A video illustrates a cartoon Brachiosaurus trudging along. The dinosaur has bright colors and a friendly voice carefully designed to draw the attention of a toddler. As the green leaf-eater goes to speak, a banner ad floats across the screen.

Experts caution that this experience can distract the child. “There’s advertising embedded into the video, or at the bottom of the video, or the side,” said Kaitlin Tiches, a medical librarian at Boston Children Hospital’s Digital Wellness Lab. That can be especially problematic if the ad isn’t developmentally appropriate for the viewer. 

The tough choice about whether to allow babies and children to consume content online is nothing new. Neither is that comes with it for many parents who opt to allow their little ones to access digital media, from the American Academy of Pediatrics that suggests to avoid it for babies under 18-months-old and to limit it for kids under age 5.

At a time when kids are gaining access to digital devices earlier — many of them as infants or toddlers — and cuts to public broadcasting have put an end to many of the high-quality programs American children have been raised on for generations, the decision has become more complicated.

, which comes with its own unique blend of allure for parents and children has become a staple in many homes. The streaming site is seeing a surge in popularity, especially among families with children under 2, even though child development experts have expressed about the use of the platform for young children.

According to a recent published by Pew Research Center, 62% of toddlers ages 2 and under watch YouTube, a significant spike from the 45% reported in 2020. There was also an uptick in toddlers who watched YouTube daily, rising from 24% in 2020 to 35% in 2025. 

“I think it’s a very striking rise,” said Colleen McClain, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. “It’s a great example of a theme from our report, which is that tech starts young.” 

What to Know Before Letting Kids Hit Play on YouTube

The YouTube boost arrives as concerns continue to swirl about the site. Tiches warned of unfettered advertising and the company’s focus on profit over education. She pointed out that traditional children’s media has clear parameters around advertising  — the episode plays, then cuts to commercial break. But on YouTube, prevalent banner ads appear throughout the screen, with other ads interjecting in the middle of an episode. That children’s learning. 

“I think because YouTube creators are monetized, there’s a lot of pressure to successfully create videos, and with the young children on these platforms, it’s a big market,” Tiches said. “Ads might be very long and again, if parents are not watching with their children, then the children might not know how to skip them. Then, it’s minutes of an ad that may not be appropriate for very young children.”

While creators can mark whether their video is child-friendly, the ads — and videos themselves — may not be developmentally appropriate. A found that only 19% of the videos infants and toddlers watched on YouTube were age appropriate. That report was based on data about young kids and YouTube by Common Sense Media, which revealed that roughly one-fifth of advertisements contained age-inappropriate content including violence, drugs and sexual content. About one-quarter of ads were child-appropriate, with most (74%) deemed “neutral,” for companies like Volvo, State Farm Insurance and Casper Sleep Inc. 

But even those can influence children on consumerism, which may not be the intended point of watching content. 

Curation and quality control are important, experts said. Shortly after the Common Sense report came out, its lead author, Jenny Radesky, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Michigan , “YouTube is kids’ favorite playground right now.” She added: “We have to ask whether it’s being maintained in the right ways, if the equipment is safe and giving kids freedom to explore and have positive experiences? Or are they being steered towards experiences that benefit marketers and brands, but don’t support their developmental growth?”

Many entities, such as PBS, have their for children’s programming, thanks to the , a law that requires broadcast television to air a dedicated amount of educational content and limited advertising during children’s programs. Streaming services like YouTube do not have to adhere to those rules. YouTube’s asks publishing for a primary audience of children to mark their content as “Made for Kids” and to ensure they’re “complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and other applicable laws.” 

“The content I’m viewing on Netflix or Disney has been selected by that company; if they say it’s child-focused, depending on the company, I can have a little more reasonable awareness or trust,” said Kate Blocker, director of research and programs at Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. 

“I could post a video and say it’s educational, but what does it mean?” Tiches added. “There’s not necessarily a lot of oversight into what is considered truly educational, or [ensuring] the value of it is rooted in early education practices.” 

Blocker said some parents, while well aware of issues on social media sites, may view YouTube as a separate entity akin to watching traditional television or a streaming service. But Blocker points out the platform more closely mimics the former, with the ability to comment on videos, have an auto-play feature and deliver suggested content driven by algorithms. 

