SPARK - Hopelab

SPARK Survey of Possibilities on AI Research & Knowledge

Published in partnership with UNC Chapel Hill

Young people today are growing up alongside AI chatbots that talk back, remember them, and show up in classrooms, group chats, and late-night conversations. For many, these tools are already woven into how they process emotions, do homework, and relate to others.

The science gap is real and urgent. At the start of 2026, there were zero published studies that paired AI exposure with neurobiological or longitudinal outcomes in adolescents. Current research has focused heavily on education and learning. The research needed to understand adolescent development barely exists yet.

SPARK maps what we currently know, what we urgently need to learn, and how researchers, companies, and policymakers can move faster, and in partnership, before the gap between AI’s reach and our understanding of its effects grows even wider.

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About the Research Key Findings Insights More Research from SPARK Other Partners and Resources

About The Findings

Young people are using AI chatbots for schoolwork, emotional support, and companionship, and the science that should guide how these tools are built and regulated is lagging behind. SPARK finds that current research is focused heavily on education and learning. This leaves high-stakes questions like how AI responds to young people in crisis, how companion bots shape attachment, and how chatbots affect a still-developing brain largely unanswered. Closing this gap requires researchers, funders, tech companies, and policymakers to move with greater urgency and more coordination than these sectors have collectively shown so far.

Jana Haritatos, Ph.D.Chief Science Officer, Hopelab

"The risk isn't that academic research will be too slow. The risk is that solutions keep emerging without them — and without the young people most affected. That's not a failure of urgency. It's a failure of coordination, and it's one we can still fix."

Key Findings

Most published research on youth and AI chatbots focuses on the classroom, not the areas where the stakes are highest.

Of the 95 peer-reviewed studies on adolescent Generative AI use published between 2020 and 2025, roughly 60–70% focus on education. Less than 15% examine companionship, social development, or mental health — the domains researchers flag as carrying the greatest risk.

Researchers are already working in this space; they just aren't connected to one another.

Fifty-two of the 100 researchers and professionals surveyed for SPARK are actively studying youth and AI, and another 12 plan to start soon. Without a shared network or common language across psychology, education, public health, neuroscience, and design, that momentum is fragmented.

Nearly every researcher surveyed agrees: engagement-driven AI products and youth well-being are on a collision course.

Across disciplines, researchers surveyed for SPARK were nearly unanimous in their view that business models built to maximize engagement and emotional attachment during adolescence are fundamentally at odds with protecting young people’s attention, emotional development, and sense of self. We saw this pattern with social media.

Some of the most important protections don't require new research to put in place.

SPARK identifies guardrails that can be implemented now: safety-by-design defaults, age- and vulnerability-aware protections, and limits on how human-like AI companions are allowed to seem, without waiting years for longitudinal data to arrive.

Four questions matter most right now: how AI handles disclosures of self-harm, how it spreads misinformation and deepfakes, how companion AI shapes attachment, and how young people build AI literacy.

Researchers surveyed for SPARK ranked these four use cases as the highest priority for study — not because they’re the most common ways young people use AI, but because they carry the greatest potential for harm if left unexamined.

Anne Maheux, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of PsychologyWinston Family Distinguished Fellow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"Science is supposed to move carefully, and that's a feature, not a bug — rigor takes time. But scientists are also stewards of the public, and that comes with a responsibility to ask whether we're moving fast enough to help people with rapidly evolving technological tools. We don't have to sacrifice rigor for speed. We just have to be more intentional about working together to balance the two."

Join the Conversation AI, Young People, and What Comes Next

We Still Have Time to Get This Right

Have you noticed headlines about Generative AI and teens just about everywhere lately? Despite the technology’s newness, the basic storyline feels… all too familiar. We’ve been here before. The social media era gave us a preview of what happens when powerful new technology reaches young people faster than our understanding of it does. In that era, research lagged behind deployment by years, and solutions like content moderation, screen time tools, and age verification that eventually emerged were generally bolted on after the fact, rarely shaped by expertise in adolescent development and well-being or by young digital natives themselves. As our colleagues in youth-led coalitions like Design It For Us argue powerfully, we are collectively still paying dearly for that. Litigation, legislative fights, belated industry reckonings, not to mention the unfolding impacts on all of us, young people in particular: these are the costs of building first and understanding later.

Compared to that earlier era, however, AI is moving even faster and reaching even deeper into the parts of adolescent development that matter most. How young people form relationships, regulate emotions, and figure out who they are. We don’t get a ‘do-over’ on social media, but we do get a choice about how the next chapter goes, and about the future we collectively bring into being.

The choice comes down to who is in the room.

More Research from the SPARK Team

Adolescents in the Age of Generative AI: A Half-Decade Systematic Review

Generative AI is the most rapidly adopted technology in human history, with adolescents among its earliest and most active users. This systematic review synthesized 82 peer-reviewed empirical studies on adolescent (defined as mean age between 10–20) AI use published between 2020 and 2025. Read the preprint in the link below.

“Already Outdated and Still Under Review”: Mapping the Landscape of Research on Adolescent Development and AI Chatbot Use

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are increasingly embedded in adolescents’ daily lives, yet developmental science research struggles to keep pace with adoption. This mixed-methods study gathered developmental expert perspectives via a survey (n = 141 researchers and adjacent professionals working on issues related to youth and technology) and semi-structured interviews with a purposive subsample (n = 15) to inform a coordinated research and policy agenda on adolescent AI use. Read more in the preprint.

Hopelab Research AI as Emotional Support

Six Reasons Young People Told Us They Go to AI for Emotional Support

Hopelab, in partnership with the Center for Digital Thriving, talked with 30 teens (aged 14-17) and young adults (aged 18-22) about their experiences with generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Findings reveal young people’s perspectives on when and why they turn to these tools for emotional support, while some express skepticism.

Other Partners & Resources

Design It For Us

Design It For Us is a youth-led coalition leveraging grassroots power to disrupt Big Tech’s harmful business models.

The Rithm Project

On a mission to grow the intergenerational force of leaders to rebuild and evolve human connection in the age of AI.

Koko

Koko’s mission is to help end the youth mental health crisis by reaching people where they are, on platforms they use.

Debate: Conversational AI and young people's mental health—friend or foe?

A case for designing conversational AI as a bridge to youth mental health support

Young People's Alliance

AI Coalition: Human-like AI Framework

Center for Digital Thriving

Creating knowledge and research-based resources that help people — especially youth — thrive in a tech-filled world.

Connect With Us

We're at the beginning of this exploration. If you're a researcher, advocate, funder, or product leader working at the intersection of AI and young people's well-being, we'd love to connect.