What Not to Share With AI: A Parent’s Guide to Staying Safe Online

AI feels like magic. You type a sentence, and seconds later it plans your week, rewrites an email, or gives you options what to cook with three random ingredients. It can seriously reduce the mental load that parents often carry.

But here’s the part most people currently do not understand: AI should not be your diary.
It’s not your therapist. Your life coach.
And it’s definitely not your child’s teacher.

It’s a tool and like any tool, it comes with responsibility (and it's limitations).

What we forget about “free” tools

When you use AI platforms, whether it’s ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, CoPilot or any voice-assistant app like Siri, your inputs are often stored and may be reviewed to improve the system. That means every prompt you type, every story idea, every photo uploaded could, in theory, be seen or used to train models in the future.

That’s not to scare you. It’s to remind you: there’s no true delete button once something goes online.

Things I never share with AI

Here’s my personal no-go list, the things I never feed into any AI tool:

• Personal details: full names, addresses, phone numbers, or anything that can identify you or your child.

• Photos of children: even blurred or “cute” ones. Keep their faces offline and out of training data.

• Financial info: salary, account details, invoices, or tax documents.

• Legal or medical data: unless it’s an encrypted, verified service built for those fields.

• School names, routines, or locations: these seem harmless until they create patterns someone else could track.

• Private thoughts about others: AI isn’t a safe space for venting; it’s a record-keeper with a long memory.

What to be mindful of as a parent

It’s easy to start leaning on AI for everything, school letters, parenting advice, even emotional support. But there are boundaries worth holding.

AI doesn’t understand emotion; it mimics it. When we use it to process guilt, fear, or frustration, we’re often met with logic when what we really need is empathy. That can subtly change the way we relate to our own feelings, and to our kids’.

So here’s my simple rule: use AI for tasks, not trust.
Let it save you time, not shape your values.

As a parent, I never use AI for…

• Parenting decisions that require nuance. Discipline, developmental milestones, emotional guidance, those belong to lived experience and professional advice.

• Health or safety questions. Always check with a real doctor, teacher, or expert.

• Comparing my child to others. AI draws from broad data, it doesn’t see your child’s soul, quirks, or pace.

• Replacing real connection. No AI will ever mirror what happens when you look your child in the eye and listen. I would never hand over a chat bot to speak to my child about things that matter to them.

So what can you use it for safely?

Plenty, actually.
Draft that meal plan.
Rewrite the nursery or school email. Create a fitness plan. Plan a trip. Pull up and analyse research with links. Create a bedtime story you read out loud. Summarise an email or an article into clear bullet points.

The list goes on and on....
Use AI as your invisible assistant, not your invisible audience.

If you treat it like a sharp kitchen knife, powerful, useful, but not to be handed to a child, you’re already ahead.

The bottom line

AI can be an incredible ally for parents if used with awareness.
It’s here to help you think, not to replace your thinking.
It can lighten the load, but only if you keep your boundaries intact.

We do not know enough about it to simply hand it over to our children.

Protect your privacy. Guard your family’s digital footprint.
And remember: the best filter in the world is still human judgment.

With Love,

Magda x