Lots of teens say they’re using AI in school — even if it’s hurting their critical thinking skills

Nearly three-quarters of American teenagers say they use AI for schoolwork. Of those, more than 60% say they use it to get an answer rather than figuring it out for themselves.

Those are among the findings of a new survey from the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media. The group surveyed more than 1,000 teens, asking them about whether they use AI for schoolwork, and if so, how.

The Show spoke with Geoffrey Fowler, head of public engagement for the Youth AI Safety Institute about what the survey found, including with what Stood out to him from the results.

Full conversation

GEOFFREY FOWLER: Two things really stand out to me. 70% of all American teenagers are using AI for schoolwork. So we’ve moved far past the point where the concern is a couple of early adopter kids might be using ChatGPT for cheating. That’s a really big moment.

The other thing that really stuck out to me is that of those kids who are using AI for their schoolwork, the majority admit, even in a survey, that they’re sometimes using it in ways that hand off some of the thinking, that they’re using it to just get answers sometimes. And that’s a really big deal for the basics of education. What are we doing at school if we’ve given every American teenager an easy shortcut tool that means that they don’t have to do critical thinking anymore?

MARK BRODIE: Well, it’s particularly interesting that that many admit to it, right?

GEOFFREY FOWLER: Exactly. I believe them. If anything, probably we’re slightly undercounting how much they’re using AI and the ways that they’re using it. The other thing that though I think makes this a more complicated story is that those same kids who said that, "Yes, sometimes we’re using it in ways that replace thinking," also say they are sometimes using it in ways that they think are more productive. They’re using it as brainstorming tools, they’re using it to get feedback on their work, they’re not just going to it for answers. So kids have this sort of complicated relationship with AI, and they’re using it as part of the ordinary everyday parts of being a teenager in school now.

MARK BRODIE: It was also interesting that at least some number of the teens who say they’re using AI for schoolwork basically to give them the answers, they seem to acknowledge that they’re almost depriving themselves of something in their educational experience. They’re aware of what they’re doing and yet still doing it.

GEOFFREY FOWLER: Yeah, this is this really complicated moment that we’re at, right? Teens themselves see the cost of using AI. They see that when they have it available, about 38% of them say they think they develop fewer ideas when they have it available, and 39% say that they feel like they’re missing out on learning when they use AI to complete assignments.

So they have this understanding, but let’s put this in some context. Kids are under incredible pressure in school now, right? They are trying to figure out how to make it in this world. They see all of the adults around them, they see their parents, their teachers, political leaders even, using AI tools, and they say, "Well, then why can’t I?"

And I think that what the real problem here is that we as adults are letting them down because we’re not giving them guidance and helping them figure out how they should and shouldn’t be using this stuff and what is and isn’t helpful and appropriate for young minds when you’re just learning all of these critical thinking skills.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so that kind of gets, I think, at least in part to policies that schools and maybe individual teachers have for AI use in their classrooms. Do you find that those are understood? Are they effective? I mean, you kind of referred to the fact that we’re beyond the point of just a couple of kids who figured out, "Hey, this AI thing can be really helpful." Pretty much everybody’s using it now, so what are schools doing about it and is it effective?

GEOFFREY FOWLER: Schools clearly aren’t doing enough and aren’t doing the right things. So some people think, "Well, the solution is easy, we should just go ban AI in schools." Well, in our survey, we asked kids about that, and among those who use AI for schoolwork, 44% said that they have had an AI tool blocked on a school network or on their school device. But you know what they did? 60% of them just switched to a personal device instead, and on their personal device, they don’t have support, they don’t have any guardrails at all, so we’re kind of in a worse situation than we were before.

The education experts that we’re working with here at Common Sense Media really think that we need a different kind of approach. What we need is AI literacy. We need to have teachers and parents and families and communities talking with kids about the best ways, the good ways to use AI, and also how to stay safe with it.

MARK BRODIE: Are parents and teachers and others prepared to help teenagers figure this stuff out though? Are we AI literate enough to really be good guides here?

GEOFFREY FOWLER: What you’re pointing out is behind every corner with this AI situation, there’s another new set of problems, right? So teachers do not feel like they are AI experts. Parents do not feel like they are AI experts. I’m based in San Francisco in the capital of the AI world, and plenty of people here do not feel — in the industry — do not feel like they’re AI experts. It’s moving so fast, so I think we have to sort of accept that you don’t have to be an expert to have a conversation with your kid about it and to explore it with them, right?

To say, "Hey, you know what? Google now gives you an AI-generated answer every time you search for something. Let’s try this together and try the same query a bunch of times and see how we get different answers every time we ask a question. And from that, maybe we can learn and have a conversation about, ’You know what? AI isn’t expert. It doesn’t actually know the answer. It’s just kind of figuring it out each time, and sometimes we can’t trust what it says.’"

So you’ve got to have kind of an open mind to explore this stuff with kids and to talk about your values, talk about what feels like cheating and what doesn’t, why is it important to go through the process of doing a school assignment like the teacher asked as opposed to just turning to AI to get it done more quickly.

And then for schools, a little bit of good news. With this research, Common Sense Media, we’ve also produced some new curriculum for high school, for high schools, and our curriculum is already used by 70% of American high schools. And this new curriculum focuses on digital literacy specifically around AI, so it gives teachers courses and lesson plans they can do with their kids to work through thinking about how AI is impacting them, and again, to teach those critical thinking skills that we know are going to be important for the future.

MARK BRODIE: Is it safe to say that one of the biggest lessons that it would be helpful for teenagers, and maybe for adults to learn as well, is the ways in which AI can be helpful and the ways in which AI is either providing a shortcut or is maybe unhelpful?

GEOFFREY FOWLER: Yeah, I think we need to talk about that difference and tease through it together. To be completely honest, I’m not certain we’ve figured out yet what specific tools or apps or whatnot are actually useful for education at this point. It’s all so new, we’re still figuring it out.

But I think we can say that we know that the skill that is going to matter most for the future is not a technical skill. It’s not about being the smartest person about using AI. It’s about human skills. It’s about being able to communicate and think critically and have a conversation. And so those are the things that schools really need to emphasize to prepare kids for the AI era, not technical skills.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Geoffrey Fowler, head of public engagement with the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media. Geoffrey, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

GEOFFREY FOWLER: You bet. Great talking to you, and I hope we get to do it again.