# Conversational Agents and Children: Let Children Learn

## TL;DR

This paper advocates for designing conversational agents that act as facilitators and teachers for children, promoting autonomous learning and critical thinking during online information discovery.

## Contribution

It introduces the concept of agents that guide children non-intrusively, emphasizing their role in fostering learning and development rather than just resource provision.

## Key findings

- Agents should support children's learning processes
- Design principles for child-friendly conversational agents
- Potential to enhance children's critical thinking skills

## Abstract

Using online information discovery as a case study, in this position paper we discuss the need to design, develop, and deploy (conversational) agents that can -- non-intrusively -- guide children in their quest for online resources rather than simply finding resources for them. We argue that agents should "let children learn" and should be built to take on a teacher-facilitator function, allowing children to develop their technical and critical thinking abilities as they interact with varied technology in a broad range of use cases.