# Understanding Parents' Desires in Moderating Children's Interactions with GenAI Chatbots through LLM-Generated Probes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03727 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03727/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 105 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Decomposed Prompting: A Modular Approach for Solving Complex Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02406/) (2022)
- [A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering in Large Language Models: Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07927/) (2024)
- ["Kelly is a Warm Person, Joseph is a Role Model": Gender Biases in LLM-Generated Reference Letters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09219/) (2023)
- [Identifying and Mitigating the Security Risks of Generative AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14840/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Cultural and Social Awareness of LLM Web Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23252/) (2024)
- [Identifying and Manipulating Personality Traits in LLMs Through Activation Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10427/) (2024)
- [Traceability and Accountability in Role-Specialized Multi-Agent LLM Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07614/) (2025)
- [From Parental Control to Joint Family Oversight: Can Parents and Teens Manage Mobile Online Safety and Privacy as Equals?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07749/) (2022)
- [Guidelines to Develop Trustworthy Conversational Agents for Children](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02403/) (2022)
- [The Pitfalls of "Security by Obscurity" And What They Mean for Transparent AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18669/) (2025)
- [SET-PAiREd: Designing for Parental Involvement in Learning with an AI-Assisted Educational Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17623/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Beyond "I Can't Help With That": How Child Safety Experts Evaluate AI Chatbot Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07902/) (2026)
- [Understanding Parents' Complex Views of AI for Children's Pretend Play](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39906/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper studies how parents want to moderate children's interactions with Generative AI chatbots, with the goal of informing the design of future GenAI parental control tools. We first used an LLM to generate synthetic child-GenAI chatbot interaction scenarios and worked with four parents to validate their realism. From this dataset, we carefully selected 12 diverse examples that evoked varying levels of concern and were rated the most realistic. Each example included a prompt and a GenAI chatbot response. We presented these to parents (N=24) and asked whether they found them concerning, why, and how they would prefer the responses to be modified and communicated. Our findings reveal three key insights: (1) parents express concern about interactions that current GenAI chatbot parental controls neglect; (2) parents want fine-grained transparency and moderation at the conversation level; and (3) parents need personalized controls that adapt to their desired strategies and children's ages.