The Generation Growing Up With AI Is Already Telling Us What They Think

Sixty-four percent of American teenagers use AI chatbots. Thirty percent use them daily. More than half have used them for schoolwork. Twelve percent have used them for emotional support. These are not projections about a future generation of AI users. This is the Pew Research Center describing teenagers right now, surveyed in the fall of 2025.

The workforce, the customer base, and the cultural context your brand will operate in five years from now is being shaped by this data today.

What Teenagers Are Actually Using AI For

The top use cases are unsurprising and important in equal measure. Information search at 57%. Schoolwork help at 54%. Entertainment at 47%. Summarizing content at around 40%. These are productivity and research behaviors — the same applications that are simultaneously reshaping white-collar work.

The numbers that deserve more attention are further down the list. Sixteen percent of teens have used chatbots for casual conversation. Twelve percent have sought emotional support or advice from an AI. One in ten does all or most of their schoolwork with the assistance of a chatbot.

On the schoolwork finding: 59% of teens believe AI cheating happens at their school at least somewhat often. Among teens who have used chatbots for schoolwork themselves, that number rises to 76%. The teens closest to the behavior have the clearest view of its prevalence. The gap between what schools are detecting and what students are doing is almost certainly significant.

The Optimism Gap — and What It Reveals

Here is the finding that should inform every brand strategy and workforce planning conversation happening right now. Teens view AI's impact on their own lives more positively than its impact on society. Thirty-six percent expect a positive personal impact over the next 20 years. Only 31% say the same for society broadly. Fifteen percent expect a negative personal impact. Twenty-six percent expect a negative societal impact.

This is not cognitive dissonance. It is a rational assessment. Teenagers who use AI daily to learn faster, complete research more efficiently, and access information previously gated by expertise are experiencing genuine personal benefits. They simultaneously understand — with striking clarity — that the same technology threatens jobs, erodes critical thinking at scale, spreads misinformation, and concentrates power in ways that are bad for society as a whole.

A teen girl quoted in the study put it plainly: "People will be afraid to be creative, or won't see a need for it anymore. It makes people lazy and takes away jobs." A teen boy: "It's already being used to spread propaganda, there's no end to what it can do, it's hard to tell what's real or AI online anymore."

These are not naive observations. They are accurate ones. And they are coming from 14 and 15-year-olds.

What Marketers Need to Understand About This Audience

The generation entering adulthood right now has a sophisticated, unsentimental relationship with AI. They use it constantly and trust it selectively. They are aware of its limitations in ways that many adults who adopted it later are not. They are skeptical of AI in high-stakes decisions — roughly half think AI would do worse than humans in hiring, medical diagnosis, and driving. They think AI might actually be better than humans at teaching skills.

That nuanced calibration matters enormously for how brands deploy AI in customer-facing contexts. An AI interaction that feels useful and efficient will land well with this cohort. One that feels like it's replacing genuine human judgment in a moment that requires it will generate exactly the skepticism the data predicts.

The 12% seeking emotional support from AI is the number that should prompt the most serious reflection — not because it's surprising, but because it signals a relationship with AI that extends well beyond utility. Brands, educators, and platforms building for this generation carry a responsibility that the industry has not yet fully reckoned with.

The teenagers are paying attention. The question is whether the adults building the technology are.

Winsome Marketing helps growth teams build AI-powered customer experiences that resonate with audiences who have grown up knowing exactly what AI is — and isn't. Let's build something that earns their trust. Talk to our team.