Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report 2026

Key Findings

• — 86% of 8 to 17 year olds have heard of AI such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini; 56% have used AI (50% in 2025 and 46% in 2024), rising from 35% of 8 to 9 year olds to 66% of 16 to 17 year olds, and higher in ABC1 than C2DE households.
• — One in ten AI users aged 8 to 17 say they have used AI as someone to talk to or 'as a friend'; qualitative interviews describe children asking chatbots about health worries and for personal advice.
• — Among child AI users, just over half use it for schoolwork or homework (up from 34% in 2023 and 45% in 2024), with learning, fun, information and creating images or songs the other main uses.
• — 40% of AI-aware 13 to 17 year olds would trust an AI-generated news article as much as (31%) or more than (9%) one written by a human, while 43% would trust it less; 46% of children who have read AI search summaries believe the information is always accurate.
• — About half of teenagers are confident they can recognise AI-generated content (56% of 13 to 15 year olds, 47% of 16 to 17 year olds), but a share of the confident were wrong when shown a real and an AI-generated image.

Methodology Notes

Children and Parents Tracking survey with 5,008 parents of children aged 6 months to 17 and 3,426 children aged 8 to 17 (UK), plus the Children's Media Lives qualitative panel; new single-survey methodology this year, so year-on-year comparisons are indicative. 63-page PDF (created 19 May 2026), published 21 May 2026. ofcom.org.uk is Cloudflare-walled to this workspace; the landing page and the PDF were verified from Wayback raw captures dated 8 and 5 September 2026.

Sources