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These days, a majority of kids and teens use a plethora of AI tools, including chatbots and AI-powered tools that summarize information, according to nonprofit Common Sense Media’s latest report, “AI Use by Tweens and Teens.” The organization ranks the safety of entertainment and technology for kids.
Eighty-one percent of 9-to 12-year-olds, 89% of 13-to 15-year-olds and 92% of 16-to 17-year-olds say they use or interact with AI. Nearly a third, 29%, of 13-to 17-year-olds use the tech daily.
“It is clearly a very prominent part of childhood already,” says Michael Robb, head of research at Common Sense Media.
Kids who use these tools say they do so to seek advice about future decisions, practice social interactions, and talk through feelings and personal problems, according to the organization.
And a majority, 57%, say they have used AI to get information or advice about their health or body. Here’s why Robb and child psychiatrist and author Suzan Song think that’s worrisome, and what they say parents can do about it.
‘There’s a very natural instinct for some kids to want to avoid embarrassment’
Common Sense Media did not look into the specific health and body questions kids are asking AI. But a September 2025 OpenAI report entitled “How People Use ChatGPT” listed the following prompts as examples of what people have asked the bot in the health, beauty, fitness and self-care category:
- “How to do my eyebrows.”
- “What’s a good skincare routine for oily skin?”
- “How can I improve my cardio fitness?”
From accessibility to anonymity, experts say there are many reasons why kids, specifically, turn to AI for health and body questions.
There’s the ease of availability, with so many options for which type of AI to turn to, says Robb. There’s the pleasant experience of interacting with them. They “subtly reinforce what people want to hear in their answers through varying degrees of sycophantic behaviors,” he says.
And kids often have mixed feelings about asking these intimate questions in the first place. “There’s a very natural instinct for some kids to want to avoid embarrassment and not have to personally make themselves vulnerable to parents or others,” he says.
‘We have biological structures that are rewarded when we see people deeply’
But there are problems with this phenomenon.
First, “AIs tend to sound very confident in their answers,” says Robb, “and kids don’t always know necessarily that the AIs can be wrong, or know the difference between a right answer and a wrong answer.” The AI can end up misleading them, says Robb.
Second, while Common Sense Media found that 73% of kids would still go to a trusted adult first before deferring to AI, some could get into the habit of relying solely on this tech, says Robb.
That’s concerning because AI can’t provide the kind of connection children need to develop, says Song.
“We have biological structures that are rewarded when we see people deeply, or when we experience them deeply in all their imperfections,” she says. That doesn’t exist with this tech.
Human relationships are also messy, and that messiness helps kids learn about themselves and the world. “Identity is shaped by the friction between your peers and your parents,” says Song, adding that AI “smooths over all of that friction.”
‘Remind kids they aren’t alone with their AI’
Some AI companies have begun implementing guardrails around kids’ usage. ChatGPT, for example, includes various parental controls like setting times when chat can’t be used and reducing the availability of sensitive content.
When it comes to helping kids navigate what kinds of conversations it’s OK to have with AI and which ones are best had with people, get curious, say both Robb and Song.
Ask your kids questions like, “How are you using AI? What do you see? What do you think the best uses are?” says Robb. Then expand to asking questions like, “Did you consider asking a person first, why or why not?” says Song, and “Who would you have gone to if you were to ask a person in your life that question?”
This helps “remind kids they aren’t alone with their AI,” she says. “They are embedded in relationships. And that sense of belonging is really important.”
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