AI use among students raises alarm as research links it to decline in critical thinking skills

59% of kids use AI to look up information -- but it could weaken 'critical thinking skills,' says expert

Parents and kids alike expect AI to play a major role in their futures. Seventy-one percent of parents and 60% of kids and teens believe that by the time young people are adults, people will be so dependent on AI -- specifically large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini -- that they won't be able to function without it, according to a new report by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that helps families make informed decisions about media and technology. In fact, 12-to 17-year-olds are already leaning into AI: 59% use it to search for information and facts, Common Sense Media found. "A lot of kids, including those in the surveyed age group, are turning to AI to help them study for school," says Tiffany Zhu, assistant professor of global ethics and technology at Old Dominion University. "Many are asking AI questions when they are looking for quick information instead of typing questions into a search engine." Whether or not that shift is positive is still unclear. Here's what experts say parents should keep in mind.

Professors Say AI Is Destroying Their Students' Ability to Think

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Professors are fighting an uphill battle against the intrusion of AI into education, and it's forcing them to rethink how they instruct their students, many of whom have already become hopelessly dependent on the tech. "It's driving so many of us up the wall," one told The Guardian in a new piece that interviewed more than a dozen professors in the humanities. "I now talk about AI with my students not under the framework of cheating or academic honesty but in terms that are frankly existential," Dora Zhang, a literature professor at UC Berkeley said. "What is it doing to us as a species?" Alas, students looking for an easy "A" may not be interested in philosophical inquiries on how AI is fundamentally changing how we interact with the world and with each other -- and indeed, according to a burgeoning body of research, how our brains work. One canary in the coal mine comes from a Carnegie Mellon study published in early 2025 that found that knowledge workers who regularly used and trusted the accuracy of AI tools were losing their critical thinking skills. An earlier study found a link between students who relied on ChatGPT and memory loss, procrastination, and worsening academic performance. And an MIT study that performed EEG scans on subjects who were asked to write essays with and without ChatGPT found that AI users had the lowest levels of cognitive engagement during the tasks. Working in the trenches, most professors, especially in the humanities, probably didn't need formal research to tell them what those studies found, when they could easily intuit it by interacting with their pupils. Michael Clune, a literature professor and novelist, lamented to The Guardian that many students are now "incapable of reading and analyzing, synthesizing data, all kinds of skills." Clune's school, Ohio State University, recently required all students to enroll in "AI fluency" courses "across every major," ostensibly to prepare them for a world that is dominated by the tech. Clune was critical of the push. "No one knows what that means," he told newspaper. "In my case, as a literature professor, these tools actually seem to mitigate against the educational goals I have for my students." OSU may be the most egregious example of capitulating to the whims of Big Tech, but the AI industry has its tendrils all across education. Companies like OpenAI and Microsoft have poured tens of millions of dollars into teachers' unions, providing training on how to use their AI systems. They've also partnered with numerous institutions to provide their students with free access to their AI tools. Duke University, after entering such a partnership with OpenAI, introduced its own AI tool called "DukeGPT." Abroad, xAI founder Elon Musk partnered with the government of El Salvador to launch the "world's first nationwide AI-powered education program" to provide his Grok chatbot to a million students across thousands of public schools. "These companies are giving these technological tools away partly because they're hoping to addict a generation of students," Eric Hayot, a comparative literature professor at Penn State, told The Guardian. "This is part of every single class I teach now, talking to students about why I'm not using AI, why they shouldn't use AI." But pedagogues aren't taking this sitting down. Some are now using oral interrogations and requiring handwritten notebooks, they told the paper. AgainstAI, a faculty-run initiative that advises professors on how to work around AI use, recommends giving assignments like oral exams, requiring students to show pictures of their notes, and paper journals. Some even dare to be optimistic. Several said they noticed more students pushing back or expressing more cynicism about AI tools. "I think the current crop of gen Z students are seeing that they are the guinea pigs in this giant social experiment," Zhang said. "There's kind of defeatism, this idea that there's no stopping technology and resistance is futile, everything will be crushed in its path," Clune added. "That needs to change... We can decide that we want to be human."

