Everyone is using AI. My patients use it to ask for help with personal issues in between sessions with me. People are using it to ask for help with work problems and to answer random questions. Teachers are using it to write their curriculum and professors are using it to write their lectures.

But how do you feel about your kids using it? Is it Ok for them to use AI to do their homework? on exams? Or to answer questions about how to handle problems with their friends and significant others?

A recent Pew Research Center study found that 26% of teens are using AI to help with schoolwork. (And I just used AI to find that out!)(1)

Black and Hispanic teens (31% each) are even more likely than White teens (22%) to say they have used ChatGPT for their schoolwork, and teens in 11th and 12th grade (31%) are more likely than seventh and eighth graders to use ChatGPT to do their work (1).

54% of teens surveyed said it was acceptable to use ChatGPT to do research and 29% said it was OK to use it to do math problems. But not all teens know about ChatGPT. For those who do, the percentages of those who use it are even larger. As many as 79% of teens who knew about ChapGPT said it was acceptable to use it for research on school projects (1).

And even more college students are using AI, with 86% using it – and many of them using it daily.

Here is the breakdown of how they are using AI according to one study (2):

• (69%) Search for information
• (42%) Check grammar
• (33%) Summarize documents
• (28%) Paraphrase a document
• (24%) Create a first draft

So, how do you feel about this?

Is using AI on assignments and exams cheating? Will it get in the way of learning math or grammar skills? Will kids learn how to do their own research if they use AI to do it for them? And what about their using it to create the first draft of a paper or to figure out how to manage a difficult interpersonal issue?

This last one is the part I worry about the most. To me, teens using AI to write a paper or to manage an issue with a friend is a way of getting AI to do their thinking for them. I worry that doing this will curtail their ability to figure out how to negotiate with friends or to build a logical and convincing argument. I worry that it will get in the way of their learning how to express themselves well. I worry that they will not have to do the hard work of THINKING for themselves. These are all important skills. What will happen to our kids’ ability to use critical thinking and to write well if these tasks are farmed out to AI?

Or – is AI the wave of the future and are kids just early adopters, using it in the ways they will continue to use it for the rest of their lives? Will the lawyers of the future (or maybe the present…) use AI to write their briefs and their oral arguments?

After all, AI is already available to doctors at some hospitals to write their patient notes.

Do you want to talk to your kids to see what they think about using AI? Or do you want to establish rules in your house about how much AI your kids are allowed to use when doing schoolwork?

Think about it.

References

1

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/15/about-a-quarter-of-u…-

2

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2024/08/28/survey-86-of-students-….