While adults worry about sharpening their artificial-intelligence skills to remain relevant in their jobs, many of their teenage children are feeling meh about the AI revolution.
I wondered if it was just my teenagers, whose eyes glaze over every time my husband and I urge them to learn more about AI. Parents can’t help but worry about how a lack of AI preparedness will affect their kids’ future career prospects.
I reached out to dozens of teens and found many who share my kids’ reluctance to embrace AI—as well as their fears about where it’s headed.
“I think it’s bad for creativity,” said Willow Nolan, a 16-year-old in Los Angeles. “You just put the prompt in and it makes whatever you want. When you use it excessively, it’s hard to have ideas of your own.”
It isn’t that teens don’t use chatbots—about two-thirds do, according to a recent report from Pew Research Center. But the teens I spoke to say they have curtailed their use because of fears over cheating accusations, concerns about AI’s environmental impact and worries about negative psychological effects.
“I will use AI sometimes, but it’s a last resort for me,” said Leo Gurney, a 19-year-old college student in London.
Whether this represents a small group of holdouts or a coming generational shift remains to be seen. We know generative AI is capable of bringing positive changes in the form of scientific discovery, office-productivity improvements, support for people who are lonely and much more.
Yet these teens, who have grown up witnessing the problems wrought by social media, are taking a cautious approach. These are their biggest concerns.
“It freaks me out that people are choosing to talk to fake people instead of socializing, and I worry it could become an addiction,” said Annika Frederick, a 14-year-old in Denver who only occasionally uses ChatGPT—and always in a web browser. “I don’t want to commit to downloading it on my phone.”
Many teens (and adults) turn to AI for advice or companionship. A recent Common Sense Media survey found that about one in three teens have used chatbots for friendship, romantic interactions or emotional support.
“We don’t know the lasting effects of talking to AI. It might make it hard to talk to people,” Willow said.
“Putting in a prompt and saying ‘Draw me this’ doesn’t feel right to me,” said Leo, who is studying esports management. “It takes the joy out of listening to a song if I learn it was made by AI, no matter how good it sounds.”
“Chatbots are stealing artists’ work and I have a moral objection to that,” Annika said.
“It requires so much space to make all those data centers that house all the data that is used by AI,” said Ruby Mehta, a 12-year-old in suburban Washington, D.C. “It is taking up a lot of resources, which is contributing to climate change and habitat loss and a bunch of other things.”
Ohannes Montgomery, a 15-year-old in Simi Valley, Calif., said he once used ChatGPT every couple of days until three months ago, when he quit, in part, after learning how much water is used to cool the data centers.
“I feel like it will make people lazy. If they’re stuck on something they’ll always go to AI,” said Chase Morgan, a 13-year-old in Grapevine, Texas.
He said when he needs tips on fixing his dirt bike, he prefers to search for things on the internet or to use YouTube. His twin brother, Pierce, however, uses AI daily. He said understanding it is a prerequisite for success.
“If you use AI for everything, you could start being dependent on it,” Ohannes said.
Hadar Groner, an 18-year-old high-school senior in Yonkers, N.Y., said she used AI sparingly. “When I took chemistry, I would ask AI for help balancing equations and it couldn’t do that. It was giving me things that didn’t make sense. That was a couple of years ago, so it might have gotten better, but I always try googling things first before turning to AI.”
Ruby has also gotten wrong answers, including one related to her pet snake. “I asked AI, ‘What do you get a snake for their birthday?’ and it said a trip to the zoo.”
“I’m afraid of it storing data about me,” Hadar said. “I guess that happens with any online thing, but something about sharing personal data with AI feels sketchy. I don’t fully understand what they’re doing with that info.”
Leo said he was troubled by how AI has been used to create fake nude images of people and how it has fed peoples’ delusions. He read a recent story I wrote about a murder-suicide that was preceded by the killer’s heavy ChatGPT use. “It gave me the shivers,” he said.
“If we rely on AI too much,” Leo added, “we may lose our humanity.”
