How kids feel about AI, in their own words

What happened

When we set out to talk to kids about artificial intelligence, we thought we knew what we’d hear. We expected some to tell us they were using it to cheat a little, the way Millennials and Gen Xers opened up CliffsNotes or programmed formulas into their TI-82s, and others to share inspiring ways they were using it.

What surprised us most was how much young people might be able to teach adults about AI, and how clearly the kids who use it could name what they will and won’t hand over. They’re not as worried that it will take their jobs as they are that it might impact society.

And, with increasing access to tools that could in theory do their thinking, their talking, or even their friend-­making for them, it sounds as if most want to keep their hands on the wheel. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. ” I just don’t find the current applications that exciting for my own use. I go to school. I teach tae kwon do. I read.

I play games with friends. None of that needs AI. I mean, I use it. I mostly use Claude, the free version, for programming outside of school. I had it help me write a program to see if I could tweak my computer’s overclock. So I see the appeal. But at school, I actually think AI mostly makes my assignments worse, not better.

In English, everything is now in-class writing, because teachers don’t want kids cheating. So we have only 70 minutes to write a whole essay, and I think that hinders my writing. (Did you know Princeton voted to let faculty proctor exams for the first time in over a century? ) As far as code goes, I’d also rather build things myself.

I’ve been making a reinforcement-learning model in a game engine with a friend; it moves randomly at first, gets rewarded for walking toward a coin, and after enough iterations it teaches itself the most efficient path. I’ve also tested AI for game development, and it isn’t there. It makes sloppy code, and it’s bad at blending mechanics into something cohesive. I’d spend more time correcting it than writing it myself.

I’m studying engineering, and my life goal is to innovate technology that will help as many people as I can. The way I see it, AI isn’t inherently good or bad; that’s decided by the people using it. It’s already being used for lots of good. Just think about how it helps people with personalized education and more accessible medical diagnoses.

And everything is cited, so you can click straight to the actual policy to learn more. The information comes to you, instead of you having to remember to go search or prompt for it. One AI agent finds official government sources for a given city or state—the council website, the proposed bills, the meeting transcripts.

Why it matters

We were also listening for concerns that were less kid-specific, like deepfakes or job destruction. But what we actually heard when we asked kids aged 10 to 18 about AI had tons of nuance.

Many of the same kids who can go on and on about music, rock climbing, or soccer met our questions with words like “bruh” and “meh”—or were so deeply against AI or uninterested in making it part of their lives that they didn’t want to talk about it at all. One teen said his peers use it for things they know they shouldn’t, like writing papers.

One told us she won’t touch AI because of the environmental impact. A few said they find the whole field disheartening: “AI isn’t the solution to our problems,” said Winter, a 17-year-old. ” Yet most of the kids we asked admitted to using AI at least a little bit.

AI doesn’t yet seem to be something a lot of elementary- or middle-school-age kids we spoke to are focused on—and they aren’t begging for it, the way they do for iPhones and Snapchat accounts. Many told us that some of their first AI encounters came from their parents or schools. Sometimes, they said, it’s just embedded in the devices and apps they already rely on.

It’s just there, in things like a Google search. What we heard tracks with the data. In a survey published in February 2026, the Pew Research Center found that 57% of teens in the US had used chatbots to search for information, 54% tapped them to help with schoolwork, and 47% had used them for fun or entertainment. Only 12% had used them for emotional support or advice.

Teens are over four times more likely to be using AI in innocuous ways than potentially harmful ones. Some are even using it to build things, whether it’s a character, a tech platform, or a tutor to help other kids study. None of that means the worries are misplaced.

Kids can stumble into unfiltered content, lean on a chatbot instead of their own judgment, or trust an answer that’s wrong—and they should be protected from those dangers. But the danger is the reason to teach the thing, not to avoid it. We don’t teach teens to never drive. We teach them to check their blind spots.

What to watch

So far, the biggest project I’ve worked on with AI is called Next Voters. My teammates are more on the technical side, and I’m working on scaling. Right now, we’re focusing mostly on city councils as well as states. Our system turns dense, hundred-page documents into a headline and a few plain-language bullet points in your inbox.