What two studies say about teens and AI usage, and what it means for parents

A lot of adults might find the idea of artificial intelligence daunting and even threatening, but their kids are using it every day.

A pair of studies is shining more light on how kids are using AI, what they鈥檙e finding with it and how much their parents might be in the dark on it all.

鈥淯sing AI is nearly universal among tweens and teens in America,鈥� said Geoffrey Fowler, the head of public engagement for the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media. 鈥淚t’s hard to overstate how much AI has become a part of their lives. They’re using it for school. They’re using it for fun. They’re using it to communicate, and they’re using it to talk about things that, frankly, we would rather have them talking to adults and trusted humans about.鈥�

He said that includes topics like their bodies, their relationships and other problems they might be facing on a day-to-day basis.

鈥淲e know that is a dangerous path for kids to go down with AI systems, with chatbots, because they’re not human and they are not, frankly, designed well enough at this point to really be able to answer some of those questions appropriately,鈥� Fowler said.

One of his group’s finds growing dependency on AI among teens, with those who might be struggling in school turning to AI for help. He also said kids who report feeling lonelier tend to use AI more frequently for social and emotional support.

鈥淲e can’t necessarily say that AI is making kids feel lonelier, but we can say that the lonelier kids are turning to AI,鈥� Fowler said. 鈥淭hat’s disturbing because we know that those kids might need more human support, and they’re much better served by friends and parents and counselors and teachers than by a bot.鈥�

A found that AI is lowering the barrier to sexually explicit material among teens and tweens.

In fact, it found almost half teens said they鈥檝e seen sexually explicit material they believed was AI-generated. In most cases, that exposure was not something they were seeking either. Within that group coming across the explicit material, a quarter of them said it involved either themselves or someone they knew.

鈥淭his is just a new super powerful form of it that we have to be extra aware of because it can have real lasting damage on communities and on kids’ relationships,鈥� Fowler said.

鈥淢any adults, myself included, assume that when you hear the term deepfakes, that’s a problem for celebrities and politicians,鈥� he added. 鈥淏ut the real takeaway here is that this is also a part of the lives of teenagers. So much so that many of them say they’re fearful it’s going to happen to them, and they’re even changing some of their behavior online to try to keep it from happening to them.鈥�

But a common theme in both reports is that parents aren鈥檛 talking about AI with their kids. The July report found only 20% of teens have talked about AI-generated sexual content with a trusted adult. The other report, released in June, found more than 40% of kids aren鈥檛 having conversations about AI safety with either parents or teachers.

鈥淚t’s hard to blame parents for this,鈥� Fowler said. 鈥淭hey feel that their kids are way ahead on this technology. They may well be, but the reality is, you don’t have to be an expert to have a conversation with your kid and to have an open door to talk about what you鈥檙e using.”

鈥淚 think adults have to catch up with kids in a big way about all the different things that AI can do, and all the different ways it’s becoming part of their lives,鈥� he added.

But he also said Big Tech can be doing more too. Fowler said Apple and Google could do more to get certain apps that help create deepfake, pornographic content, off their app stores. He also faulted social media companies for not doing enough to keep certain content from spreading within their platforms too.

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