Write to Julie Jargon at Julie.Jargon@wsj.com
","readTimeMin":4,"provider":{"id":"AAynGx","name":"The Wall Street Journal","companyLegalName":"Dow Jones & Company, Inc.","logo":{"id":"AA1V258b","width":400,"height":400,"url":"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1V258b.img","title":"","source":"msn"},"lightScalableVectorLogo":{"width":142,"height":12,"url":"https://cdn.query.prod.cms.msn.com/cms/api/amp/binary/AA13gD5m","title":"","source":"msn"},"darkScalableVectorLogo":{"width":142,"height":12,"url":"https://cdn.query.prod.cms.msn.com/cms/api/amp/binary/AA13gD5m-dark","title":"","source":"msn"},"subscriptionUrl":"","isPremium":true,"url":"http://online.wsj.com/","profileId":"vid-y572a3ryyddhuiujs0xe2j4m4b6c3n2fp5hnux4jpsdand8h09ys","comScoreStackedTags":{"ca1":"1","ca3":"13047035","ca2":"6035148","ca4":"MSNWSJ","ca6":"*null"},"fullSizeLogoPrimaryColor":"","fullSizeLogoSecondaryColor":"","lightSquareLogo":{"id":"AA1V1LDs","width":400,"height":400,"url":"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1V1LDs.img","title":"","source":"msn"},"darkSquareLogo":{"id":"AA1V1SN1","width":400,"height":400,"url":"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1V1SN1.img","title":"","source":"msn"},"lightFullLogo":{"id":"AA1V1Qpn","width":1366,"height":400,"url":"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1V1Qpn.img","title":"","source":"msn"},"darkFullLogo":{"id":"AA1V1Qpo","width":1367,"height":396,"url":"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1V1Qpo.img","title":"","source":"msn"}},"socialEmbeds":[],"seo":{"canonicalUrl":"https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-avoidance-teenagers-7d1efa06?mod=RSSMSN","canonicalAuthority":"provider","sharingAuthority":0,"disallowIndexing":false,"excludeFromSiteMap":false,"keywords":[]},"tags":[{"label":"News","weight":0.6510005593299866,"feedId":"Y_9eb0ac10-32bc-43cf-816e-5beaaf524f7a","locale":"en-us"}],"facets":[{"key":"displayAds","values":["1"]}],"keywords":[],"contentQuality":{"result":2},"satoriTags":[{"label":"wf_topic_psychology","weight":88.0,"feedId":"73ebbf21-5d7e-410e-b1c3-2727b32bce54"},{"label":"wf_topic_philosophy","weight":70.0,"feedId":"e0ef04cb-87e3-4801-8b89-46536757bdb7"},{"label":"wf_topic_technology","weight":62.0,"feedId":"ce383728-e905-4353-865f-faa205f9aa93"},{"label":"wf_topic_business","weight":60.0,"feedId":"5d5524a3-1f4e-4d0f-8242-b7daadefcad1"},{"label":"Cybernetic revolt","weight":0.5838888888888889,"feedId":"edfea3db-bb33-51aa-06a1-f0bdae00e5bc"},{"label":"Creativity","weight":0.30700000000000005,"feedId":"b78011bd-6526-0fa3-3b21-b6ba8843368a"},{"label":"Environment","weight":0.30700000000000005,"feedId":"6f664b4d-fbcc-475f-8b8b-0d1f26977c2a"},{"label":"Children","weight":0.24194444444444443,"feedId":"72a95d81-e58c-2b61-a638-71c3ef080bcb"},{"label":"Hadar, Nebraska","weight":0.03333333333333333,"feedId":"5f6e046a-0e85-7852-e890-1df8898ffa2e"},{"label":"Chatterbot","weight":0.02598767058481156,"feedId":"d5a6ee1b-da4b-230b-9ad0-30d222388c11"},{"label":"Common Sense Media","weight":0.025472370289051013,"feedId":"7d0835b9-5698-d99d-025d-7738ea2157ac"},{"label":"Grapevine, Texas","weight":0.024687208329070627,"feedId":"485df9b6-1181-4472-a26a-8f2ac0ede568"},{"label":"Simi