ChatGPT is the homework helper for more than a quarter of teens – and the trend is accelerating

• ChatGPT’s use in schoolwork doubled in a year to 26% among U.S. teens
• A majority of teens think using ChatGPT for research is fine
• Far fewer support using ChatGPT to write essays or solve math problems

I’m old enough to remember when teachers said we couldn’t use a calculator in tests because we wouldn’t always have one in our pockets, and they would check essays that seemed familiar against their entry on the Encarta CD-ROM encyclopedia. Teachers today are faced with the far more sophisticated tools offered by ChatGPT and other AI chatbots, whose popularity has skyrocketed among students, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. The percentage of teenagers using ChatGPT for schoolwork doubled from 13% in 2023 to 26% a year later.

Let’s face it: schoolwork isn’t always the most thrilling part of a teenager’s life. It’s not shocking a lot of teens are turning to AI for a little academic assistance. But the details of how ChatGPT is used by students are a little more nuanced. Pew’s research found that a slight majority of 54% of teens are okay with using the AI chatbot for tasks like researching new topics, which is hard to claim is an attempt to cheat. That approval drops to 29% for using ChatGPT to solve math problems, and only 18% of teens think it’s acceptable to get ChatGPT to write essays for them.