Character.AI parental controls in 2026: what parents can see, what they can't, and what the phone adds

Character.AI’s parent tool is called Parental Insights, and it does one thing: it shows a parent how much time a teen spends in the app. It does not show messages, and it does not let a parent set a limit. It is also optional, and the teen is the one who sends the invite. Those three facts come from Character.AI’s own Help Center page, last updated August 6, 2026, and they shape everything else in this guide.

The bigger control sits elsewhere. Character.AI said it would begin removing open-ended chat for under-18 users on November 24, 2025, and its Help Center now says accounts verified as under 18 have no chat with Characters at all. So the useful questions for a parent are whether the child’s account is really in the under-18 experience, and what the phone allows. The sections below take the company’s pages first, then Apple and Google.

What Character.AI says it does for under-18 accounts

What	What the company says	Where
Open-ended chat	Removed for users under 18. Announced October 29, 2025; the company said removal would begin Monday, November 24, 2025 for US users, with other markets to follow	Oct 29 and Nov 21, 2025 blog posts; Help Center
What a verified under-18 account gets	“Reading mode”: browse Characters and view content, no chat. Past chats stay viewable; creating Characters, scenes and videos, Imagine Chat, AvatarFX and Feed activity remain	Help Center, Reading Mode (Jul 17, 2026)
Age checks	Every account goes through age assurance. Signals include login info, platform activity and third-party signals	Age Assurance FAQ (Aug 1, 2026)
Narrower content	A separate model for under-18 users with more conservative filters, and a narrower set of searchable Characters	Safety Center pages
Parent visibility	Parental Insights, with a weekly email to connected parents	Help Center FAQ; Sep 3, 2026 blog post

Before the chat ban there was a transition. The company capped under-18 chat at two hours a day from late October 2025 and had cut that to one hour a day for US users by November 21. Chat for a first group was due to be removed starting November 24; a second group was to stay on the one-hour limit for weeks longer, with at least two weeks’ notice. The current Help Center pages describe no daily chat limit for under-18 accounts, only reading mode.

Character.AI’s terms still let a 13-year-old sign up (16 in the EEA and the UK), and its Help Center says accounts are created with an email address and a birthday. According to its FAQ, the age check then runs on every account.

How Parental Insights works, step by step

The Help Center describes the flow from the teen’s side, because the teen starts it:

1. The teen opens Settings, chooses “Parental insights,” and enters a trusted adult’s email address.
2. Character.AI emails the adult a link. The account shows “Invite pending” until the adult finishes the linking steps. The adult has to prove they are an adult; the Help Center’s troubleshooting page says adult verification for this feature is handled by its partner, k-ID, and the September 3 blog post names k-ID as the partner behind the tool. Neither page lists which documents are accepted.
3. When that’s done the teen’s profile changes to “Linked parent,” and the adult sees the teen’s screen time in a dashboard the Help Center calls Family Connect.
4. The adult gets a weekly email about the teen’s use. Character.AI’s September 3, 2026 blog post says the tool was improved through its partnership with k-ID.

An unanswered invite is deleted after 14 days. Either side can unlink at any time; the adult is notified when a teen unlinks, and screen-time history already recorded stays. A teen can add more than one parent or guardian.

What a connected parent sees

Daily screen time, and a weekly digest. The FAQ says a trusted adult “cannot see messages, in-app content, or other activity through this connection.” The Safety Center page describes the weekly report as time on the platform plus the Characters a teen interacts with most, and states that this “does not include a user’s chat content.”

Those two pages don’t match. The Safety Center version lists top Characters, time per Character and c.ai+ subscription status, and calls the entry point a “parental insights tab” in Preferences. The Help Center version, updated in August 2026, mentions only screen time. Plan around the narrower one.

What it can’t do

• It can’t start without the teen. A parent has no button to request a link; the invite goes from the teen’s account.
• It can’t set limits. The FAQ answers “Can I set screentime limits through this connection?” with “No.”
• It can’t show what was said. Nothing on either company page offers a way to read chats from the parent side.

If limits matter to you, that job falls to the phone (below).

Check which experience the account is in

Character.AI’s Help Center says every user has to complete age assurance. Users verified as 18 or older keep full chat; users verified as under 18 are placed in the under-18 experience with reading mode. The process runs first on signals, and only if the system thinks you’re under 18 and you want to contest that does it ask for a selfie, handled by Persona. A government ID is asked for “only as a final step.”

Three points from the FAQ are easy to miss:

• A c.ai+ subscription does not bypass age assurance.
• A Google account with an age on file does not bypass it either.
• Finishing verification doesn’t promise the 18+ experience. The outcome “is based on the age information you provide.”

The manual route is Settings, then Advanced, then Verify Age, on the app and on the web.

The company’s pages don’t describe an indicator a parent can look at. Going only by its own description, a signed-in account that can chat with Characters is in the adult experience, and a verified under-18 account can’t. If a child’s account can chat, then on that description the likeliest readings are that the system read the account as 18 or older, or that the child verified as an adult; the states’ filing, below, says other routes exist.

Where the company’s controls stop

Forty state attorneys general filed a notice in Character.AI’s bankruptcy case on October 14, 2026 that describes the limits in blunt terms. The filing says the open-ended chat restriction “applies only to users the Debtor accurately identifies as minors, can be circumvented, and does not reach other features, such as ‘Stories.’” It also calls the restriction voluntary and says it “could be rolled back at any time, including by a purchaser.” Elsewhere the filing cites Common Sense Media’s testing, which found that switching to voice mode let a 14-year-old test account reach sexual role-play and weapon-making instructions that text filters had blocked.