“There’s a lot of national dialogue and awareness building around social media and its particular harms, but generally speaking I don’t think people connect that thought to YouTube,” she said. “They’re thinking of Instagram and TikToks and teens  — [but] not making the same connection to the content on YouTube.” 

Some parents are somewhat cognizant of limiting their children’s screen time, at the very least. According to the Pew report, roughly one-quarter of parents said that they believe they can “do more” to limit their toddler’s screen time access. As the child gets older, that share becomes almost half: 47% of parents believe they can do better limiting their 8- to 12-year-old’s screen time. 

“I have a 3-year-old, and we don’t let her use a phone or tablet or anything,” one parent said in a focus group conducted by Pew in March. The parent added that they let their 3 year old use a laptop for a week’s subscription to an educational platform. “It got me thinking there probably are opportunities to use technology as an educational tool … but I’m so scared about the consequences … that I’m probably hesitant to use it at all.”

The Pew report highlighted that children found YouTube content educational and entertaining, but the research did not delve into why parents turn toward the platform. The screen time, Pew’s McClain said, could be driven, in part, by parents simply battling with high stress levels. 

“From qualitative research, we’re hearing more and more that it’s really hard; parents are struggling,” Blocker said. “Sometimes you need something to keep your little one still, to do the dishes or help your older one with homework.” 

Some may turn toward YouTube because of its easy accessibility across various devices. Others may be drawn to its free model at a time when the cost of cable subscriptions and streaming service continue to rise. And with funding for public media — most notably PBS — in recent months, families are left with less reliable options for high-quality children’s programming.  

“Regardless of the platform, it can feel overwhelming,” Tiches said. But families might  have an easier time figuring out whether programs on a more traditional network, like PBS, have had input from educational or developmental experts, versus on YouTube, where parents have to search for information about the creator, Tiches added.

How Parents Can Help Kids Stream Smarter

Experts acknowledge that it is not feasible to expect parents to avoid screen time entirely. from The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages use of screens for babies under 18 months old and recommends that parents who want to introduce digital media to their 18- to 24-months old toddlers do so by co-viewing high-quality programs. According to the Pew report, most of them are: 74% of parents of kids age 12 and under watch YouTube with their children, and more than 90% of parents of kids 5 and under do. 

“I think it speaks to the way parents are navigating all this technology for their kids,” McClain said. “Parents are really navigating these decisions on a daily basis, dealing with a lot of emotions around them and trying to do the best for their kids.” 

If watching together is not possible, Blocker suggests that having the content on a large screen — not a small screen plugged in with headphones — is preferred, so the parent is still able to hear the content. 

Tiches added that parents can look into who is making the content their children are consuming, and at the very least, should look at the type of content that it is. If a video is fast-paced, consider finding something more calming, especially for kids under 2.  

“You can tell sometimes from the title if there are shapes, colors, numbers, letters … that’s going to be a lot of information, but probably not as beneficially educational,” she said. “Versus really focusing on circles, for example, or words that start with the letter ‘A.’”

Beyond what parents can do though, there is a push for more legislation from both the federal government and technology companies. 

“Parents don’t want to do this alone,” McClain said. “One of the things that stand out in our work is [that] parents are people: they work, they struggle with their own screen time. And that, combined with [the fact that] they want technology companies to do more, really paints a picture.”

The two new Texas laws are part of a broader push this year as Republican lawmakers in pursue bills that bolster the presence of religion in public schools — legislation critics contend violates the Constitution. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” or favor one over another. Proponents of the policies in Texas and other conservative states have framed the laws as a matter of religious freedom and believe the Supreme Court is on their side. 

On the same day Abbott took those steps to legislate religion in public schools, a federal appeals court in New Orleans found a similar law requiring Ten Commandments displays in Louisiana classrooms was unconstitutional.

In Texas, and throughout the South in particular, the new laws have garnered overwhelming support from the public, the shows. While 52% of adults nationally said they favor allowing teachers to lead prayers that refer to Jesus, 81% felt that way in Mississippi and 61% did in Texas. In the Lone Star State, 38% of adults opposed having teachers lead Christian prayer. 

The latest results are “a lot higher than what we’re used to seeing” among Americans who “want to see the end of church-state separation or public displays [of the Ten Commandments],” Chip Rotolo, a research associate at Pew focused on religion, told The 74. 

