A framework for helping youth understand, evaluate, and navigate AI in social and emotional contexts.
Social & Emotional AI Literacy (SEAL) is the set of competencies and critical skills that equip individuals to understand how AI operates in social and emotional contexts and how it may affect social and emotional health.
SEAL helps young people critically evaluate AI behaviors, use AI intentionally for social and emotional skill-building, create personal boundaries for safer use, and make informed decisions that protect psychological wellbeing, human connections, privacy, and rights.
As AI becomes more socially interactive and emotionally responsive, young people increasingly encounter AI not only as a tool but also as something that can feel supportive, engaging, and even relationship-like.
Traditional AI literacy and social-emotional learning do not fully address this emerging reality. SEAL helps fill that gap.
Primary demographic encountering social AI
Between traditional SEL and AI-aware education
The framework designed to bridge it
SEAL helps students understand and navigate AI in social and emotional contexts. It adds a dimension that traditional AI literacy and SEL do not fully address: how AI can feel socially engaging, emotionally responsive, and relationship-like.
Understand how AI design can create a sense of social and emotional connection — and why that matters for youth development and wellbeing.
Recognize when AI feels human-like and respond with critical awareness rather than passive acceptance of its designed social cues.
Evaluate AI interactions more safely and thoughtfully, developing personal frameworks for healthy and intentional engagement.
Build skills for healthy, resilient functioning in an AI-mediated world — protecting wellbeing, human relationships, and autonomy.
SEAL equips young people with the conceptual tools to ask — and thoughtfully answer — the right questions about their AI interactions, relationships, and personal boundaries.
The Brain, AI, and Child (BAIC) Center explores how artificial intelligence is shaping children’s development, relationships, and well-being. Our research aims to guide the creation of safer, responsible AI technologies for future generations.
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