Nearly a third of US teenagers say they use AI chatbots daily, a new study finds, shedding light on how young people are embracing a technology that’s raised critical safety concerns around mental health impacts and exposure to mature content for kids.
The Pew Research Center study, which marks the group’s first time surveying teens on their general AI chatbot use, found that nearly 70% of American teens have used a chatbot at least once. And among those who use AI chatbots daily, 16% said they did so several times a day or “almost constantly.”
AI chatbots have been pitched as learning and schoolwork tools for young people, but some teens have also turned to them for companionship or romantic relationships. That’s contributed to questions about whether young people should use chatbots in the first place. Some experts have worried that their use even in a learning context could stunt development.
Pew surveyed nearly 1,500 US teens between the ages of 13 and 17 for the report, and the pool was designed to be representative across gender, age, race and ethnicity, and household income.
ChatGPT was by far the most popular AI chatbot, with more than half of teens reporting having used it. The other top players were Google’s Gemini, Meta AI, Microsoft’s Copilot, Character.AI and Anthropic’s Claude, in that order.
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