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Are children the biggest users of generative AI in the UK?

This is fascinating from this year’s Ofcom report. Saved here to look in more detail later:

In June 2023, three in five (59%) online 7-17 year olds said they had used any of the following AI tools: ChatGPT, Snapchat My AI, Midjourney or DALL-E65. While there was no difference by gender at a total level, or between younger or older boys and girls, there were differences by age. While four in five teenagers aged 13-17 said they had used at least one of the AI tools (79%), two in five 7-12s had used one (40%). Three per cent of 7-17 year olds had used all of the AI tools listed, with 5% of boys saying this, compared to just 2% of girls. In June 2023, half of UK online 7-17 year olds said they had used Snapchat My AI, making it the most widely used generative AI tool of those listed, probably because it is the most accessible, as it is accessed through existing Snapchat accounts.

A third of 7-17 year olds said they had used it in the past month (fieldwork conducted in June and July 2023). Snapchat’s My AI chatbot initially launched in February 2023, allowing Snapchat’s paid subscribers to chat directly in the Snapchat app with an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology.66 In April 2023 the AI chatbot became available to all Snapchat users for free. 67 Girls are slightly more likely than boys to have ever used Snapchat My AI (54% vs 48%), and usage is much higher among 13-17 year olds; 72% have ever used it, compared to 30% of 7-12s. Teen girls are the most likely users, with 75% saying they have ever used Snapchat My AI.

Snapchat has a minimum age threshold of 13; this will be a factor for the higher reach among older children compared to younger children. One in four (24%) 7-17 year olds have used ChatGPT, with boys more likely than girls to have done so (34% vs 14%). This generative AI tool is also more popular among teens (29%) than 7-12s (19%), peaking sharply among older boys, at 41%. One in six (16%) said they had used ChatGPT in the past month, with boys far more likely than girls to have done so (23% vs 9%)

A few provisional thoughts on this:

  • This suggests that incorporation of GAI functionality into social platforms could be more impactful than I initially imagined
  • It raises questions about the interaction between social media and GAI (within and beyond platforms) in the experience of young people
  • If these usage patterns are sticky, it means universities will get an influx of students with an extremely different digital socialisation to previous years.
  • The versatility of GAI services (less so those integrated into social platforms) means new uses will always be discovered ‘on the ground’, suggesting a generational epistemic gap here quite unlike that with social media
  • We don’t know about intensivity and extension of use, or the meanings attached to it. Are they just ‘trying’ GAI or are these becoming routine uses?
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