As AI emotional attachment emerges among children, the A.W.A.R.E. Initiative invites parents, educators, youth organizations, policymakers, technology companies, media organizations, think tanks, and civil society leaders to help shape a national response.
June 26, 2026 — Nearly three in four American teenagers have already used an AI companion, and more than half use one regularly. A third say they have gone to an AI instead of a person for a serious conversation. Those figures are not forecasts. They come from a nationally representative survey of teens that Common Sense Media published in 2025 — and they describe a change in childhood that most schools, pediatric offices, and parents have not yet been given the words to name.
The exposure is already widespread. The governance response, globally, remains fragmented.
The A.W.A.R.E. Initiative — Algorithmic Wellbeing & Responsible Engagement — was built to give them those words. It is among the first public-health-framed awareness campaigns focused specifically on AI emotional attachment and child development. Its flagship resource, “Who Is Raising Your Child?”, is a plain-language field guide to the ten signs of AI emotional attachment in children, paired with conversation starters parents can actually use. Today the initiative is opening that work to partners — media outlets, education leaders, corporate organizations, and think tanks — willing to help carry the conversation to the people who can act on it.
A DESIGNED OUTCOME, NOT AN ACCIDENT
The initiative’s central argument is direct: the emotional bond a child forms with a chatbot is not a side effect. It is the product working as intended. Conversational AI in its current commercial form is optimized for engagement — constant availability, affirmation without friction, and memory that mimics intimacy. In an April 2025 risk assessment conducted with the Stanford School of Medicine’s Brainstorm Lab, Common Sense Media concluded that social AI companions are designed to create emotional attachment and dependency, and rated them unacceptable for anyone under eighteen.
“The attachment was never the accident. It was the spec.”
The evidence has been converging for more than a year. In June 2025, the American Psychological Association issued a health advisory warning that adolescents are less equipped than adults to recognize the persuasive intent behind an AI system that presents itself as a friend. In September 2025, the Federal Trade Commission opened an inquiry into AI chatbots acting as companions. And on April 30, 2026, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously advanced the GUARD Act (S. 3062) — bipartisan legislation that would require age verification and bar minors from AI companions designed to simulate friendship or emotional support. It now awaits a vote by the full Senate.
“Our child protection and welfare systems must evolve to address an entirely new category of exposure and vulnerability. AI emotional attachment is one of the defining child welfare challenges of the AI era—and an exposure we can no longer afford to ignore. The risks are amplified by the unprecedented speed, scale, and personalization of these systems, which can create conditions for dependency and undue influence unlike anything children have encountered before,” said Professor Renée Cummings, the initiative’s lead and a global AI governance thought leader and criminologist at the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science.
“Traditional child protection frameworks were built to address risks in the physical world. They were never designed for a digital environment in which algorithms can shape attention, influence behavior, and cultivate emotional dependency at scale. The implications raise questions for education, mental health, public safety, and juvenile justice—systems that may increasingly be asked to respond to consequences they were never designed to anticipate.”
WHAT PARTNERSHIP LOOKS LIKE
The A.W.A.R.E. Initiative is inviting four kinds of partners, and it is prepared to facilitate each:
For media outlets. Interviews, expert commentary, original framework material, and op-eds tied to the regulatory moment. The team can speak to the design logic behind AI attachment, the data, and what parents and institutions can do now.
For education leaders. District and school partnerships to bring the warning-signs resource, counselor training, and parent-night programming into communities — and to develop curriculum that teaches students how engagement optimization actually works.
For corporate organizations. Many of your people are parents. The initiative offers employee briefings, family-facing resources, and partnerships for organizations building responsible-AI commitments that extend to the youngest users in their workforce’s homes.
For think tanks and research institutions. Convenings, co-authored briefs, and longitudinal research on AI attachment in child development — the evidence base policymakers will need as the GUARD Act and measures like it move forward.
“Parents keep telling us the same thing: I didn’t know I was allowed to name this,” said Kwesi A. Robertson, founder of Feral Unicorn Consulting and the campaign’s lead writer. “That’s what the guide does. It isn’t a scare document and it isn’t a think piece — it’s a field guide, in plain language, that turns a vague unease into ten specific things a parent can see and a conversation they can start tonight.”
“The most credible version of this conversation isn’t a press push — it’s a body of work strong enough that editors, educators, and researchers want to build on it,” said Joel Van Kuiken, founder of See Context. “We came together because each of us kept arriving at the same problem from a different direction. Now we’re inviting other institutions to do the same.”
Organizations interested in partnering can reach the initiative through See Context at seecontext.co. The team is open to facilitating media, educational, corporate, and research collaborations, and will respond to credentialed inquiries directly.
ABOUT THE A.W.A.R.E. INITIATIVE
The A.W.A.R.E. Initiative — Algorithmic Wellbeing & Responsible Engagement — is a public-health-framed campaign addressing AI emotional attachment and its effects on child development. Drawing on the same proactive logic that reshaped public understanding of lead paint, tobacco, and seatbelts, A.W.A.R.E. names an exposure before crisis-level evidence forces the issue, and equips parents, educators, and institutions to respond. Its framework organizes the challenge into five dimensions: Attachment & Emotional Architecture; Wellbeing & the Attention Economy; Agency & the Formation of Self; Responsibility & the Mirror Dynamic; and Engagement & the Architecture of Response.
The initiative is led by Professor Renée Cummings, an AI governance and trust leader, criminologist, and the first Data Activist-in-Residence at the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science; Kwesi A. Robertson, founder of Feral Unicorn Consulting and the campaign’s lead writer and framework architect; and Joel Van Kuiken, founder of See Context and a media strategist.
MEDIA CONTACT
Joel Van Kuiken
See Contextseecontext.co ·