The vast majority of 9- to 17-year-olds use AI and 85% have used AI for schoolwork or homework, with about half of them using it weekly, and a fifth using it daily, according to a new report from Common Sense Media cited in an Education Week article.
The survey, conducted in March, shows how deeply AI is embedded in young people’s daily lives.
Kids are adopting AI far more quickly than they did with social media, says Michael Robb, the head of research at Common Sense Media. The report’s findings should be an eye-opener for adults, he says.
“AI is already a part of childhood in a way I think maybe people haven’t really grappled with yet,” he says. “This is happening right now across different age bands, across gender, across race and income levels as well.”
Other findings:
- Growing AI-dependency among adolescents is evident, especially among the heaviest users of the technology. A fifth of kids who use AI say it would be very or somewhat hard for them to give it up for a month; with 42% who use AI frequently say it would be tough to go without AI.
- Kids most often encounter AI through automatic summaries from search engines and from the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT.
- Many kids struggling with school and socialization use AI more frequently.
- Children who struggle with academics and focus are more likely to use AI frequently, as are kids who say they are lonely.
- 55% of teens and tweens who use AI and find math pretty or very hard say they use AI weekly for schoolwork, compared with 46 percent of adolescents who use AI but don’t find math difficult.
- More than half of adolescents who have a hard time focusing on school assignments use AI at least once a week for schoolwork.
- Kids who use AI daily were more likely to report feeling lonely at least some of the time compared with kids who use AI less than once a month or not at all.
- AI is being used for social-emotional support and practice. Overall, 40% of kids who have used AI have utilized it to practice conversations and social skills.
- Kids who say they are lonely and kids who say they have a harder time making friends are more likely to use AI in this way than kids who say they are rarely lonely and don’t find making friends hard.
- Nearly half of adolescents who use AI say they have tapped the technology to get advice on their future goals.
- About half of kids think AI will have an equally negative and positive effect on their near- and long-term futures.
- Three-quarters of kids report that their school or teacher have communicated expectations regarding when students can use AI for schoolwork this year.
- Fewer say that educators or parents have talked to them about using AI safely, or AI’s accuracy. Fifty-six percent of kids say their school has discussed how to use AI safely, and 51% have been told by a teacher or their school how to judge if information from an AI platform is accurate or trustworthy.
- Slightly more than half of kids, 56%, say their parents or guardians have not spoken with them about AI safety.
“Schools are starting to set some rules, but they’re less consistent around teaching AI literacy,” says Robb of Common Sense Media. “So that’s an area where schools could definitely home in on a little bit more closely.”
At a bare minimum, students should know that AI doesn’t understand whether the answer it spits out is accurate or not and that it frequently gets things wrong, Robb says. Teachers should also speak with their students about how there are often biases built into AI outputs based on the training data that was used.
Students should also be aware of privacy concerns, Robb says.
“It’s like giving your diary to AI and hoping for the best, but that becomes part of AI’s training data and can become a privacy risk because you don’t know how that’s going to manifest itself later on within the AI,” he says.
Education Week
