Platform research · Google
74% of UK Teens Use AI Weekly to Learn and Create
Google's 2026 Future Report, run with the youth consultancy Livity, surveyed more than 6,000 UK teenagers on their digital lives. It finds AI is now a weekly habit for most, used to learn and create, while a clear majority actively question whether what they read online can be trusted.
Source published Summarised
Key findings at a glance
- 74% of UK teens use AI at least a couple of times a week for learning or creative tasks
- 67% use AI for creative projects daily or almost daily
- 65% use AI for learning more than once a week
- 77% always or often consider whether information can be trusted when learning online or with AI
- 6,000+ UK teenagers surveyed for the Future Report
- 21% of 13 to 15 year olds use AI specifically for homework research
- 1 in 3 of 13 to 15 year olds always consider whether online information is trustworthy
- 80%+ of 13 to 15 year olds would turn to their parents over problems like cyberbullying or privacy
- 52% of 16 to 18 year olds always verify the trustworthiness of information
- 50% of 16 to 18 year olds actively check online information for bias
- 25% of 16 to 18 year olds worry their parents cannot recognise AI-generated or fake information
What the report covers
The 2026 Future Report is Google's UK research into how teenagers live online, produced with the youth consultancy Livity. It draws on responses from more than 6,000 UK teenagers and covers how they use AI, how they judge the information they find, where they go for help, and how those habits shift with age.
The headline picture is one of routine, considered use rather than novelty. Most teenagers now reach for AI several times a week, split between learning and creative work, and a clear majority say they weigh up whether what they read can be trusted before acting on it.
The data is broken down by age, separating 13 to 15 year olds from 16 to 18 year olds, and the two groups behave differently enough that a single teen label flattens the detail. The report sits alongside the wider UK policy debate on young people online, including our earlier summary of parental support for a social media age cap.
What this means for UK marketers
This is a preview of the next decade of UK search and buying behaviour, and it should reset a few assumptions. The teenagers in this study are not passive recipients of whatever an algorithm serves them. Most use AI weekly to learn and create, and most actively question whether a source can be trusted, with scepticism rising sharply between 13 and 18. By the time this group controls real spending, thin content built to game rankings will not survive contact with an audience that triangulates and checks for bias by habit.
For marketers, the practical takeaway is that visibility and credibility are now the same problem. If AI tools are where young people learn, then being citable inside an AI answer matters as much as ranking on a results page. That is the core of our SEO work for UK brands, and it is why we treat generative engine optimisation as a distinct discipline rather than a buzzword: see our explainer on getting cited by LLMs. Clear authorship, verifiable claims and genuine expertise are what survive a fact-checking audience.
There is a brand-safety dimension too. This cohort grows up under tightening rules, including the UK's Online Safety Act, so any brand marketing to or near under-18s needs to assume more scrutiny of targeting, data use and creative, not less. The brands that win this audience will be the ones that earn trust in the open: accurate, transparent and comfortable being checked. Treat the 16 to 18 year olds in this data as your near-future customers and design for their standards now, rather than retrofitting credibility later.
How they got the data
The figures come from research commissioned by Google and delivered with the youth consultancy Livity, based on self-reported data from more than 6,000 teenagers across the UK. Findings are reported in two age bands, 13 to 15 and 16 to 18, which is what allows the report to show how AI use shifts from homework support towards life management as teenagers get older. The full write-up and country detail sit on the Future Report site for the UK.
Two caveats are worth stating plainly. This is platform-commissioned research, so it carries the usual interest of a technology company reporting on enthusiasm for its own category, and the published material does not give a precise fieldwork window or margin of error. The numbers are best read as a directional signal of how UK teenagers say they use AI, not as a regulated national statistic.
Platform research
Read the full report
From Google · published 10/06/2026