America's math and reading scores tanked after schools ditched textbooks for screens -- and AI could worsen the brain rot | Fortune

At the turn of the century, educational technology initiatives put laptop keyboards at the fingertips of U.S. schoolchildren. Now, 25 years later, the next generation of students have turned to AI -- and education experts warn unrestricted use of the technology could atrophy critical thinking skills. AI use among students has become ubiquitous following the 2022 release of ChatGPT. More than half of teenagers are using the technology for schoolwork, a Pew Research Center report released last month found. Of the nearly 1,500 parents and teens interviewed for the survey, 57% of teen students use AI to search information, and 54% use it for schoolwork. While access to AI chatbots makes homework as easy as plugging a question into one's phone, the frictionless retrieval of information using AI has raised concerns among educators: Rather than aid in learning, could AI actually hinder the process? A Brookings Institute study published in January laid bare anxieties around the potential harms of AI in the classroom. Analyzing data from interviews and focus groups with more than 500 educators, parents, and students across 50 countries, as well as from more than 400 studies, the researchers found at this point, "risks of utilizing generative AI in children's education overshadow its benefits." The report gave credence to early research -- including a February 2025 Microsoft study -- finding AI use was associated with worse judgement and critical thinking skills. "The cognitive offloading, and the cognitive decline that's associated with that, the decline in critical thinking, and just even reading and writing and knowledge of basic facts -- I absolutely believe that," to be the case, Mary Burns, an education consultant and co-author of the Brookings Institute study, told Fortune. Computer use in schools has come under recent scrutiny following a Congressional testimony in January from neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath, who noted, citing Program for International Student Assessment data, that Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to be less cognitively capable than their parents. He blamed unfettered access to classroom technology, noting a stark correlation in lower standardized testing scores and more screen time in school. A 2014 study surveying 3,000 university students found that two-thirds of the time students spend on their screens were on off-task activities. "This is not a debate about rejecting technology," Horvath said in his written testimony. "It is a question of aligning educational tools with how human learning actually works. Evidence indicates that indiscriminate digital expansion has weakened learning environments rather than strengthened them." Horvath, author of the 2025 book The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids' Learning -- and How to Help Them Thrive Again, told Fortune the rise of EdTech was a result of tech companies creating a narrative around the need for screens in the classroom to bolster learning. The push for computers in schools began in 2002, when Maine became the first state to introduce a statewide program providing laptops to schoolchildren in the classroom. Following a slow rollout, Google began reaching out to educators to test its low-cost Chromebook with free Google apps, and asked teachers and administrators to promote the product. In partnership with schools, Google's Chromebook became commonplace in classrooms, accounting for more than half of digital devices sent to schools in 2017. There have been more than 100 years of evidence showing the failures of automated learning, Horvath argued, beginning with the 1924 invention of the "teaching machine" by Ohio State University psychology professor Sidney Pressey. Students learned to answer the questions the machine would generate when fed a piece of paper, but were unable to generalize that knowledge outside the device. "Kids would be very good so long as they were using the tool, but as soon as they went off the tool, they couldn't do it anymore," Horvath said. Burns, the education consultant, said AI was, in some ways, a natural extension of the argument tech companies have made about the need for computers in school, which is that students are able to learn at their own pace, or seek out information of interest to them to initiate their own learning. "[Tech] companies keep talking about, AI is personalizing learning," she said. "I don't think it's personalizing learning. I think it's individualizing learning. There's a difference there, and that's kind of a classic carryover from educational technology." According to Horvath, student AI use is not conducive to learning because it mirrors the failures of the 20th century "teaching machines." Students' learning was individualized -- they answered questions from the device at their own pace and independently from other students -- but were unable to synthesize knowledge taught outside the device. Similarly, Horvath said, giving AI to students without clear instructions or parameters teaches students how to rely on the device, not their own critical thinking. "The tools experts use to make their lives easier are not the tools children should use to learn how to become experts," Horvath said. "When you use offloading tools that experts use to make their lives easier as a novice, as a student, you don't learn the skill. You simply learn dependency." Burns -- a proponent of EdTech -- said it's futile to eschew the technology altogether. The Brookings Institute study found that despite educators having real fear that students will use AI to cheat, teachers are using AI to create lesson plans. Data on AI in the classroom is limited, but there are benefits, she added. For English language learners, for example, teachers can use AI to alter the lexile level of a reading passage. "To say that technologies are a failure is not true," Burns said. "To say technology is a mixed bag is true."