How kids feel about AI, in their own words
| Source: MIT Technology Review AI
Tags: teens, AI literacy, Pew Research, education, AI adoption, MIT Technology Review
MIT Technology Review interviews of kids aged 10-18 reveal nuanced AI attitudes: 57% of US teens use chatbots for information and 54% for schoolwork per Pew Research, but most express concern about societal impacts on creativity and critical thinking rather than personal job loss.
Details
MIT Technology Review interviewed children aged 10-18 about their relationship with AI, finding neither the wholesale enthusiasm nor the panic that adult coverage tends to project. Most teens use AI at least occasionally, and many encounter it passively through existing tools like Google search rather than deliberately adopting standalone AI assistants.\n\nPew Research Center data from February 2026 provides the quantitative backdrop: 57% of US teens use chatbots to search for information, 54% use them for schoolwork, and 47% for entertainment. Only 12% have used AI for emotional support or advice — teens are over four times more likely to use AI in innocuous ways than potentially harmful ones.\n\nThe concerns teens articulate tend to be societal rather than personal: impacts on creativity, critical thinking, and intellectual culture, rather than anxiety about job displacement. The article concludes that teens may have clearer intuitions about what to delegate to AI versus keep for themselves than adults typically credit.