Conversations with 10-to-18-year-olds about artificial intelligence (AI) revealed a spectrum of attitudes: many young people use AI in everyday ways—schoolwork, programming, or creative projects—while others avoid it for ethical or environmental reasons. The responses were nuanced: some teens embraced AI as a tool, others distrusted it, and several had built their own AI projects.
How young people are using AI
Interviews mirror broader data. A Pew Research Center survey published in February 2026 found that 57% of U.S. teens had used chatbots to search for information, 54% had used them to help with schoolwork, and 47% had used them for fun or entertainment; just 12% used them for emotional support or advice. In short, teens are far more likely to use AI for innocuous tasks than for sensitive ones.
Voices from 10–18 year olds
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Remy, 16, New York ("The Coder"): Uses Claude’s free tier for programming tasks—helping test an overclocking tweak, for example—but finds AI often makes school assignments worse because teachers now require in-class writing to deter cheating. Remy also builds reinforcement-learning models in a game engine and feels current AI produces sloppy code that needs more correction than building from scratch.
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Danielle, 18, California ("The Organizer"): An engineering student involved in Next Voters, a project that uses multiple AI agents to gather and verify local government documents (council websites, proposed bills, meeting transcripts), categorize them, and produce a cited weekly newsletter. The aim is to lower barriers to civic participation and present policy in plain language so more people can engage critically.
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Hazel, 17, New York ("The Naturalist"): Initially curious about ChatGPT, Hazel now avoids many AI services because of the environmental footprint of data centers—high water use and localized heating that can strain communities and ecosystems.
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Wesley, 14, Ohio ("The Storyteller"): Uses ChatGPT for grammar checks and debugging small coding projects, and tries Character.AI for entertainment—making and speaking with user-created characters. He warns free services can be unfiltered and limited in memory: long conversations may slow and lose earlier context, so users must steer the interaction.
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Sylvia, 10, Michigan ("The Artist"): Does not use ChatGPT or Claude herself, though her mother does. At school she uses a program called SchoolAI for writing ideas and revisions, but she prefers to keep drawing and songwriting personal. She was surprised to find some music she liked on Spotify was actually made by AI.
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Evelyn, 13, Oregon ("The Pre-Premed"): Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in January 2026, Evelyn benefits from AI-enabled devices: her glucose monitor and insulin pump predict glucose trends and adjust dosing to prevent lows. She also uses AI for study aids and plans to become an endocrinologist; she views the technology’s benefits as outweighing the risks.
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Krishiv, 17, Ontario, Canada ("The Inventor"): Built Aceflow, an AI tutor that generates practice questions and explains material in the style of a teacher from any supplied source (lecture video, blog post, PDF). Aceflow gained traction on TikTok and thousands of users; the project led to part-time roles at BenchSci and Simple Ventures and later involvement with an MIT AI lab and the launch of CheetahPrep.com.
Concerns and educational implications
Interviewees raised legitimate concerns: exposure to unfiltered content, overreliance on chatbots, and accepting incorrect answers. Those risks are why many argue for teaching AI literacy rather than forbidding the technology—the comparison given was that we don’t ban driving but teach people to check blind spots.
Unexpectedly, the interviews also showed how much adults might learn from younger users: teens were often clear about which tasks they’d delegate to AI and which they wanted to keep for themselves. Rather than fearing job loss, many worry about societal effects and want to retain agency as AI tools become more capable.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
The reporting includes contributions from Justyna Stasik, and the piece notes that Jen Swetzoff and Keeley McNamara are the founding editors of Anyway, an independent print magazine for tweens and teens.
