The EU Kids Online 2026 comparative study: Children's views, experiences, opportunities and risks in a digital world

Key Findings

• — 28,465 children aged 10 to 16 were surveyed in 19 countries, making this the largest cross-national denominator the library holds for children's conversational AI use.
• — 14% report talking to an AI chatbot about what worries them in the past month, and 15% report using generative AI to talk about physical health or fitness.
• — Use of AI for medical and emotional support is higher in Romania, Portugal, Serbia, Italy, Czechia and Austria than the cross-national average.
• — 27% of children selected 'Something else' to describe their AI use, rising to 53% in Czechia, 45% in Austria, 43% in Poland and 39% in Finland, which the authors read as use beyond what the instrument anticipated.
• — Nearly half of children in Belgium, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia used generative AI to write essays or stories for schoolwork.
• — 87% use a smartphone or mobile phone to go online at least daily across the 19 countries.

Methodology Notes

School-based self-administered questionnaire, target population children born 2009 to 2015, fielded April 2025 to April 2026 in 19 countries (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland). National fieldwork arrangements differ, which the report flags as a comparability caveat, and all measures are self-report with a past-month recall window on the AI items. 222-page PDF read directly; DOI 10.21953/researchonline.lse.ac.uk.00140901. The document itself states only '2026'; published_date is set to 2026-09-10, the launch at the Irish EU Presidency Conference on Online Safety for Children, with the PDF creation date 2026-09-09 recorded here.

Sources