Published on
updated on
Reading 2 min.
If AI-based tools like ChatGPT no longer hold any secrets for young people, their parents, on the other hand, often feel overwhelmed. According to a report from Common Sense Media, only 37% of parents think their children use generative AI, while seven in ten teenagers say they do.
Overall, 70% of young people aged 13 to 18 reported having already used at least one generative AI tool. The Common Sense Media study, entitled “The Dawn of the AI Era: Teens, Parents, and the Adoption of Generative AI at Home and School“, carried out with more than 1000 parents and adolescents, reveals a lack of awareness among parents regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the daily lives of their children. Nearly a quarter of parents (23%) are convinced that their offspring has never used this type of tool even though those concerned say the opposite. An obvious lack of communication confirmed by the study when almost half of the parents questioned (49%) admit to not talking about artificial intelligence. generative with their children.
Among the tools most popular with young people, search engines improved with AI such as Bing or Google SGE (56%) and chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini from Google (51%) are the most popular. On the other hand, tools for creating images (34%) and videos (22%), generated using AI, such as DALL-E or Midjourney are less attractive to young people.
Why children use AI
According to the study, young people use generative AI primarily to help them with their schoolwork (53%). Young people from the black and Latin communities are turning more to this assistance with 59% and 57% of respondents respectively.
Adolescents also use these tools to avoid boredom (42%). An interest more widely shared by the Latin community (48%) followed by the black community (42%). Next comes the possibility of using AI for translation for 41% of respondents.
If the use of artificial intelligence in the school context can be debated, some parents are more optimistic unlike others, who are much more refractory: “Parents of Black teens are almost twice as likely to report that these platforms will have a positive impact on their teen’s learning in school as parents of White teens (37% vs. 21%).” we can read in the report.
In addition to believing that generative AI has a negative impact on their children’s education, parents of white teenagers (59%) are also more likely to speak out against harmful and hateful content generated by these tools than parents of white teenagers. black adolescents (43%). They are also concerned about the use of AI in the school sector, fearing that it encourages cheating, according to 82% of parents of white adolescents.
*Methodology: The report is based on a representative sample of 1,045 American adults aged 18 or older, parents of children aged 13 to 18, and 1,045 American adolescents (aged 13 to 18) recruited by the intermediary of their parents, between March 15 and April 20, 2024.