Stanford, FOSI, and California Partners Project publish parent guide to teen digital safety

The guide covers screen time, cyberbullying, online sexual exploitation, scams, misinformation, generative AI, and family strategies for building healthier digital habits.

Stanford Social Media Lab, the Family Online Safety Institute, and California Partners Project have launched A Parent’s Guide to Digital Safety.

Stanford Social Media Lab, the Family Online Safety Institute, and California Partners Project have launched A Parent’s Guide to Digital Safety: Helping Kids Navigate Online Risks and Build Healthy Habits, a new resource for parents and caregivers supporting teens and preteens online.

The guidebook brings together research, practical strategies, conversation prompts, and emergency resources across eight categories of online risk, including time and attention, cyberbullying, emotional well-being, physical health, sexual exploitation and content risks, information and influence, commercial and financial harms, and generative AI.

The launch comes as families, schools, and youth organizations are dealing with online safety issues that now go beyond screen time and social media use. The guide covers social platforms, gaming, online advertising, scams, AI-generated content, chatbots, online sexual harms, and the effect of digital habits on sleep, mental health, learning, and relationships.

Sunny Xun Liu, Senior Research Scholar and Director of Research at Stanford Social Media Lab and Associate Director of Research at Stanford Tech Impact and Policy Center, served as one of the authors. Her research focuses on the social and psychological effects of social media and AI, adolescent well-being, digital literacy, and the design of social robots and AI.

Liu described the guide on LinkedIn as a response to the pace of change facing parents, writing that "parents are being asked to navigate an environment that changes faster than most institutions can respond."

Eight online risk areas for parents and caregivers

The guidebook is written for parents of teens and preteens who are using, or preparing to use, social media platforms and other online technologies, including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and AI chatbots.

Each section explains what a risk means, how young people may encounter it, how common it is, what parents and children can do, and where families can find external help.

The eight sections cover excessive use and attention risks, cyberbullying and doxxing, emotional harms, body image and physical health, sexual exploitation and content risks, misinformation and algorithm-driven harms, commercial risks such as scams and in-app purchases, and generative AI.

Jennifer Heifferon, Child Well-Being Program Director at California Partners Project, contributed to the project as a writer, editor, and reviewer. She described the guidebook on LinkedIn as "comprehensive, practical, and designed for parents and caregivers who may not even know where to begin."

The guide includes statistics and examples across each risk area. It cites a 2025 Pew Research Center report finding that 45 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 say they spend too much time on social media. It also states that 64 percent of American teens use AI, about 30 percent use it daily, and 16 percent use it several times a day or "almost constantly."

Generative AI sits inside broader online safety guidance

The generative AI section focuses on four areas: AI companions and sycophancy, overreliance on AI tools, fake content, and privacy.

The guide notes that AI can support learning, creativity, and skill-building, but also raises concerns around emotional dependence on AI companions, shortcutting schoolwork, AI-generated fake content, and the collection of personal data through user interactions.

For schools and families, the guide’s AI section is particularly relevant because it treats generative AI as part of everyday digital safety rather than a separate technology issue. It covers academic use, critical thinking, privacy expectations, AI companions, AI-generated images, fake profiles, voice recordings, and age-appropriate access.

The guide encourages parents to create a family plan for AI use, including agreements on which tools children can use and how privacy will be protected. It also advises parents to ask school leaders about AI policies and to talk directly with children about expectations.

Heifferon said the guide was built for parents dealing with the speed and complexity of digital childhood: "Because parents need more than fear-based headlines. They need clear information and practical support that meets the reality of everyday life."

CALMER framework and emergency resources

The guide introduces the CALMER framework as a practical response model for parents and caregivers: Communicate, Assess and Address, Listen and Learn, Monitor and Manage, Educate and Encourage, and Report and Use Resources.

The framework encourages parents to speak with children about online life without judgment, assess exposure to specific harms, listen to how children use platforms, manage boundaries collaboratively, educate themselves about how technology works, and report serious or illegal harms when needed.

The guide also includes a Quick Action Guide and an Emergency Resource Guide. The emergency section gives immediate steps for sextortion, grooming, child sexual abuse material, image-based sexual abuse, mental health crisis, financial scams, cyberbullying, dangerous online challenges, and tech abuse from a dating partner.

For serious incidents, the guide points families to services including the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, Crisis Text Line, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline, Take It Down, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, and Love is Respect.

The guide is designed as a flexible resource rather than a document parents need to read from start to finish. Families can use the table of contents to jump to specific topics such as cyberbullying, body image, online sexual exploitation, misinformation, scams, or generative AI.

Liu said the project was designed to be used in family life, not only as a research document: "This guidebook was designed to be practical, evidence-informed, and usable in real family life. It brings together research, strategies, and resources to help parents support adolescents in ways that are proactive rather than purely reactive."