Ask a teenager about AI and you might get a shrug. Words like “bruh” and “meh” came up repeatedly when Common Sense Media interviewed kids aged 10 to 18 about artificial intelligence. One 17-year-old named Winter put it bluntly: “AI isn’t the solution to our problems. I’m afraid it’s going to be the end of creativity and critical thinking.” Yet the same interviews revealed a generation quietly using these tools without much enthusiasm.
The numbers back that up. Pew Research Center found in a February 2026 survey that 57% of US teens had used chatbots to search for information, 54% for schoolwork help, and 47% for entertainment. Only 12% turned to AI for emotional support. Teens are more than four times as likely to use AI for innocuous purposes than potentially harmful ones. Some are building things—characters, tech platforms, even tutoring tools for other students.
Remy, a 16-year-old coder from New York, embodies the ambivalence. He uses Claude’s free tier for programming experiments but finds AI frustrating for real work. “It makes sloppy code, and it’s bad at blending mechanics into something cohesive,” he said. “I’d spend more time correcting it than writing it myself.” He also pointed to a concrete consequence: his English classes now require in-class essays because teachers don’t trust students not to cheat. He noted Princeton voted to let faculty proctor exams for the first time since 1893, ending a 130-year honor code tradition.
That’s the detail that stuck with me. We’ve spent years debating whether AI will replace jobs or fuel cheating, but the quieter cost is already here: schools redesigning assignments around the assumption that students will cheat. The kids interviewed weren’t panicked about their own futures. They were more concerned about society’s relationship with the technology. Many could articulate exactly what they would and wouldn’t hand over to AI. For a generation growing up with these tools embedded in Google search and Instagram, the response isn’t fear or excitement. It’s calibrated skepticism—and that might be exactly what the adults need to learn from them.