Valley, California","weight":0.022790960603941993,"feedId":"3b69d2db-aa81-436e-b273-67b20c42bdc3"},{"label":"Yonkers, New York","weight":0.02237151192444612,"feedId":"f6cdf287-38d4-4a47-b6b2-24ff6e18e7d6"}],"sourceId":"WP-WSJ-0003294663","feedId":"AA1vykdo","hasHeroImage":false,"subscriptionProductType":0,"intAttributes":{"hasSyndicationRights":1,"isBreaking":0,"isEmbedOnly":0,"renderingRestriction":0,"isExclusive":0,"isNoteworthy":0,"isVisible":0,"softDemotion":0,"galleryCount":0,"isProviderSubscribable":0,"hasHeroImage":0,"isContentFresh":0,"subscriptionProductType":0,"providerFlagAiExperiments":0},"displayAttributes":{"disableDefaultCopilotButtons":false},"stringSignals":{"feedId":"AA1vykdo","label":"newsscienceandtechnology","product":"news"},"stringAttributes":{"providerTags":"","providerSummary":"{\"id\":\"AAynGx\",\"name\":\"The Wall Street Journal\",\"adNetworkId\":\"188286\",\"logo\":{\"width\":400,\"height\":400,\"url\":\"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1V258b.img\",\"source\":\"msn\"},\"mainLogo\":{\"id\":\"AA1V258b\",\"width\":400,\"height\":400,\"url\":\"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1V258b.img\",\"title\":\"\",\"source\":\"msn\"},\"lightScalableVectorLogo\":{\"width\":142,\"height\":12,\"url\":\"https://cdn.query.prod.cms.msn.com/cms/api/amp/binary/AA13gD5m\",\"title\":\"\",\"source\":\"msn\"},\"darkScalableVectorLogo\":{\"width\":142,\"height\":12,\"url\":\"https://cdn.query.prod.cms.msn.com/cms/api/amp/binary/AA13gD5m-dark\",\"title\":\"\",\"source\":\"msn\"},\"subscribable\":false,\"profileId\":\"vid-y572a3ryyddhuiujs0xe2j4m4b6c3n2fp5hnux4jpsdand8h09ys\",\"url\":\"http://online.wsj.com/\",\"largeFaviconUrl\":\"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1V1LDq.img\",\"flags\":{\"infinite_feed\":true,\"noarchive\":true,\"related_video\":true,\"interactive_ai_experiences\":false,\"copilot_daily\":false,\"ai_experiences\":false,\"ai_experiments\":false,\"commenting\":true}}","subType":"","variation":"","headlineAlternatives":"{\"originalHeadline\":{\"title\":\"7 Reasons Teens Say No to AI\",\"isValid\":true},\"gptvcdTitleQuality\":{\"title\":\"7 reasons teens say no to AI\",\"isValid\":true}}","bingThumbnailWebP":"https://th.bing.com/th?id=OMSN.AA1VnIzn.webp&pid=Wdpv2","bingThumbnailWebPWithROI":"https://th.bing.com/th?id=OMSN.AA1VnIzn.webp&roil=0&roit=0&roir=1&roib=1&pid=Wdpv2","tH_AR_1_91":"https://th.bing.com/th?id=OMSN.AA1VnIzn.webp-2C&pid=Wdpv2","tH_AR_1_59":"https://th.bing.com/th?id=OMSN.AA1VnIzn.webp-Gem&pid=Wdpv2"},"numberDictionaryMap":{},"id":"AA1Vo1If","name":"","source":"msn","type":"article","version":"3","createdBy":"micropublish","createdDateTime":"2026-01-31T13:05:45Z","updatedDateTime":"2026-06-28T01:01:59Z","publishedDateTime":"2026-01-31T13:00:00Z","locale":"en-us","categories":[{"product":"news","label":"newsscienceandtechnology","source":"SelectionMLModel","score":0.6510005593299866}],"jsonDataMap":{"numberMap":"{}"},"scoredCategories":{},"_t":"ContentView","colorSamples":[{"isDarkMode":true,"hexColor":"#5A3102","isGreyScale":false},{"isDarkMode":false,"hexColor":"#FFF9EC","isGreyScale":false}]}