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The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has found that children are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies at rates more than three times faster than adults, heightening concerns about the technology’s negative effects and uses, such as the creation of explicit deepfakes.
- A worrying case of AI adoption among the youth
- The risks of children’s growing reliance on AI
- AI guardrails for safety, privacy, and well-being
After analyzing new data from a survey of approximately 1,000 internet-using children aged 12-17 and 1,000 of their parents or caregivers across 10 countries, UNICEF published its findings, estimating that at least 20 million children have used AI, many of whom outpace adults by adopting it at rates more than three times faster.
According to the research conducted by UNICEF and multinational market research and consulting firm IPSOS, more than 2 million children, or 1 in 10 kids, said they turned to AI for advice on things that worry them, while an estimated 13 million children said they used it to support their learning and homework.
“AI is here. It is a growing part of all of our lives. And it is already shaping childhood around the world – for better and for worse,” UNICEF said. “New evidence is laying bare the scale and speed of its uptake by children worldwide, while exposing the risks and divides emerging alongside it.”
The data also indicated that the children themselves recognize the associated risks of AI. Based on the surveys, a third of children reported concerns about AI being used to scam and trick others, or spread misinformation, while a quarter feared having their images or videos manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes.
UNICEF shares these concerns, saying that “too many systems are reaching children with no guardrails – safety, seemingly, an afterthought.”
Use and misuse
While the increasing use of AI among younger generations may be good news for the technology’s future relevance, it raises serious concerns about the health and well-being of those who use or overuse it.
“Children are more exposed to AI systems — including how they are designed, their underlying business models, and how their own data is used — yet have far less power to avoid or challenge them,” UNICEF said. “While AI has potential to bring opportunities for children to learn, play, or be creative, evidence about its role in cognitive development, emotional dependency, and exposure to harm is just emerging.”
One such source of emerging evidence was a 2025 MIT Media Lab study that warned how “excessive reliance on AI-driven solutions” may contribute to “cognitive atrophy” and a shrinking of critical-thinking abilities.
Meanwhile, another study by Italian researchers, published in January 2026 and titled “The brain side of human-AI interactions in the long-term,” argued that: “AI, if used uncritically, poses a dual risk: it may encourage cognitive offloading, potentially undermining our abilities to process information, plan actions, and solve problems – but also…intentional offloading- i.e., eroding our moral compass and weakening personal agency.”
And if brain erosion wasn’t worrying enough, another emerging child safety concern that has been much in the headlines of late involves AI image creation and editing tools being misused to create and disseminate explicit images of children and women with their clothes digitally removed.
Due to reports of this happening on Elon Musk’s Grok AI, in January, the United Kingdom’s communications watchdog, Ofcom, felt compelled to make “urgent contact with X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the U.K.”
In response, Grok switched off its image creation function for the vast majority of users, posting on X that “image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers.”
However, a spokesperson for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer rebuked the effectiveness of this measure, arguing it “simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service” adding that “the point here is we must stop these abhorrent images being made on Grok.”
Beyond the damage being done to those whose image is being abused, if young people can use AI technology to create such images, it raises further concerns that it could provide a back door around bans on pornographic content for under 18s, which are in place in a number of countries, including the U.K., France, Australia, South Korea, and Germany.
‘Won’t someone think of the children!’
In terms of what is to be done about the perceived threat posed by the proliferation and ever-increasing use of AI by younger people, UNICEF called on governments, the private sector, and partners to embed child rights, especially the right to safety and protection, in global AI governance.
According to the agency, this could be done in a number of ways, specifically: Investing in research on AI’s impact on children’s development and well-being; strengthening laws, governance frameworks, and corporate accountability to stop AI-enabled sexual exploitation and abuse; ensuring that AI systems are designed with maximum safety and transparency; building AI literacy; providing support for children and their caregivers; and investing in digital infrastructure and meaningful connectivity for every child and their caregivers, “to close the AI divide between and within countries.”
UNICEF summed up its thoughts on the topic by stating that “this is a decisive moment. The choices made about AI now will shape children’s safety, privacy, well-being, and their equal access to opportunities for decades to come.”
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