There’s fear among many educators that most students are now using AI to do too much of their schoolwork and most of their critical thinking.
A new nationally representative survey of 13- to 17-year-olds sheds some light on that fear. Turns out, a little more than half (54%) reported in the survey by leading polling group Gallup that they use AI to get help with schoolwork. Among the other findings related to how teens are using AI tools for schoolwork:
- 48% say they have used AI to do research;
- 43% say they use it to solve math problems;
- And 35% say they use the technology to edit something they wrote.
However, while many teens are not using AI in their schoolwork much if at all, a small subset is relying heavily on it, according to Gallup’s report on the survey findings.
“For a minority of teens, chatbots have become a go-to tool for much of their schoolwork,” the report said. “One-in-ten teens say they do all or most of their schoolwork with chatbots’ help.”
Overall, teens report that AI chatbots are helpful tools for doing schoolwork, with a quarter of teens saying the technology is “very” or “extremely helpful,” and another quarter saying the tech is “somewhat helpful.”
How many students use AI to cheat?
While chatbots may be useful to students as they complete their school assignments, is the technology so helpful it’s preventing students from learning? And at what point does that technological assistance cross a line into cheating?
Teens seem to think many of their peers are using AI unethically to do their schoolwork, the survey found. Six in 10 students believe that using AI to cheat is a regular occurrence at their school. A third of students say that this kind of cheating is happening extremely often.
Teens who have used chatbots themselves to help with their own schoolwork are more likely to believe that other students are using the technology to cheat. Three-quarters of those students say that their peers use AI to cheat at least sometimes.
But it’s hard for both teachers and students to determine where the line between cheating versus appropriate AI use is, said Michael Robb, the head of research for Common Sense Media, a research and advocacy organization focused on youth and technology.
“I don’t think we have a really good idea, yet, of how to divide those things,” he said. “I don’t think schools necessarily have policies that help delineate what’s cheating and what’s responsible use and I suspect that kids are just filling in the gaps themselves—and may not think they’re cheating but under some more objective measure would probably fall under the category of abusing AI chatbots.”
Robb described watching his teenage son use ChatGPT to help solve a math problem. On the one hand, the chatbot was breaking down the steps to solving the problem, but it was also perhaps spoon feeding his son the information, Robb said.
“I couldn’t get a good read on how adaptive it was and how much scaffolding it was providing versus how much scaffolding he needed,” Robb said.
What educators should take away from these survey results, said Robb, is that a lot of students are using AI to do their schoolwork, and they need clear rules—from either their teachers or school administrators—about when it’s OK or not to use the technology.
“So, that could be anything from a zero use of AI for the completion of an assignment to, ‘you can use AI to try to figure out sources for something, or you could use AI to construct a counter argument to what you’re writing and try to argue against it,’” Robb said.
How teens see AI impacting their futures
Looking ahead 20 years, about a third of teens believe AI will have a positive impact on them, and another third predict the technology will have both an equally positive and negative impact on them. Fifteen percent believe AI will negatively affect them and 17% are unsure.
Of those teens who think AI will negatively impact their futures, a quarter point to concerns over AI taking people’s jobs, and third of them cite concerns about overreliance on the technology and losing their ability to think critically or creatively.
Among the other findings from the survey relevant to educators:
- 57% of teens say they use AI to search for information;
- 42% say they use it to summarize an article, book, or video;
- And 12% say they use the technology to get emotional support or advice.
