Parents say young children’s screen time now includes AI-powered chatbots

How old do you have to be to start using? pneumatic? In some families, kindergarten-age children are already interacting with apps like ChatGPT and Gemini.

That’s according to A A new poll from the Pew Research Centerwhich indicates that 3% of parents who responded said that their children aged 5 to 7 years had previously used a chatbot. That jumps to 7% for parents with children aged 8 to 10, and to 15% for those aged 11 to 12.

About 40% of parents said their children aged 12 or younger use voice assistants like Alexa and Siri.

These findings came from a survey of more than 3,000 American parents that looked broadly at how they manage their children’s screen time. While average AI chatbot use was about 8%, or roughly 1 in 10 kids, there were much higher numbers for screen use in that age group, including 90% for TV, 68% for tablets, and 61% for smartphones.

Many parents are finding it difficult to keep up, with 42% saying they could manage their children’s screen time better, and 58% saying they are doing their best.

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The use of artificial intelligence by children and teenagers has caused concern for many people. In August, OpenAI Added parental controls to ChatGPT after a family filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that the chatbot was a factor in their 16-year-old son’s suicide. Some countries have it too Issue warnings to AI companies About technology that may be harmful to children.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)