More teens say they're using ChatGPT for schoolwork, a new study finds

The rise of ChatGPT and learning language models have understandably disrupted almost every knowledge industry, and education systems are no exception.

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A recent study from the Pew Research Center examined the way that high school students interact with ChatGPT for their schoolwork. The results shed some light on the matter but suggest there's still more to uncover. 26% of US teens (aged 13-17) are reported to utilize the famous AI tool, double that of 2023. The data also reports that only 79% of teens have even heard of ChatGPT.

This figure appears awfully low, given the extent to which schools and universities are scrambling to establish new curriculums and policies in response to the chatbot. While the study openly outlines the testing methodology, the student in me is prone to suggest that, well, schoolers don't want to incriminate themselves. Given the media coverage of OpenAI, the tech savviness of a youth generation, and the discourse within education in general, it's hard to believe that the figures would truly be that low.

The data also delineates factors of racial difference and age, highlighting that black & hispanic teens, at 31% each, are more likely than white teens to use ChatGPT at 22%. In terms of tasks, 54% think using ChatGPT for research is acceptable, 29% for math problems, and 18% for essays.

Again, these questions don't exactly incentivize an honest response. AI has been the buzzword of the last few years: while we appreciate the efforts to understand the extent to which it affects behavior in schools - our intuition says that we'll have further to go with effectively capturing it.