Research institute · Pew Research Center
55% of US Under-30s Now More Wary of AI Than Excited
For the first time, a majority of US adults under 30 say they are more concerned than excited about AI in everyday life. Across all age groups, 71% now expect AI to reduce the number of jobs over the next 20 years.
Source published Summarised
Key findings at a glance
- 52% US adults more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life
- 37% The same measure in 2021, before generative AI reached the mainstream
- 9% US adults who are more excited than concerned, the lowest reading in the series
- 55% Adults under 30 more concerned than excited, a majority for the first time
- 39% Adults under 30 who said the same thing in 2024
- 11% Adults under 30 who are more excited than concerned in 2026
- 59% Adults aged 65 and over more concerned than excited, the most wary single age band
- 71% US adults expecting AI to lead to fewer jobs over the next 20 years
- 64% US adults who held that view when Pew last asked in 2024
- 5% US adults expecting AI to lead to more jobs
- 73% Adults under 30 who expect AI to cut the number of jobs
- 3,488 US adults surveyed on Pew's American Trends Panel
What the report covers
Pew Research Center published this analysis on 18 August 2026, drawing on a survey of US adults run from 22 to 28 June 2026. It tracks two questions Pew has asked repeatedly since 2021: whether the growing use of AI in daily life makes people feel more concerned or more excited, and whether they expect AI to increase or reduce the number of jobs over the next two decades. Because both questions carry several years of comparable readings, the value here is the trend line rather than any single figure. It sits alongside Pew's earlier 2026 work on adoption, which we covered in our summary of how half of US adults now use AI chatbots.
Overall sentiment has hardened and then settled. The share of US adults who are more concerned than excited about AI stands at 52%, against 37% in 2021. Most of that shift happened between 2022 and 2023, and the figure has moved little since. Excitement is the side that keeps eroding: just 9% are now more excited than concerned, down from 18% in 2021, with 37% saying they feel both equally.
The movement in this release is concentrated in the youngest group. Adults under 30 were the least worried cohort in 2021 and have now crossed into majority concern at 55%, up from 39% two years ago. Their concern is now level with adults in their 30s and 40s (51%) and behind only the over-65s (59%). On jobs, 71% of all adults expect AI to mean fewer jobs, up from 64% in 2024, and only 5% expect it to create more. Among under-30s that figure is 73%, up from 61% in 2024.
What this means for UK marketers
The obvious caveat first: this is US data, and UK sentiment is measured separately. It still matters, because the direction of travel is consistent on both sides of the Atlantic. The ONS found that just 36% of UK adults think AI will benefit them personally, so the underlying scepticism is not a US quirk. Treat the Pew numbers as a leading indicator of audience mood rather than a UK measurement.
The finding with real planning value is the age inversion. Marketers have spent two years assuming that younger audiences are the receptive end of the AI story and that resistance sits with older consumers. That assumption is now wrong in one direction and only half right in the other. Under-30s have moved 16 points towards concern in two years while every other band was flat, and they are the group most likely to expect job losses. If you are running youth-skewed campaigns, leading with AI as a headline benefit is more likely to read as a threat than a feature.
Practically, that argues for describing outcomes and not mechanisms. A tool that answers a customer in seconds is worth saying. Saying it is AI-powered adds nothing and, with this audience, carries downside. The same logic applies to how agencies talk about their own delivery: clients increasingly want the result, not the stack. Our own approach to digital marketing for UK brands treats AI as production infrastructure rather than a selling point.
There is a labour angle too. With 71% expecting AI to cut jobs, any campaign that pairs automation with headcount language is walking into a hostile frame, particularly in B2B where the buyer is often the person whose team would shrink. Contrast that with the supply side: ONS data on AI adoption in UK businesses shows firms adopting quickly while public opinion moves the other way. That gap is the communications problem worth solving this year, and it will not be solved by more enthusiastic AI messaging.
How they got the data
Pew surveyed 3,488 US adults between 22 and 28 June 2026. Respondents were drawn from the American Trends Panel, Pew's nationally representative probability-based online panel, recruited by random sampling of residential addresses so that nearly all US adults have a chance of selection. Results are weighted to match the US adult population on age, gender, race and ethnicity, education, party affiliation and other benchmarks.
Two limits are worth stating. Both questions are attitudinal and forward-looking, so they capture how people feel about AI rather than how they behave around it, and the 20-year jobs question invites speculation rather than observation. Age-band figures also rest on smaller subsamples than the headline numbers, so year-on-year movement within a single band should be read as a trend across several waves, which is what the 2021 to 2026 series allows here.
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From Pew Research Center · published 18/08/2026