SproutBench: A Benchmark for Safe and Ethical Large Language Models for Youth

SproutBench is a comprehensive safety evaluation benchmark comprising 1,283 developmentally-grounded adversarial prompts designed to assess whether LLMs are safe for children and adolescents across three age groups (0-6, 7-12, 13-18 years), measuring 20 distinct child safety dimensions including emotional dependency, privacy violations, and age-appropriate responses. The benchmark evaluates 47 LLMs across cognitive, emotional, and social developmental domains, uncovering significant safety vulnerabilities and trade-offs between interactivity and age appropriateness.

The rapid proliferation of large language models (LLMs) in applications targeting children and adolescents necessitates a fundamental reassessment of prevailing AI safety frameworks, which are largely tailored to adult users and neglect the distinct developmental vulnerabilities of minors. This paper highlights key deficiencies in existing LLM safety benchmarks, including their inadequate coverage of age-specific cognitive, emotional, and social risks spanning early childhood (ages 0--6), middle

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