The teens I’ve talked to about this are more knowledgeable than you might expect. For example, Joseph says he accepts advice cautiously, recognizing that the AI may just be telling him what he wants to hear. But most, including Joseph, argue that using AI for advice and companionship goes too far. One person mentioned the story of a 14-year-old boy who took his own life after a persistent conversation with a chatbot.
“One of my friends was talking to an AI all the time at one point,” said Kingston Lievan, 16, of San Diego, California. “Sometimes we would just sit there and I would hear him laughing next to us while typing something on his cell phone.”
When Pew asked American teenagers about AI, 12% said they use it for advice or emotional support, and 16% said they use it for casual conversations. These percentages may be small, but if the study is representative, they still represent millions of children across the United States. And there was a huge racial disparity.
The study found that 21% of black teens use AI for emotional support, compared to just 13% of Hispanic teens and 8% of white teens. (This study did not have enough Asian teenagers to conduct a separate analysis.)
“We also see a lot of evidence, using regression and other analyses, that race stands out on its own, even when controlling for other factors such as income,” Anderson says.
