One notable finding from the study is how many parents don’t know if their children are using generative AI. Only 37 percent of parents with children using AI tools knew they were doing so. Nearly a quarter of parents with children using AI tools wrongly assumed they weren’t. Most parents have not discussed AI with their children.
Nearly half of parents surveyed worry that the advent of generative AI tools could harm their children’s writing and critical thinking skills. It wasn’t all pessimism, though; parents were divided about how these tools would affect research skills, and more than a quarter reported that they expected AI tools to help their children generate ideas.
Another important finding: Teachers were more than twice as likely to accuse black students of using generative AI in their homework when they didn’t, compared to their white and Hispanic peers. In these cases, teachers often use AI detection software to flag suspicious documents. “This suggests that AI detection software, and its use by teachers, may exacerbate existing disparities in discipline among historically marginalized groups, including black students,” the report said.
However, both black teens and their parents reported more optimistic feelings about how AI is being used in education than their white and Hispanic peers. What’s more, the study suggests that black teens, as well as Latino teens, are more enthusiastic and experimental users of these tools than their white peers, reporting significantly higher levels of adoption of a wide variety of activities, from creating humorous content to , to share with friends, use AI as a companion. (More than a quarter of black teens said they used AI to “keep me company,” compared with 11 percent of white teens.)
Overall, teens report mixed feelings about AI, but this research suggests one clear point of agreement: the majority are convinced that understanding how to use this technology is a necessity. More than half of students said they think kids from kindergarten through high school should be required to learn to use generative AI tools.
“I sympathize with administrators and teachers who don’t know what to do, but we can see in the data that it’s extremely important to start talking about it,” says Lenhart. “You can’t push it aside and hope it goes away.”
