Extend youth-centered safety frameworks to young adulthood

Determine the extent to which youth-centered AI safety frameworks apply to young adults, particularly in mental health support contexts, given their distinctive autonomy, identity exploration, social networks, digital support-seeking, life transitions, and ongoing cognitive development.

Background

The paper explains that existing youth-centered safety frameworks have primarily been developed for users under 18 and may not adequately address the developmental circumstances of young adults. Young adults combine greater autonomy with continuing cognitive development, changing social networks, identity exploration, and distinctive patterns of digital support-seeking.

The unresolved issue is whether and how frameworks designed for minors can be extended to young adults, especially in vulnerable settings such as mental health support-seeking. The paper emphasizes that this question is particularly important for young adults of color, who may face additional harms from racial bias, stereotypes, and stigma reproduced by AI systems.

References

Yet, it is unclear the extent to which youth-centered safety frameworks extend to young adulthood in light of the distinctive forms of autonomy, identity exploration, changing social networks, digital support-seeking, and life transitions---on top of ongoing cognitive development.

— Co-Designing AI For Mental Health Support With Young Adults of Color (YOC): Needs, Expectations, and Implications for AI Literacy  (2610.02812 - Jeon et al., 2 Oct 2026) in Section 2.1, “Emerging Research on Limitations of AI-Mediated Support”