These Ethical Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence in Youth Work provide the youth sector with a practical ethical framework for the responsible utilization of AI. The guidelines are based on the perspective that artificial intelligence is a rapidly spreading technological transformation that significantly impacts young people’s daily lives, learning, media environments, inclusion, and well-being. The role of youth work is to ensure that AI is used in a manner that respects young people’s rights, supports equality, and strengthens their ability to navigate a changing digital society.
A core principle of the guidelines is that AI serves as a support for human work in youth work, not as its replacement. The responsibility for decision-making, equitable interactions with young people, and ethical judgment always remains with humans. The use of AI must be evaluated on a needs-based approach so that its benefits to young people, service accessibility, and the quality of activities outweigh potential harms. At the same time, the environmental impacts of AI, data privacy risks, and the potential generation of discriminatory or inaccurate content are recognized.
The guidelines are structured around four themes:
- Needs-based use of AI
- AI literacy for youth workers and youth work
- Use of AI in services targeted at young people
- Data collected in youth work and its processing with AI
AI literacy is viewed as a vital professional skill that enables workers to critically evaluate AI systems, identify their opportunities and risks, and support young people’s media and AI competence. Special attention is paid to source criticism, identifying disinformation, respecting copyrights, and transparently labeling AI-generated content.
AI services targeted at young people emphasize human-centeredness, equality, transparency, and safety. Young people must have the right to know when they are interacting with AI and, when necessary, always be able to access human support. The processing of data concerning young people emphasizes data privacy, data minimization, anonymization, and compliance with EU data protection regulations and the AI Act. Simultaneously, the guidelines support the objectives of the European Union’s AI Act by strengthening the AI literacy and responsible practices of youth sector organizations and workers.
Overall, the objective of the guidelines is to ensure that AI is utilized in youth work ethically, safely, and in a way that advances the best interests of young people, ensuring that the opportunities offered by technology can be harnessed without compromising young people’s rights, privacy, or well-being.
1. Needs-based use of AI in youth work
This category considers when and in which situations the use of AI is justified or even recommended.
In youth work, careful judgement is used to determine when the benefits of AI outweigh the potential harms
- Youth work always emphasizes individual encounters, the promotion of equality, equity, accessibility of services, and acting together. The use of AI should never aim to bypass these principles.
- The use of systems is recommended if it can promote the values of youth work, offer services that could not otherwise be implemented, or advance young people’s AI literacy and critical media education. If time savings are pursued through the use of AI, it must be ensured that the saved time is used in the best interest of young people.
- AI can be utilized to support young people’s equal growth, individual needs, and minority groups by producing, for example, language versions, subtitles, and other accessibility-enhancing presentation formats that increase equal access to services.
- When using AI systems, one must always pause to consider the ethics of the systems in accordance with these guidelines, and use them only if the benefits outweigh potential harms arising from their use.
Youth workers understand the potential environmental harms of AI use
- The use of AI consumes significant amounts of energy and natural resources, particularly when generating audio, video, or images.
- Organizations must take into account the carbon footprint of systems and use AI only when it is justified.
Youth work emphasizes human values, personal judgment, and critical AI and media literacy
- When using AI tools, it must be ensured that we do not outsource our own thinking or decision-making to technology.
- In youth work, a worker’s own competence, subjective experience, and observation skills are valued above AI.
- AI is used as a tool, not as a human replacement.
Youth work must recognize the rapid development of AI, the need for continuous skill updates, and ongoing ethical evaluation and monitoring
- Youth sector organizations ensure that all employees have an understanding of AI in line with the EU AI Act and are provided with sufficient training on the subject.
- Youth sector organizations should have internal AI guidelines defining which AI systems are used at the workplace and how.
- The impacts of AI on society and young people, as well as its consequences for youth work, must be continuously monitored and evaluated as technology develops.
- The youth sector actively monitors changes in legislation and regulations concerning AI, and these changes are taken into account in operations.
Youth work protects the digital rights of children and young people
The digital rights of children and young people are part of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and their significance and content are understood in youth work.
2. AI literacy of youth workers and youth work
This category focuses on the employee’s AI competence, i.e., AI literacy. A youth worker with sufficient AI literacy is capable of reflecting on accountability issues related to AI and critically evaluating the use of AI tools and the material generated with them.
Youth work strengthens young people’s AI and media literacy
- The role of youth work is to teach young people to examine AI-generated content critically, as it may contain errors, biases, or false information.
