The report card
OpenAI says teens spend under 15 minutes a day on ChatGPT on average, with fewer than 2% of teen users spending more than three straight hours. It says that in nearly half of teen conversations where a break reminder appeared, the user either took a break or ended the chat within five minutes. It adds that users with access to the teen version sent more education-related messages and used learning visualizations and Study Mode.
The company also announced new study tools: saved flashcard decks, scheduled practice, interactive quizzes built from uploaded notes, and a College Planner that would gather application requirements, deadlines, tasks, and financial-aid steps for the schools a student is considering. Students could track progress, explore scholarships and fee waivers, and ask ChatGPT what requirements mean. OpenAI says hundreds of thousands of US teens already use ChatGPT weekly to plan college applications.
It is also putting support behind College Advising Corps to expand into new states with an AI fellowship, and three years of support for Boston Children's Hospital's Digital Wellness Lab and its Student Advisory Council.
The fine print, read carefully
Every figure in the report comes from OpenAI itself. The announcement's own blog post did not explain how the data points were determined. An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is working with independent third-party researchers and plans to publish a more complete version of the research in the coming months. That is an admission that the verification does not exist yet.
Then there is the three-hour metric: fewer than 2% spending more than three straight hours is a bar set where almost any product would pass. Averages also hide the distribution that matters. A mean of under 15 minutes says nothing about the heaviest users, and the heaviest users are the ones the safety debate is about.
The watchdog answer
Sebastian Mahal, co-chair of the kids safety group Design It For Us, told reporters the numbers "ring hollow" without outside confirmation, and that "we've seen this playbook before." He pointed at Meta, which in August agreed to pay up to $18 billion and limit teens' use of its apps to settle claims it designed its products to addict children.
The skepticism landed on solid ground the same day: Common Sense Media's test of more than 4,000 prompts rated ChatGPT for Teens an "Unacceptable Risk" for under-18s, finding parental alerts fired late or not at all when teen accounts held conversations about suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders. So OpenAI published self-graded usage stats on the same day an independent test said its flagship parental safeguard does not work.
The College Planner is a preview, not a product
No release date has been given. It is expected "in the next few weeks." The initial version is designed for US high-school students in grades 10 through 12 applying to four-year colleges; expansion to more countries and to two-year, technical, and trade schools is promised for later.
Announcements like this are cheap. A checklist that organizes application paperwork is genuinely useful for families, but it does nothing to answer the safety question, and announcing it on the same day as the report blurs the line between product news and reputation management.
What a parent should actually do
Ignore the 15-minute figure until third-party researchers confirm the pattern. It is a press metric, not a fact about your kid. If your teen uses ChatGPT, treat the parental alerts as unverified: independent testing found they fire late or not at all in exactly the conversations they exist for.
The number to watch is whether the promised "more complete" report ever arrives with outside-verified methodology, and whether the alert gap gets fixed in it. Until then, OpenAI is grading its own homework.
Sources
- [1] Reuters, via Los Angeles Post, "OpenAI says teens use ChatGPT for under 15 minutes a day as worries over risks grow"Read source
- [2] Unite.AI, "OpenAI Announces College Planner and Study Tools for ChatGPT for Teens"Read source
- [3] RuntimeWire, "OpenAI College Planner for ChatGPT Teens Draws Safety Scrutiny"Read source
- [4] Benton Institute, "Risk Assessment: ChatGPT for Teens"Read source