Children Faster than Adults in Adopting AI: UNICEF's Alarm on 20 Million Under 18s
At least 20 million children in ten countries have already used artificial intelligence, adopting it at a speed more than three times that of adults. This is the estimate from an analysis by UNICEF published on June 30, 2026, on the eve of the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance, which indicates that governance systems struggle to keep pace with the rapidity of adoption.
The data comes from Disrupting Harm Phase 2, a research program led by UNICEF Innocenti, ECPAT International, and INTERPOL, funded by Safe Online. Approximately one thousand children aged 12 to 17 and an equal number of parents were interviewed for each of the ten countries involved (Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Jordan, Mexico, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Pakistan, and Serbia), with IPSOS sampling weighted on UN population data for 2024.
About 13 million children use AI as support for study and homework. But more than 2 million, one in ten, report turning to an AI system for advice on personal issues that concern them: a much more sensitive use than mere academic assistance, moving AI into the territory of emotional support without the guarantees typically required of those who provide it.
The Fears of Children Themselves
One third of the interviewed children fear that AI will be used for fraud, scams, or misinformation. A quarter fears that their own images or videos will be manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes. This is not an abstract fear: in a previous UNICEF statement from February 4, 2026, also under Disrupting Harm Phase 2 but across eleven countries, at least 1.2 million children had reported that their images had already been manipulated in this way in the previous year, amounting to about one in twenty children in some of the involved countries.
UNICEF describes the current situation as a "global experiment" in which an entire generation is growing up. The organization notes that children are more exposed than adult children to AI systems, including design choices, business models, and the use of their data, but they have much less power to avoid or contest them: they are the first to feel the effects of weak governance, and will live with the consequences for longer.
UNICEF's Five Requests
In the statement, also picked up by UN News, UNICEF calls for five concrete actions:
- Investments in research on the effects of AI on child development;
- Stricter laws and corporate accountability against sexual exploitation generated through AI;
- Systems designed with the highest level of safety and transparency;
- Digital literacy programs aimed at both children and parents;
- Investments in connectivity to reduce the digital divide between and within countries.
The underlying issue, according to the organization, is that most AI governance systems still do not treat children as a distinct group, with their own needs and vulnerabilities compared to adult users.