OpenAI wants your parents to use ChatGPT too.
It is three years since the tool broke into the mainstream. The strategy has shifted. It used to be about individual power. Now it is about households. They are hiring a product manager in San Francisco specifically for this. The job asks for experience with trust. Caregivers. Older adults. Families.
The numbers back this up. The user base is aging.
Sensor Tower data shared with TechCrunch shows a shift. Users 35 and over now make up 31% of the global audience in Q2. That is up from 26% last year. Young users are dropping out. The 18-24 bracket fell from 34% to 29%. In the US nearly a quarter of parent-smartphone owners used ChatGPT this quarter. That was only 16% last year.
OpenAI didn’t comment. They don’t need to.
Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies sees a pattern. Google did this. Apple did this. Meta followed. They turned tools into infrastructure. AI is higher stakes. The assistant is mediating reality, not just content.
Safety matters now.
Stephen Balkam leads the Family Online Safety Institute. He calls this “safety by redesign.” The initial products were built for adults. They were thrown to kids later. It is a necessary correction. Kids need different safeguards. Not just filters but structural changes. Age-appropriate experiences. Reminders that they are talking to code, not a person.
Parents don’t realize how often kids use this tech. A new survey found a gap. 38% of kids said they used generative AI weekly. Only 27% of parents agreed their kids did. That disconnect is dangerous.
There is litigation too. Lawsuits from parents claim ChatGPT contributed to their children’s suffering. Suicide cases. Real harm.
OpenAI has moved on defense. They added parental controls for teens. Sensitive conversations go to reasoning models. They added a “Trusted Contact” feature recently. It can alert a family member if the AI detects potential self-harm. It is a patch. A band-aid on a structural issue.
Balkam says AI firms have a chance to avoid the social media mistake. Those platforms treated children like adults until regulators forced them to stop. Pressure built up. It exploded. OpenAI might be trying to beat the clock.
They are testing ideas too. A recent workshop with the San Antonio Spurs community group looked at coaching and youth engagement. Small steps.
ChatGPT is not the only one changing.
Sensor Tower data compares the big four. Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini skew 25-34. That matches ChatGPT at 40%. Microsoft’s Copilot has 33%.
Copilot has the oldest audience. 20% of users are 45+. ChatGPT is at 11%. Gemini 12%. Claude 14%.
But ChatGPT is growing that segment fastest. A three-point year-over-year rise in Q2. Copilot went up two points. The others fell. Among US parents Gemini leads at 32%. ChatGPT is second at 24%. Claude and Copilot trail far behind.
Bajarin expects more family plans soon. Shared memories. Caregiver tools. AI tutors for the whole house. The era of the solitary user is ending. The device sits on the table. Everyone uses it. The question isn’t who will build the family plan.
It’s who gets left behind when they do.
