From Digital Natives to the New Era: How Today's Children Are Growing Up with Artificial Intelligence

I'm thirty years old and proudly part of the generation that sociologists dubbed "digital natives". I grew up straddling the arrival of the internet and fast connections, I experienced the explosion of social networks on school desks, and I always took for granted that, for any doubt, there was a search engine ready to provide a list of links to sift through. For us, technology was the window to the world.

Yet, looking around today and observing the younger generations, I realize that this paradigm is already aging. We are witnessing a new, silent but radical evolutionary leap. Today's children and teens are experiencing Artificial Intelligence exactly as we experienced the advent of the internet and social media: not as a software to study or a novelty to marvel at, but as an obvious and taken-for-granted infrastructure of their daily lives, right from elementary school.

Research numbers: Italy is at the top of Europe

To truly understand where we are, we must look at the data. And the most recent and significant data comes from a survey by the EUKidsOnline network, a multinational and multidisciplinary research network studying the relationship between children, teens, and digital technologies. The study involved a staggering 25,592 children and adolescents aged 9 to 16 for the quantitative part, spanning 17 European countries.

What emerges about Italy is surprising and places us at the top of Europe. In our country, the use of generative AI among minors is at 89%, against a European average that stops at 72%. Italy ranks fourth overall in adoption, right behind the Czech Republic, Austria, and Belgium.

The research also dispels the myth that AI is "grown-up stuff" or for a privileged few: differences in gender and socioeconomic status among users are defined as "minimal". What makes the difference is only age, with a frighteningly steep curve: constant use goes from 70% of 9-10 year old girls and boys to an almost total 98% among 15-16 year olds. In short, if you are 15 today in Italy, you use AI. Period.

The decline of classic search and the "personal tutor"

But to do what? This is where I notice the starkest difference from my generation. We looked for sources; they look for answers.

According to EU Kids Online data, 44% of Italian teens stated they used AI to "summarize or explain long texts". In general, the report highlights how artificial intelligence is seen in all respects as a "personal tutor available 24 hours a day". The main goal is pragmatic: "making homework faster and easier".

There's a key passage in the research that captures the historical moment: many kids consider AI "an improved version of Google, as it provides direct answers without having to consult different sources". For those who grew up with the idea that media literacy meant opening five different links to compare information, this total delegation of synthesis to a machine represents a massive shift in perspective.

The most intimate aspect: asking the machine for advice

While school use was predictable, there's another piece of data that prompted me to look back and understand where we're heading. Italian kids, much more than their European peers, use AI for intimate and personal matters.

20% of our youth (compared to a European average of 15%) ask AI for "health or fitness advice". Even more impactful is discovering that 24% use it for "personal concerns and issues". One in four teens uses a synthetic chat to deal with personal anxieties or doubts. Across the screen, they find a confidant who doesn't judge, doesn't get tired, and always has a ready answer.

Looking ahead: what does all this mean?

From digital native to spectator of this new era, I believe there's no point in sterile alarmism. Technology doesn't stop. However, this data forces us to face reality.

If today's kids no longer have to make the effort to search and compare sources because they have a "24/7 tutor" who packages the perfect, ready-to-use answer for them, and if they even find support for their personal anxieties in the machine, what are the skills we must help them develop?

The challenge will likely no longer be teaching them how to find information, but teaching them not to blindly trust whoever hands it to them, even if beautifully packaged. Educating them to ask the right questions to themselves, to machines, and to others, preserving the irreplaceable value of human confrontation, especially when it comes to personal issues. They are already one step into the future; it's up to us adults (even young adults) to make the effort to catch up with them, so as not to leave them conversing alone with the machines.