- Youth work helps young people identify how AI-based systems affect their daily lives and society.
- In youth work social media communications, it is recommended to use authentic photographs instead of AI-generated ones. AI-generated material is always clearly labeled.
- Youth work strengthens young people’s critical thinking so they learn to identify AI-generated material and incorrect information, and prevent the spread of misinformation.
- Employees’ own AI literacy must also be developed regularly.
- Youth work supports young people in using various AI-powered services safely, ethically, and in a manner that fosters their own critical thinking and creative expression.
Youth work respects copyright
- Copyrighted material or content created by others must not be input into AI systems without permission.
- It is also important to remember that AI-generated material often does not hold copyright. Content generated using AI must not be presented as one’s own work.
In youth work, the accuracy of information is verified from multiple sources, and citations are clearly marked
- All information generated with AI assistance must be verified against reliable sources to avoid incorrect claims, biases, or hallucinations.
- Fact-based content must always preserve and cite original source references, even if the text has been edited using AI. Sources suggested by AI must always be manually verified.
- AI-generated material must always be clearly labeled in accordance with the EU AI Act’s codes of practice.
3. Use of AI in services targeted at young people
This category deals with ethical principles in youth work situations where a young person is in direct interaction with an AI application or AI-generated material.
Youth work is human-centered, and young people must always have access to human contact
- AI should complement and support youth work, not replace human encounters or exploring issues and phenomena together with young people.
- AI should be used in situations where it provides clear added value, such as offering support when human assistance is not immediately available, for example due to queues.
- When using AI, the worker remains responsible for AI-generated content and knows how to apply AI suggestions in a professionally and ethically sound manner.
A human is always responsible for the services used in youth work
- AI solutions must have a designated accountable person who has the ability to monitor and intervene in the system’s operation. This person should be named in the organization’s internal AI guidelines.
- AI must not make automated decisions affecting citizens without professional review.
AI systems used in youth work identify risk situations and always direct young people to human help when necessary
- If automated systems such as AI-driven chatbots are used, the system must be capable of identifying risk situations, such as self-harm or violence involving a young person, and immediately route the user to human assistance.
- AI should readily suggest speaking with a professional.
Youth work must ensure that used systems treat everyone fairly, equally, and equitably
- It must be ensured that AI systems used in youth work do not reproduce or reinforce societal biases or discriminate against groups of people.
- The development of algorithms and AI models used in youth work must take into account diversity, equality, and cultural representation.
AI-powered services used in youth work must adhere to the principle of transparency
- Young people in youth work should be able to influence the development of services that affect them.
- Responses generated by systems used in youth work must always be explainable, and the grounds for the responses must be verifiable.
- The operational logic and decision-making of AI must be understandable to young people and youth workers.
- Communication regarding the use of AI must be clear and open, and materials produced with AI assistance must be clearly labeled.
- Youth work ensures that young people distinguish between a human and AI, and they have the right to know when they are interacting with an AI system and when material provided to them is AI-generated.
4. Data collected in youth work and its processing with AI
This category covers ethical principles in situations where data concerning young people is collected and/or processed using AI-powered systems.
Youth work respects young people’s privacy and data security
- The processing of personal data must comply with GDPR and national legislation.
- Personal data or other sensitive information (photos, audio, video) must not be entered into AI services, and it must be ensured that collected data is used only for its original purpose.
- Youth workers understand the operational principles of the systems and AI agents they use, ensuring that data does not leak and entered data is not used to train models.
- Data entered into AI systems must always be anonymized.
- Only workplace-approved services and devices are used in youth work, and employer guidelines must be followed when using them. For example, risk assessments in line with the AI Act are recommended.
No unnecessary data about young people is collected in youth work
- Only data strictly necessary for the activity may be collected and processed regarding young people (data minimization).
- All written material, such as meeting minutes saved in organizational cloud services, must also be understood as data. Careful consideration must be given to what data is stored, how generated material is handled, and who and/or which service has rights to the generated data.
- Data collected in youth work is used in the best interest of young people. When collecting data, it is essential to understand how it will be used and what conclusions can be drawn from it.
Material produced by: The Finnish Society on Media Education / Petteri Ruotsalainen & The City of Helsinki / Panu Räsänen.
Graphics: Petteri Ruotsalainen
Year of publication: 2026
The materials were produced as part of the AI Skills for Youth Work Practices project (Tekoälytaidot nuorisotyön käytänteisiin), funded by the National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI).
This material by the Finnish Society on Media Education is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
