Chatbot-assisted cheating has become “a regular feature of student life,” according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. At its core, the study tackles a question that’s growing louder by the day: just how deeply — and how irreversibly — will artificial intelligence weave itself into the daily lives of students? The findings deliver a clear verdict: the role is already immense, and it’s only expanding.

More than half of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 (57%) now treat chatbots like a go-to search engine. At least 54% rely on them for editing, problem-solving, and other schoolwork support — with one in 10 admitting they handle all or most of their assignments with AI’s help. Four in 10 turn to these tools to summarize articles, books, or videos, or to generate images and videos. One in five uses them for news, while nearly half (47%) tap them purely for fun and entertainment. Smaller but notable shares engage in casual chats (16%) or seek emotional support and advice (12%).

When teens described the tools’ impact on schoolwork, the feedback was largely positive: about a quarter called chatbots extremely or very helpful for completing assignments, another 25% said somewhat helpful, and only 3% found them of little to no use. Yet the picture darkens when the focus shifts to integrity. A full 59% of teens said using AI to cheat is a “regular” occurrence at their school — happening at least somewhat often, including about a third who described it as extremely or very frequent.

Even so, teens remained surprisingly optimistic about AI’s long-term effects. Far more (36%) expect it to have a positive impact on their personal lives over the next 20 years than a negative one (15%). When it comes to society at large, skepticism rises slightly, with 26% anticipating a negative outcome.

What fuels this mix of hope and worry? Teens highlighted AI’s potential to simplify life, supercharge education, boost efficiency and productivity, push technological progress, and even improve health care. On the flip side, fears centered on over-reliance, job losses, rampant misinformation, misuse and abuse, greater harm than help for students, environmental damage, and the “loss of the human factor.”

One teen boy captured the optimism vividly: “It will meet the needs of almost everything. Answers to the hardest questions. No need for research!” Conversely, a teen girl countered bluntly: “People will be afraid to be creative, or won’t see a need for it anymore. It makes people lazy and takes away jobs.” Another went further, stating that “it destroys young people’s minds and brains.”

As it turns out, teens aren’t alone in these mixed feelings. Many Americans see AI as a helpful tool that can be used and guided responsibly, even as concerns about job displacement and similar risks echo widely. Yet amid those worries, Pew found that most Americans — teens and adults alike — still believe humans will hold the edge over AI in key areas like career decisions, medical diagnoses, customer service, and more.

This conversation has felt urgent for a while, but it’s truly just beginning. Consider the pace, AI has advanced so rapidly that it’s already reshaping the lives of adults, children, students, and professionals alike. Where might it lead in 10, 20, or 50 years? Classic sci-fi films often envisioned a future of flying cars and hulking robots handling the physical load — machines that would either ease existence or spiral into chaos. And yet, from a general perspective, how many predicted the real battleground of the future would be the mind and soul itself?

Whether it’s unregulated social media use (which has proven to affect brain development in children and emotional well-being in adults) or the swift, all-encompassing rise of AI, the deeper anxiety boils down to this — too many in our society are drifting onto a conveyor belt of mindlessness. Not long ago, social media became the (relatively concerning) primary lens for news and worldview formation. Now? It’s AI, AI, AI. Fatigue is already setting in, and it’s easy to understand why.

The exhaustion isn’t just from endless chatter about the technology. It’s from the growing uncertainty of what’s real. Students and professionals alike are leaning less on hard-earned craft and skill, more on instant convenience and generation. It’s been said that humans are essentially walking brains — the mind powers what we do, say, think, and feel. Paired with the soul, it’s the essence of our earthly experience: everything we encounter, value, and understand. AI, by contrast, demands no mind and no soul. It’s artificial in the truest sense. Yet it’s rapidly becoming the default.

This force is seeping into every corner of society, every crevice of human existence. It doesn’t have to be destructive. Like any tool, it holds real potential for good — accelerating discovery, making knowledge more accessible, easing burdens that once crushed entire generations. But in a fallen world, it can be — it will be, and already has been — misused and abused.

So, perhaps the question we now face isn’t whether AI will change us; it’s whether we will let it define us. Will we steward this power with wisdom and guard the irreplaceable spark of human creativity, empathy, and soul? Or will we surrender the quiet, hard-won work of thinking and feeling to something that can never truly know what it means to be alive? The answer will shape not just the next decade, but the very nature of what it means to be human.

And could it be — even our own students are beginning to wake up to this reality? Maybe. But let’s not leave the reclamation of what makes us human to them alone.