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News & safety / Source briefing

What children mean when they call a chatbot trustworthy

Preprint

21 September 2026 · revised 23 September

115 learners, ages 8–18

Children

Research / Child safety · Safety & wellbeing

A study in which young people built their own chatbots found differences by age in how they understood confidence, transparency and trustworthiness.

Why it matters

Trust calibration deserves attention alongside answer accuracy. A confident presentation may mean something different to a younger user.

Read with care

A chatbot-design study, not a population survey or a test of long-term companion safety. The arXiv record is a preprint; peer-reviewed acceptance was not verified.

What was checked

Authors’ abstract and version history checked.

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