Views on Christian prayers in public school, by state

% who say they oppose/favor allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus

Note: The blue and orange bars show the confidence intervals around each estimate at a 95% confidence level. In the 16 states with unbolded names, the shares saying they favor and saying they oppose Christian prayers in public schools are not significantly different.
Source: Religious Landscape Study of U.S. adults conducted July 17, 2023-March 4, 2024

Jonathan Covey, the policy director at the nonprofit lobbying group Texas Values, told The 74 he wasn’t surprised by the survey results as people turn to religion as an “opportunity for moral clarity” and to find “comfort and encouragement in difficult times.” 

“The country wanting to see the involvement of religion in civic society, that has been a good thing, and we’ve seen that the Supreme Court has said that the Establishment Clause doesn’t demand a strict government neutrality towards religion,” Covey said. “Actually to the contrary, it’s always been understood that religion has a place in American civic society.”

Texas Values lobbied the state legislature to get the new laws across the finish line. One requires a 16-by-20-inch poster of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom statewide. The second allows public schools to provide students and educators time during the school day to pray or read the Bible or other religious texts.  

Jonathan Saenz, the group’s president, called the new Ten Commandments requirement “a Texas-sized blessing,” noting in a statement that it “stands shoulder to shoulder with partner organizations” and is prepared to fight “against any court challenges brought against it.”  

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit that opposes government policies intertwined with religion, over the Texas law requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms. The group has against a similar Arkansas requirement signed into law in April. In that lawsuit, seven Arkansas families with children in public schools — and who identify as Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, Humanist, agnostic, atheist and nonreligious — allege the law imposes one religious perspective on all students. 

Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, considered among the nation’s most conservative, issued blocking Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law. The judges found the requirement to install a Protestant version of the commandments violated the Establishment Clause. 

Constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel, who serves as vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Fifth Circuit’s ruling made clear that “the separation of church and state is the best protection for religious freedom that we have.”

“These Ten Commandments displays are meant to tell the viewer — the captive kindergartener or third grader or seventh grader — which God is approved by the government, which God to pray to, which religion is correct,” Seidel told The 74. “That is inappropriate for a public school classroom, as inappropriate as it is clear that that tells the Buddhist students that they’re wrong, the Muslim kid that their religion is false, the Hindu child that their gods are fallacious, and the non-religious and atheist and agnostic kids are told by the state they’re misguided.” 

Religion is partisan

Results from the Pew study reflect a political split on support for the separation of church and state. Opposition to teacher-led prayer at school was strongest in Democratic strongholds like Massachusetts and California and highest in Washington, D.C., at 69%. Across 22 states, majorities of adults supported school prayers led by teachers. Opponents were in the majority in 12 states and the District of Columbia, and in 16 states, the share of respondents who supported school prayer was not statistically different from those in opposition. The nationally representative survey of nearly 37,000 U.S. adults, taken between July 2023 and March 2024, has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.8 percentage points. 

Rotolo, the Pew research associate, said he found the regional patterns particularly interesting. While support was strongest in the South, “you see right down the whole West Coast, most people oppose seeing Christian prayer in school.”

Pew , when 46% of adults said teachers should not be allowed to lead students in any kinds of prayers, a practice that saw support at the time from just 30% of respondents. However, 23% said they had no opinion on the issue. The latest survey didn’t give respondents an opportunity to choose “neither.” 

“Just by posing the question differently, we actually see some different results,” Rotolo said, acknowledging that the change could also reflect a shift in public opinion over the last four years. It’s also possible that some respondents who said they support school prayer in the recent survey “may not have particularly strong opinions about this” and may have chosen “neither” if given the option. 

Rotolo said the favorability of teacher-led prayer in public schools was dominant among Republicans, at 70%.  Just 34% of Democrats were in support. Older Americans were also significantly more likely to allow educator-led prayers in schools than recent high school students. 

Support also varied drastically between racial groups. Among Black respondents, 67% supported teacher-led prayer compared to 50% of white adults. Just 36% of Asian Americans were in favor. 

Seidel, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he wasn’t particularly surprised to see the Pew survey results, in part because it reflects a “coordinated assault on the separation of church and state right now” amid attempts by lawmakers across the country “to promote Christian nationalism.” 

“Those folks in the minority, whether it be religion or nonreligious, are the biggest supporters of separation of church and state because they know what it is to have a government impose their religion on them,” Seidel said.

