Should parents draft an AI policy for their homes? South African parents weigh in

AI is in your child’s hands, their classroom, and their favourite creators’ feeds, even before they can read. Here’s what South African parents and experts say families should be doing about it right now. Photo: iStock Most toddlers know how to swipe before they can spell, which necessitates an AI policy for the home.

Your seven-year-old has already watched their favourite content creator use AI. And your matric child? They are one generative prompt away from an essay they did not write.

Whenever I ask my five-year-old how she knows the concept she’s explaining to me, she tells me that she asked her Google. “The one with the sparkle thingy.” She’s referring to Gemini. In early April 2026, a UK family reported being locked out of their Google accounts after a 14-year-old had an explicit conversation with Gemini Live AI.

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‘I would never have called it an AI policy – but we have one’ Tinashe Venge, an award-winning writer, voice artist and father of a seven-year-old, is among the South African parents who have been building frameworks around AI use at home, even if they have never named them as such. “Do I believe that a household should have an AI policy? Yes, I do,” Venge toldThe Citizen.

“Just because of the rapid rate at which AI has advanced and continues to advance, as well as the irresponsible use of AI that we have seen already in times gone by. There have been times where people have been duped or fooled by AI videos or AI images, and they believe that a certain person said or did something based on that.” TBH it’s been reported that many of the free/cheap tools aren’t that reliable.As for AI detectors, they are not (yet?) good at differentiating the human voice from AI voice, so even something 100% original could be flagged as AI-written. For Venge, the priority is media literacy – giving his daughter the tools to distinguish between AI-generated and real content. He notes, however, that peer influence is already shaping how children engage with the technology.

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