How kids feel about AI is less a clean split between fans and critics than a set of trade-offs. Young people interviewed by MIT Technology Review described using the tools for practical tasks while questioning what they do to school, creativity and judgment. The interviews, with people ages 10 to 18, are illustrative rather than a representative survey, and were edited for length and clarity.
One 17-year-old, Winter, said AI was not the answer to social problems and worried it could erode creativity and critical thinking. Another interviewee said she avoids it because of environmental concerns. Technology Review also found that some children were disengaged or opposed to making AI part of their lives, even as most people it asked reported using it at least occasionally.
For some younger participants, AI was not a coveted new gadget so much as a feature that arrived through parents, schools, search products and the apps already on their devices, according to Technology Review.
What are teens using AI chatbots for most often?
Information lookup, schoolwork and entertainment lead the list in a Pew Research Center survey. Of U.S. teens surveyed, 57% said they had used chatbots to find information, 54% for help with schoolwork and 47% for fun or entertainment. Far fewer reported personal uses: 16% had used them for casual conversation and 12% for emotional support or advice.
Pew surveyed 1,458 teens and their parents online from Sept. 25 to Oct. 9, 2025. Its teen results represent U.S. 13- to 17-year-olds who live with parents, with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. The figures describe reported use, not whether any particular use helped or harmed a teenager.
- About four in 10 teens said they had used chatbots to summarize articles, books or videos.
- About four in 10 also reported using them to create or edit images or videos.
- About one in five said they used chatbots to get news.
Remy, a 16-year-old in New York interviewed by Technology Review, captures a tension in these accounts. He called himself “indifferent” to AI and said his daily interests did not require it, yet he uses the free version of Claude for programming outside school. He had used it while working on a program related to his computer’s overclocking.
His experience with code was qualified, not starry-eyed. Remy said AI-generated material for game development was sloppy and poorly integrated, and that fixing it could take longer than building the code himself. He described current AI as interesting but crude.
School is where he saw a sharper cost. Remy said teachers’ attempts to curb AI-assisted paper writing had shifted English assignments toward timed in-class essays. In his view, having 70 minutes to complete an essay made his writing worse. That is one student’s account of a classroom response, rather than evidence that schools broadly produce the same result.
Danielle, an 18-year-old in California, took a more conditional view, telling Technology Review that the effects of AI depend on the people using it. Her belief that it could aid personalized education and medical diagnosis was her assessment, not a finding established by the interviews.
Ying Xu, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said children can learn effectively from AI designed around learning principles. Xu also cautioned that it cannot fully reproduce the engagement and relationship-building of human interaction, and emphasized teaching children to evaluate AI-generated material critically.
The interviews and survey point to a less tidy reality than the usual panic-or-promise script. Teens report using chatbots for ordinary tasks, while individual young people interviewed by Technology Review still draw lines around the thinking and creative work they want to keep their own.
This story draws on original reporting from MIT Technology Review.
