Kids don’t want AI bans but guidance

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 11/02/2026

Children are curious and pragmatic about AI, and what they are asking for is not bans, but guidance, skills and safeguards that let them benefit without being put at risk, says  Dr Mariya Stoilova at London School of Economics and co-author of a new report showing how kids use AI. Her statement comes at a time when an increasing number of governments are thinking about joining Australia that has introduced an age minimum for access to social media “Children are not meeting artificial intelligence in the future – they are growing up with it now.” 

The new report from EU Kids Online  examines GenAI use among children aged 9 to 16 across 20 European countries. It shows that around seven in ten European children report using some form of GenAI.

 “However, children are often not making a conscious decision to use AI. Rather, GenAI is increasingly integrated directly into platforms they already use, such as search engines, messaging services and social media”, the report says. 

Across countries, children primarily use GenAI for practical and educational purposes. They value its ability to save time, help with homework and explain complex concepts. 

Age strongly shapes use. While many younger children report little or no engagement with GenAI, use increases sharply during adolescence. 

“Differences linked to socioeconomic status are also evident, with children from more advantaged backgrounds more likely to use GenAI and to use it in a wider range of ways, pointing to the emergence of a new “AI divide”. Gender differences are small.”

“Generative AI is already reshaping children’s everyday lives – but not equally. Without urgent, evidence-based action, AI risks deepening existing inequalities rather than expanding children’s opportunities”, says Professor Sonia Livingstone, Department of Media and Communications at LSE, Director of Digital Futures for Children and Founder of EU Kids Online

From the report’s key findings:

• GenAI is rapidly becoming part of children’s everyday digital environments, both through standalone tools like ChatGPT and through integration into platforms already widely used by children, such as My AI on Snapchat, raising urgent questions about how these technologies shape learning, communication, and social interaction. 
• Children use GenAI mostly for educational and practical reasons, while creative and potentially risky uses, such as advice seeking, remain less common and unevenly distributed across countries. 
• Making things faster and easier are the main reasons why children use GenAI in schoolwork. 
• GenAI has gradually changed how children use Google to search for information online, both for schoolwork and information-seeking more generally. 
• Only 15% of respondents reported using GenAI to get advice on physical health and fitness, or to share their worries and get support. 
• Trust in AI is often articulated through comparative reasoning, with GenAI positioned as more reliable than collaboratively produced sources such as Wikipedia. Such perceptions point to the persuasive power of opaque, fast, and highly personalised systems, whose seemingly tailored and immediate responses can be particularly convincing. This is especially evident among younger children or those with fewer digital and critical skills, who may be more inclined to trust the outputs of GenAI. 
• Preliminary quantitative analyses of the survey data from four countries (Estonia, Finland, Norway and Poland) show that about a fifth of children thought that the impact of AI development on their lives in the next ten years would be mostly positive; closer to a third (30%) thought that it would be both positive and negative, while less than 7% were of the opinion that the impact would be primarily negative. Importantly, 37% did not have an opinion on the issue or did not know what to think about it.