Meanwhile in 2023, in the nation to allow school districts to hire religiously affiliated chaplains to provide counseling services to students. As of April, has hired a full-time religious chaplain while more than two dozen others have opted out of the measure. In 2021, Texas lawmakers required schools to display any “In God We Trust” signs donated to them by private organizations, and in 2024, the State Board of Education that relies heavily on biblical teachings. 

The efforts to bolster religion in schools, including in Texas and Louisiana, could again appear before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. In 1980, the high court be displayed in classrooms, finding the displays served no secular purpose and ran afoul of the First Amendment. 

This time, Republican lawmakers are banking on a more favorable court makeup. In 2022, the Supreme Court found the First Amendment protected a Washington high school football on the field after games. Last month, an evenly divided Supreme Court blocked the opening of a religious charter school in Oklahoma, which would have been the nation’s first. If Justice Amy Coney Barrett had not recused herself in that case, some believe there would have been a majority permitting the school.

Covey, of the nonprofit Texas Values, said recent Supreme Court opinions have begun to abandon the 1980 opinion against the Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky schools. The court’s opinion upholding the Washington football coach’s right to pray on the field, he said, was “the nail in the coffin.” 

Turns out the perception is more true of math than science.

Senior Pew researcher Brian Kennedy put those STEM performance beliefs into context by looking at the most recent results from PISA, an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics and science literacy in the U.S. and other industrialized nations. The U.S. is indeed lagging behind in math, his research shows, but is performing — if not the best in the world — better than average in science.

In math, U.S. students ranked 28th out of 37 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a ranking similar to the last time the test was administered in 2018, despite an alarming 13-point drop on the exam post-pandemic. In science, however, the U.S. ranked 12th out of 37 OECD countries, following a 3-point drop in scores. In both subjects, the average U.S. score was within 15 points of international averages. 

“Broadly, we’re interested in where science interacts with society — where those touchpoints are,” Kennedy told The 74, “and one place is through STEM education. People experience STEM education in their own lives or they experience it through their children’s lives. So we think it’s important to get an understanding of how the public rates STEM education in this country.”

Pew Research Center surveyed 10,133 U.S. adults from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 this year using the Center’s American Trends Panel, an online survey panel. Kennedy noted that the findings are largely consistent with societal perceptions going back about a decade, based on by the research center. 

This year’s numbers remain mostly consistent across the political spectrum, but diverge when broken down by race, with white respondents showing the most pessimism. They were the least likely (24%) to think K-12 STEM education in the U.S. is the best or above average, behind Black respondents (31%), Hispanic respondents (37%) and Asian respondents (43%).

And fewer women (25%) than men (32%) say K-12 STEM education is at least above average, a difference Tom Jenkins, a middle school science teacher in Ohio, attributed to the historic lack of representation of women in science and math curriculum.

Jenkins, a 25-year veteran teacher in low-income urban and rural settings, also spoke to why American students may be scoring better in science than math. 

“Based on my experience with this [as an educator] — and also being a product of an inner-city school that was first-generation college and lower-socioeconomic myself — I really think a lot of it has to do with the way that we teach math and the way we teach science and how there’s different expectations for both subjects,” he said.

Historically, there’s an expectation in science classes that students will be highly engaged with hands-on, experiential learning that’s connected to real-world issues, he said, adding that those same expectations don’t necessarily exist in math classes. This is “unfortunate because there are so many teachable things [in math] that we could use in a hands-on, practical way that’s culturally relevant, that’s project-based.”

Amid precipitously declining math scores post-pandemic, Jenkins is not alone in his urgent call for a shift in the way math is taught. 

It’s important when students walk into his — and all — classrooms, he said, that they know they’ll be learning skills that are going to help them not only better understand the academic content but also prepare them for a wide variety of careers. 

“If we really want to have an impact in math and science and STEM subjects,” he said, “and we want to get it to stick with our lower-socioeconomic or traditionally under-represented groups in STEM, then we really need to make it have some relevance.” 

In reflecting on American students’ PISA performances he added, “I do think that while [the] middle is not the worst — I do think it’s very important that we understand that while this acknowledges that we’re doing well — we still have a long way to go and we have a lot of disenfranchised groups or historically underrepresented groups that we’re not… impacting well enough in STEM subjects.” 

Education advocate Talia Milgrom-Elcott echoed this point, noting there’s no reason American students should be in the middle of the pack. Milgrom-Elcott is the founder and executive director of Beyond 100K, a national network focused on ending the STEM teacher shortage with a particular focus on Black, Latino and Indigenous communities.

