor Spencer Cox (Utah) signed a law last year requiring companies like Google and Apple to verify users' ages. Rep. Jake Auchincloss (Massachusetts) has proposed device-level age restrictions and frames the effort as 'a modern temperance movement — digital dopamine is a vice in the same way online gambling is a vice.'

OpenAI's chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane stated that 'Kids' safety is the issue the public most cares about' and that the company recently released a policy paper backing some age restrictions while pressing for training young people to use the technology, citing the need for kids to learn to use AI to participate in the future.