A survey of US teens: 57% use AI chatbots to search for info, 54% use them to do schoolwork, 47% for fun or entertainment, 12% for emotional support, and more
Just over half of U.S. teens say they have used chatbots for help with schoolwork, and 12% say they've gotten emotional support.
Context & Ripple Effects
Teen chatbot use had already broadened: a December survey found 64% had used them and 28% used them daily, while an earlier Pew measure showed reported schoolwork use had doubled from 2023 to 2024. This survey clarifies that information seeking and schoolwork are now among the leading stated uses.
The emotional-support finding is smaller than the information and schoolwork figures, but it extends a pattern seen in teens experimenting with AI for companionship and personal conversations. That makes chatbot use a question of both learning and youth-facing safety design.
First-order effects
- Chatbot providers gain evidence that teens are using conversational tools as an information-access and homework surface, not solely for entertainment.
- The 12% reporting emotional support puts youth-safety, escalation, and age-appropriate interaction design closer to the core product experience.
Second-order effects
- Schools and educators face greater pressure to distinguish legitimate AI-assisted research and learning from work students submit as their own, rather than treating chatbot use as an edge case.
- Search and assistant products competing for younger users will need to optimize for answer quality and trust while managing the risks of conversational guidance in sensitive contexts.
Third-order effects
- If teen use remains broad across search, schoolwork, and leisure, the assistant may become a default interface for finding and working with information—an adoption pattern already visible in frequent teen use.
- The coexistence of utility and emotional-support use is likely to strengthen the case for AI companion governance, especially where products serve minors; the appropriate policy response will depend on how platforms handle those higher-risk interactions.
The trend: Consumer chatbots are shifting from a novel destination into an everyday, multi-purpose interface for information, learning, and personal interaction among younger users.