She also noted that average scores often mask disparities, which is especially true in STEM.

“A lot of us have an outdated — what should be an outdated — idea about STEM that only some people are good at it, that only some people will ever excel in it, and often that they look a certain way — are a certain gender, race, income level, etc. And so there’s something in our gut that’s not activated when we see a lot of kids at the bottom.” 

She said that if the U.S. hopes to move up in the ratings, there must be a commitment to eradicating these disparities.

“And ‘up in the rating,’ by the way, is not in itself a goal,” she added. “It’s only a goal because being competitive in math and science — having more kids having those classes and that knowledge and those opportunities — is going to drive social mobility, economic mobility. It’s going to drive global competitiveness. It’s going to help the United States continue to be an innovation factory to solve the most pressing challenges.”

Pew Research Associate Luona Lin called the findings released Thursday “jarring”: Nearly a quarter of educators said they experienced a lockdown due to a gun — or fears of one — on their campus last school year.

Teachers who work in high schools, and those located in urban areas, were far more likely to experience lockdowns. Among high school educators, 34% reported at least one gun-related lockdown during the 2022-23 school year, as did 31% of those who teach in urban areas.

“One of the most striking findings is just the sheer number of teachers who say they have experienced a lockdown,” Lin told The 74. Pew sought to probe educators’ perspectives of school gun violence after researchers conducted interviews to understand their “day-to-day lives and their perspectives” on hot-button issues, she said. Gun violence came up again and again. 

“A lot of teachers definitely talked about worrying about school shootings happening in their school,” she said. “One of the teachers we talked about it with actually said, ‘I think about it every day.’”

Though the Pew data don’t offer insight into the frequency that firearms are ultimately found, tallies on campus attacks have shown a staggering upward trend, with record numbers over the last three years.

Just this week, James and Jennifer Crumbley to 10-15 years in prison after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for their role in failing to prevent a 2021 school shooting that was carried out by their then-15-year-old son. The shooting at his Oxford, Michigan, high school led to the death of four students. The Crumbleys are the first parents in U.S. history to be sentenced to prison in response to an active shooting perpetrated by their child. More than two-thirds of active shootings at K-12 campuses were carried out by perpetrators between the ages of 12 and 18, . 

For some teachers who participated in the Pew poll — 59% of whom say they worry about a school shooting unfolding at their schools — gun-related lockdowns are frequent. While 15% said they experienced one lockdown last school year, 8% said they were forced to take cover at least twice. 

The new data on the opinions of K-12 teachers comes roughly 25 years after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in suburban Denver, which became a national flashpoint on school violence after two student gunmen killed 13 of their classmates before taking their own lives. Since then, national spending on school security has surged — and so, too, have the number of campus attacks.

Though school shootings are politically fraught and carry devastating consequences for communities, they remain statistically rare. Between 2000 and 2021, there have been 46 “active shooter incidents” at K-12 campuses, which resulted in 108 deaths and 168 injuries, according to . Active shootings are defined as those where a gunman fires indiscriminately at people in a public place like a school. 

Beyond active shootings like those at Oxford and Columbine, federal data on campus gun incidents indicate 188 shootings that resulted in casualties during the 2021-22 school year— more than twice as many as the year earlier, which at the time was a record high.

While a majority of educators fear school shootings, 39% said their school has done a fair or poor job preparing for one while 30% — particularly those with school-based police officers — said their district has done an excellent or very good job. 

In preventing future attacks, 69% of educators endorsed efforts to improve mental health screenings and treatments for children, 49% supported campus cops and 33% favored metal detectors. 

Just 13% of teachers who participated in the Pew survey said arming educators would be an extremely or very effective approach to prevent the tragedies. 

Teachers’ responses were often similar to those offered by parents and students in previous Pew surveys on school shooting fears and preparation — with all parties being swayed, at least in part, by partisan politics. 

Republican-leaning educators were more likely than their Democratic colleagues to support campus police, metal detectors and arming teachers. Democratic teachers were more likely than GOP educators to support efforts to improve students’ mental health. 

In , two-thirds of parents said they were at least somewhat worried about a shooting unfolding at their child’s school, and 63% endorsed improvements in mental health for students as a way to prevent shootings, a rate higher than any other intervention. 

