While AI chatbots have yet to replace teenagers' social media habits, they are playing an important role in their online habits. Nearly one-third of U.S. teens report using AI chatbots daily or more, according to a new report from Pew Research.
This report is the first by Pew to specifically examine how often teens use AI overall, and was released in conjunction with a recent study on social media use among teens. The study is based on an online survey of 1,458 U.S. teens from September 25 to October 9, 2025. According to Pew, the survey is “weighted by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories to represent U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 living with their parents.”
According to Pew, 48% of teens use AI chatbots at least “several times a week,” 12% report using them “several times a day,” and 4% say they use the tools “almost always.” This is much lower than the 21 percent of teens who said they use TikTok most of the time, and the 17 percent who said the same about YouTube. But these numbers are still significant considering how new these services are compared to mainstream social media apps.
The report also provides insight into which AI companies' chatbots are most commonly used among teenagers. OpenAI's ChatGPT led by far, with 59 percent of teens saying they had used the service, followed by Google's Gemini at 23 percent and Meta AI at 20 percent. Only 14% of teens said they had used Microsoft Copilot, while 9% and 3% said they had used Character AI and Anthropic's Claude, respectively.
This study is Pew's first to broadly examine Ai chatbot usage among teens. (Pew Research Center)
Pew's research comes amid increased scrutiny of AI companies' treatment of young users. Both OpenAI and Character AI are currently facing wrongful death lawsuits from the parents of teenagers who died by suicide. In both cases, parents claim their children's interactions with chatbots contributed to their deaths. (Character AI briefly banned its service for teens before introducing a more limited format for younger users.) Other companies, including Alphabet and Meta, have been investigated by the FTC over their safety policies for young users.
Interestingly, the report also shows that there has been little change in social media use among U.S. teens. Pew regularly surveys teens about how they use social media, and finds that their daily use of the platforms has remained “relatively stable” compared to recent years. YouTube remains the most widely used platform, used by 92 percent of teens, followed by TikTok at 69 percent, Instagram at 63 percent, and Snapchat at 55 percent. Of the major apps examined by the report, WhatsApp was the only service to see a significant change in recent years, with 24 percent of teens reporting using the messaging app today, compared to 17 percent in 2022.
