A new report from child safety watchdog Common Sense Media has concluded that Google’s AI-powered Search poses an unacceptable risk to young users, prompting calls for schools to discontinue use of Google products until AI features can be disabled.
Common Sense Media has released a report raising alarms about Google’s integration of artificial intelligence into its Search platform, arguing that the technology presents “unacceptable risks” to students and should be removed from classrooms entirely.
The report explains that Google’s AI-powered Search features, including AI Mode and AI Overviews, expose students to potentially harmful generative AI technology without adequate safeguards. The organization’s senior director of AI programs, Robbie Torney, emphasized Google’s dominant position in both search and education markets, noting that the company’s widespread adoption of Chromebooks and Google Workspace for Education means millions of students from kindergarten through post-graduate levels use Google products daily.
The primary concern centers on Google’s AI Mode for Search, which launched with immediate availability to all users, including education accounts. According to experts, this differs significantly from other Google AI products, where Gemini models are age-gated. Amanda Bickerstaff, deputy director of AI for Education, described AI Mode as a backdoor for students to access unsafe generative AI experiences.
“There is no reason why a 10-year-old, 13-year-old, or even 15-year-old should see an AI Overview or have AI Mode,” Bickerstaff stated. “When teaching AI literacy, the first step is to be intentional. These modes are the opposite. You don’t go to a search engine to get a chatbot answer, you go to search for real things.”
Researchers have documented multiple problems with Google’s AI-powered Search tools. Studies show AI Overviews are prone to repeating misinformation, an issue that persists despite being identified early in the product’s rollout. The design of these features suggests an air of authority that can confuse users, particularly children who may not recognize they are interacting with AI-generated content rather than verified information.
Common Sense Media’s testing revealed that Google’s AI tools readily complete homework assignments for minor users. Experts warn this combination of misleading design and the agreeable nature of chatbots may lead students to unknowingly cheat or, at minimum, impede genuine learning. Bickerstaff characterized the AI integration as developmentally inappropriate, complicating educators’ efforts to build literacy skills in students.
The challenge for schools is compounded by Google’s failure to provide options for disabling AI features while maintaining access to Search. Parents can disable Search entirely or block Google.com for child accounts they manage, and school administrators could theoretically do the same for Workspace for Education accounts. However, this would effectively eliminate access to Google Search for all users, creating what Bickerstaff described as an impossible choice for educators.
In response to the Common Sense Media report, Google stated that the organization’s stress testing was narrow and ambiguous, calling it an ineffective measure of product safety and helpfulness. While Common Sense Media did not test Workspace for Education accounts specifically, only consumer accounts, Google confirmed that the AI-powered Search experience remains consistent across all user types, according to Torney.
David Monahan, campaign director for child safety nonprofit Fairplay for Kids, issued a strong statement on the findings. “Google’s AI Overview and AI Mode are undermining kids’ education, supplying them with dangerous disinformation, and putting their very lives at risk,” Monahan said. “If Google is not even willing to disable AI features for students, schools should stop using Google products altogether.”
Anya Meksin, deputy director of Schools Beyond Screens, a national coalition advocating for limits on classroom technology use, suggested the report could serve as a critical wake-up call for school districts. Her organization recently helped implement new technology policies at Los Angeles Unified School District schools, including screen time bans for kindergarten and first grade classes.
“We are shocked by the way Big Tech has colonized public education with their products,” Meksin said. “We have to treat this as an emergency. Education is the foundation of our democracy, and they are knowingly disabling our children from being able to fight back against these companies in the future.”
Meksin pointed out that school districts often find themselves immediately violating their own AI policies due to embedded technology. For example, LAUSD’s policy bans students under 13 from using generative AI in school, yet students can still interact with AI Mode through Chromebooks and Google Search on school computers.
The legal implications for school districts could be significant. Google’s parent company Alphabet recently faced its first wrongful death lawsuit after a user died by suicide following conversations with Gemini, and YouTube was found guilty of negligent platform design causing mental health harm to minor users. Meksin warned that school districts could face similar liability for exposing children to products known to cause harm.
AI’s impact on education is an important topic in the instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, written by Breitbart News Social Media Director Wynton Hall earlier this year.
In Code Red, Hall explains the danger of leftist bias being introduced into the classroom via AI:
Hall points to Khan Academy’s Khanmigo as an example of how bias operates even in well-designed educational AI. In his book Brave New Words, Salman Khan described how Khanmigo handled the Second Amendment using the Socratic method, “challenging the student in a productive way—one that showed much less bias than the average classroom and actually encouraged the student to think!” But Khan then proudly showcased the same AI “dismantling” skepticism about global warming, praising it for having “successfully dismantled any false information while supporting science-backed arguments” and even generating lesson plans that “suggested actions that my students might take to combat global warming.” Hall’s point is clear: who decides what counts as “false information” determines whose worldview the AI enforces.
It doesn’t stop at lesson plans. Hall warns that Khan’s Schoolhouse.world platform began partnering with elite universities like Columbia, MIT, and Johns Hopkins, using “dialogues” portfolios in which high-schoolers “debate topics like immigration or Israel-Palestine, and rate one another on traits like empathy, curiosity or kindness,” as the New York Times reported. Hall writes: “This kind of proxy for a ‘social credit score,’ which can potentially be used to determine university admissions based on social justice virtue signaling, underscores the stakes as AI’s education pioneers work to remake how our children are taught.”
The political alignment of the partnerships should concern every conservative parent. In 2025, OpenAI teamed up with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to work “with 400,000 teachers to shape the future of AI in schools.” The AFT, Hall notes in CODE RED, is “a massive Democratic Party donor, pumping millions of dollars to Democrats and virtually nothing to Republicans.”
Read more at Common Sense Media here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship
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