In , from 2018, 57% of teens said they were somewhat or very worried about a school shooting occurring on their campus. 

Pew’s educator survey included responses from 2,531 public K-12 teachers in October and November who are members of , a nationally representative sample of U.S. educators. 

“Gun violence and all of these gun policy issues, they are definitely partisan,” Lin said. “The views of teachers, the views of parents, are reflective of the overall population’s views on this, and definitely the partisan differences as well.”

According to from Stanford University, about 60 to 70 percent of high school students surveyed in the fall of 2023 have engaged in cheating behavior — the same number prior to the debut of ChatGPT in the fall of 2022.

“I thought that we would see higher numbers in the fall so it was a little surprising to me,” said Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education who surveyed students across 40 high schools through an she co-founded.

Victor Lee, an associate professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education who helped oversee the research with Pope, said high school students are “underwhelmed” by AI chatbot tools.

“It just sounds very sterile and vanilla to them,” Lee said. “They may have heard about it, but the media a lot of kids are using are quite different than the ones adults and working professionals are attuned to.”

A conducted by the in the fall of 2023 found nearly one-third of students aged 13 to 17 have never heard of ChatGPT and another 44 percent have only heard “a little” about it. 

From those who were familiar with ChatGPT, the vast majority — about 81 percent — said they had not used it to help with school work.

“Many teens are using a variety of technology…[but] among those who’ve heard at least a little about ChatGPT, shares of them still aren’t sure how they feel about it,” said Colleen McClain, a research associate at the Pew Research Center.

Here are four things to know about the effects AI chatbot tools have had on high school cheating:

1. High school students who weren’t cheating before aren’t cheating now.

According to the , surveys of more than 70,000 high schools from 2002 to 2015 found about 64 percent of students cheated on a test — a similar outcome to Stanford’s findings after the rise of AI chatbot tools.

Pope said what surprises educators and parents the most is how common cheating has been.

“We know from our research that when students do cheat, it’s typically for reasons that have very little to do with their access to technology,” Pope told .

“When a student is less engaged, when they feel like they don’t belong or are not respected or valued in their community, when they’re stressed and highly sleep deprived — these are things that tend to correlate with cheating,” Pope said. 

Lee said this number will “consistently stay there unless schools engage in certain steps to be thoughtful about what climate they’re creating that motivates cheating.”

This includes tapping into the topics students are already interested in and developing useful skills based on how they naturally enjoy learning.

“A lot of the time, the AI students encounter is via Snapchat because they have a chatbot built into it,” Lee said. “And students aren’t turning to Google as their primary search, they turn to YouTube…[or] video-based searches rather than text-based.”

2. ChatGPT awareness is higher among White, wealthier and older students.

Pew found about 72 percent of white students had at least some knowledge of ChatGPT compared to 56 percent of Black students.

In addition, more than 75 percent of students in households with an annual income of $75,000 or more had some knowledge of ChatGPT compared to 41 percent of students in households with annual incomes under $30,000.

McClain pointed to the “digital divide” as an explanation for Pew’s survey findings.

“The pattern here is quite striking,” McClain said. “It certainly speaks to the fact that not every teen is equally likely to have heard about these tools and used them.”

She added how awareness of ChatGPT was seen more in older students — particularly those in 11th and 12th grade.

“Even among those who heard at least a little about ChatGPT…[young] teens may still be figuring out how they feel about it,” McClain said.

3. High school students have adopted a “good faith” approach to AI chatbot tools.

Pew found only 20 percent of students aged 13 to 17 said ChatGPT was acceptable to write essays compared to 57 percent who said it was not.

But, nearly 70 percent said it was acceptable to research new topics compared to 13 percent who said it was not.

The Stanford researchers found similar outcomes.

At four high schools surveyed this fall 2023, about 9 to 16 percent of students used AI chatbot tools to write essays and about 55 to 77 percent used it to generate an idea for a paper, project or assignment.

“The vast majority don’t want AI to do all the work for them so they’re coming into this with sort of a good faith effort,” Lee said.

“When I’ve had conversations with educators, they sort of breathe a sigh of relief and think ‘oh okay let’s think about some of the cool things we could do’ and that’s exciting,” Lee added.

4. Prohibiting AI chatbot tools won’t solve the systemic issues of why students cheat.

For Pope, finding comfort around AI chatbot tools starts with educators and parents including their students into the conversation.

