This Palgrave Pivot book examines how AI‑based technologies shape children’s everyday lives and imagines possible digital futures. Drawing on qualitative interviews and a child‑rights approach, the authors map how new AI tools are used and understood at home, at school, and among peers. They trace shifts in family routines; education, care, and health practices; and peer cultures associated with AI; cutting through the current hype to assess both promises and risks.

Building on prior work on the datafication of childhood and family life, Children and AI: Changing Digital Childhoods? rethinks AI’s implications for children’s wellbeing, rights, and life chances amid rapid market diffusion. It highlights potential harms, including widening digital divides and privacy violations, and calls for child‑centred, safety‑by‑design legal and policy frameworks. Timely and interdisciplinary, it will interest scholars, students, and policymakers across childhood studies, digital and family sociology, internet studies, children’s rights, and education.

Andra Siibak is Professor of Media Studies and Deputy Head of Research and Development at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research examines opportunities and risks of internet use, the datafication of childhood, digital parenting, dataveillance in education, and privacy. With Giovanna Mascheroni, she co‑authored Datafied Childhoods: Data Practices and Imaginaries in Children’s Lives (2021).

Giovanna Mascheroni is Professor in the Department of Communication, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy, and a sociologist of digital media. Her work focuses on the social shaping and consequences of digital media, datafication, and AI for children and young people. Together with Andra Siibak, she co‑authored Datafied Childhoods: Data Practices and Imaginaries in Children’s Lives (2021).