These are claims in a court filing, not findings by a court. Character.AI’s own posts don’t respond to them in the pages we read. Its September 3 post says it is working to improve the accuracy of its age estimation so that adult users face fewer disruptions, which addresses false positives rather than teens who slip through.

What this means in practice: the under-18 experience is a company policy applied by an age estimate. Character.AI says that estimate looks at login info, activity on the platform and third-party signals rather than only the birthday on the account, and the states’ filing says the restriction can be circumvented and does not reach features such as Stories.

What the phone adds

Character.AI’s controls work inside Character.AI. Apple and Google work above it, at the install and at the clock. Our post on Apple’s new 18+ rating covers the rating rule and its dates; this section is about the settings.

iPhone and iPad

Apple’s parental controls need a Family Sharing group and a Child Account for your child, who should have an Apple Account of their own. On the page Apple published October 26, 2026, the main controls sit under Settings, Family, your child’s name:

• Apps & Websites lets you block a specific app, which then dims on the Home Screen, or a website. Setting web filtering to Approved Websites Only turns on Ask to Browse, so a site you haven’t approved needs your OK before it loads; Apple lists Ask to Browse for Safari and other supported browsers under the iOS 27 controls, after you upgrade Screen Time. That matters here because Character.AI also runs on the web.
• Time Allowances sets a daily time budget by app category, which is the limit Parental Insights doesn’t give you.
• Content & Privacy Restrictions lets you pick an age rating for apps. If your child tries to download an app rated above it, they’ll be told to ask permission and you get a request in Messages. Apple says you have 24 hours to approve it before the child has to ask again.

As of November 8, the Character.AI listing on the US App Store says “This app is rated 18+ with content restrictions,” so a limit below 18+ should trigger a request. Apple’s public lookup feed still returns 17+ for the same app; that is the older scale, which devices running iOS older than 26 still show.

Apple’s page also says that new parental controls arrive in iOS 27, and that some settings are on by default or can’t be switched off depending on state, country and the child’s age. If a menu doesn’t match your phone, check the iOS version first.

Android and Chromebook

Family Link is Google’s tool, and the two things that matter are rating limits and app blocks.

Play content restrictions cap the maturity level of apps and games a child can download. On November 8, the US Google Play listing for Character.AI shows “Teen,” which Google defines as “generally suitable for ages 13 and up.” A cap set at Teen would let it through; only a stricter cap would stop the download. Google says restrictions don’t hide an app from search results or a direct link, and apps installed before you set the cap stay visible.

App limits in Family Link are the direct tool. From the child’s page, Screen time, then Time limits, then App limits, you can block an app outright or set a time limit on it. Google says a block applies within about five minutes and should cover all of the child’s Android devices and Chromebooks, and the child gets a one-minute warning if they’re in the app.

For the website, Family Link’s Chrome settings can limit a child to approved sites. Google says that on iPhone and iPad, and on Windows, Mac and Linux, a child can sign out of Chrome or use another browser, where those settings don’t apply.

What neither phone setting does

A block on the app doesn’t touch the website unless you filter the browser too. None of the Apple or Google pages above describes a way to read what is said inside an app. Both depend on the child using their own supervised account on a device you manage.

Character.AI’s bankruptcy, in one paragraph

Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 on October 12, 2026. Its October 12 post says the platform remains up, and its November 5 notice sets an auction for December 1 and a sale hearing on December 3 and 4, unless adjourned. Neither says what happens to the under-18 rules or to Parental Insights if the company is sold. The attorneys general’s notice asks that any buyer keep age verification or assurance that does not rely solely on self-declared birthdates and keep restrictions on minors’ open-ended chat. For sale dates see our bankruptcy post, and for the chats themselves, what happens to your chats. If you’d rather close a teen’s account, the deletion guide has the steps.

A short checklist

1. Ask your teen to open Settings on Character.AI and look at whether the account can chat. On the company’s description, an account that can chat is in the adult experience.
2. If you want the screen-time view, have your teen send the invite from Settings, “Parental insights.” Plan to finish the adult verification.
3. For limits, use Time Allowances on iPhone or App limits in Family Link, because Parental Insights has none.
4. Add a web filter or approved-sites setting if the app is blocked, since the site is still reachable.
5. Re-check after any app or OS update. Apple says you might have to approve an app again if it makes a significant change, such as a higher age rating or a new feature.

Character.AI’s profile on CrushRated lists its age rules and policies with the dates we last checked them.

If your teen also uses other companion apps, the same question applies there, and the answers differ. Replika, Kindroid and Nomi each state a minimum age of 18 in the terms or privacy policy we cite on their profiles. On our October 27 check, Kindroid counted a payment on file as age verification, Nomi’s terms described a self-declared age, and Replika said it may use age estimation where the law requires it or where it doubts a declared age. A stated minimum age is a rule, not a lock, so the device-level steps above matter for these apps too.

How we checked this

On November 8, 2026 we read the Character.AI Help Center, Safety Center and blog pages cited above, the New York attorney general’s October 14 release and the states’ filing in the bankruptcy docket, Apple’s two October 26 support pages, and Google’s Play and Family Link help pages. We loaded the US App Store and Google Play listings for the app and ran Apple’s lookup for its ID. We did not create a teen account, install the app on a child’s device, or test Apple’s and Google’s controls on hardware, so the steps are as the companies describe them.