“If you’re going to come up with a classroom or home policy, you want to have the students present, speaking up and telling you what they think will be the most useful and appropriate uses of AI,” Pope said.

Lee said addressing AI chatbot tool usage in high schools is just the “tip of a much larger iceberg.”

“Part of why we get concerned is because students feel pretty disenfranchised from the boring assignments, tedious homework and essays in these weird written formats that they don’t feel will provide them any long term need or use,” Lee said.

“I don’t see us as saying AI is the best thing since sliced bread, but I also don’t think of us as saying AI is going to destroy humanity,” Lee added.

Nearly half of all adolescents surveyed said they felt closer to their parents after two years of disrupted learning, but a sizable group grew more distant from classmates and teachers than they were in February 2020. A strong majority also said they wished school would be delivered fully in-person from now on.

, released last week by the Pew Research Center, pointed to some of the same trends that have been on display in other public opinion data released over the last two years: A plurality of parents said they were “very satisfied” with the way schools handled online learning, but a large minority were also concerned their children would fall behind academically. Teenage respondents generally did not share that concern, but were also more likely to describe themselves as unhappy with virtual instruction at their school.

Colleen McClain, a Pew research associate and one of the report’s lead authors, said the findings offered a “complex picture” of how the pandemic affected teenagers’ academic and social realities.

“I think it really paints a nuanced perspective of what teens have been through during the pandemic, what they’re still going through, and how it varies depending on a lot of factors.”

The survey, conducted between April 14 and May 4, queried over 1,300 pairs of U.S. teens (between the ages of 13 and 17) and their parents about their experiences at school and attitudes toward learning. Responses were disaggregated by both race and family income to show how families of different backgrounds were weathering the late stages of the pandemic.

Somewhat surprisingly, only about 80 percent of students in the nationally representative sample said they had attended school fully in-person over the previous month (i.e., between mid-March and early April). Conversely, in a public letter circulated in May, “more than 99 percent of schools and colleges are open.” Both statements could simultaneously be true, with K-12 schools remaining “open” for in-person learning even as significant numbers of students studied remotely during a time of . But the large group of students either learning completely online (8 percent) or in a hybrid model (11 percent) indicates a wide variety of school experiences in the spring of 2022.

The persistent, if periodic, absence of teenagers from school campuses could help explain the impact that the pandemic has left on their personal relationships. On the positive side, fully 95 percent of teenagers said they felt as close, or even more close, to their parents or guardians as they were before the pandemic began — a notable development after long months spent in much closer proximity than was previously the norm. 

But even as it gathered household members closer together, COVID also seemed to wall off teenagers from their more peripheral social ties. This was especially true in school communities, where about one-third of respondents said they felt less close to classmates and teachers than before the coronavirus outbreak.

Across all categories of relationships, McClain reflected, most students said they were “about as close” as they were three years ago. “But when you get to friends, extended family, classmates, teachers — people that teens probably wouldn’t have seen quite as much during the pandemic — you do see these larger shares saying that they feel less close to them.”

The growing feelings of isolation from school peers are perhaps unsurprising, given the exigencies of remote instruction. Still, they are notable in the context of child socialization: The early teen years are when children typically become more free of their immediate families and more dependent on relationships with their peers. Earlier pandemic research has indicated that while depression and anxiety increased among young adults in 2020 and 2021, many found solace in connecting with their friends on social media.

The study authors did note “modest” differences in these trends, with African American students being somewhat more likely than whites to describe themselves as becoming more distant from friends.

Among the report’s other findings:

• Asked what kind of schooling they would choose in the wake of COVID-19, about two-thirds of all students said they wanted to attend classes entirely in-person. Nine percent said they would prefer completely online coursework, and 18 percent would opt for a hybrid. 

• Black students were the demographic group least likely to favor a full return to in-person schooling, with just 51 percent backing that option. Over 40 percent said they would welcome either a hybrid or fully online experience.

• A plurality of parents — 39 percent in all — said they were either “very” or “extremely” satisfied with their local schools’ approach to virtual learning. By comparison, just 28 percent of students themselves said the same, while 30 percent said they were “a little” or “not at all” satisfied.

• Just one-in-six teenage respondents said they were very or extremely worried about falling behind in school, compared with 28 percent of parents. Hispanic respondents were the most likely to voice this concern, with 28 percent of Hispanic teens and 42 percent of Hispanic parents saying they were very or extremely worried.