CR4T: Rewrite-Based Guardrails for Adolescent LLM Safety
A new framework called CR4T proposes rewriting unsafe or refusal-oriented LLM outputs into age-appropriate guidance for adolescents, offering a more human-centered alternative to traditional safety guardrails.
[2605.21609] CR4T: Rewrite-Based Guardrails for Adolescent LLM Safety
[Submitted on 20 May 2026]
Title:CR4T: Rewrite-Based Guardrails for Adolescent LLM Safety
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Abstract:Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded in adolescent digital environments, mediating information seeking, advice, and emotionally sensitive interactions. Yet existing safety mechanisms remain largely grounded in adult-centric norms and operationalize safety through refusal-oriented suppression. While such approaches may reduce immediate policy violations, they can also create conversational dead-ends, limit constructive guidance, and fail to address the developmental vulnerabilities inherent in adolescent-AI interactions. We argue that adolescent LLM safety should be framed not solely as a filtering problem, but as a socio-technical, developmentally aligned transformation problem. To operationalize this perspective, we propose Critique-and-Revise-for-Teenagers (CR4T), a model-agnostic safeguarding framework that selectively reconstructs unsafe or refusal-style outputs into ageappropriate, guidance-oriented responses while preserving benign intent. CR4T combines lightweight risk detection with domain-conditioned rewriting to remove risk-amplifying content, reduce unnecessary conversational shutdown, and introduce developmentally appropriate guidance. Experimental results show that targeted rewriting substantially reduces unsafe and refusal-oriented outcomes while avoiding unnecessary intervention on acceptable interactions. These findings suggest that selective response reconstruction offers a more human-centered alternative to refusal-centric guardrails for adolescent-facing LLM systems.
Subjects:
Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computers and Society (cs.CY)
Cite as: arXiv:2605.21609 [cs.CL]
(or arXiv:2605.21609v1 [cs.CL] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.21609
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Heajun An [view email] [v1] Wed, 20 May 2026 18:16:18 UTC (3,014 KB)
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