AI Is Becoming Children's Conversation Partner — Right Next to Their Homework

A child who was supposed to be looking something up for homework turns out, when you glance at the screen, to be chatting with an AI. Scenes like this will quietly become more common in the years ahead.

AI never gets angry, never rushes anyone, and replies instantly on any topic. For a child, there may be no easier company.

Children and AI, in numbers

In a November 2025 survey by NTT Docomo's Mobile Society Research Institute covering 1,200 pairs of elementary and junior high school students and their parents across Japan, more than 40 percent of junior high students used generative AI — roughly triple the figure from a year earlier (up 27 points). The main uses were "looking things up" (over 70 percent) and "homework and assignments" (over half). So far, this matches what most parents would expect.

Next to "looking things up," AI as someone to talk to

Meanwhile, a September 2025 survey by Awarefy, a company that operates a mental health app (917 responses analyzed), found that 35.6 percent of minors used conversational generative AI — including 26.0 percent of children under 13, who cannot use ChatGPT under its terms of service. Study and research topped the purposes, but "talking about hobbies" and "casual chat" — AI as a conversation partner — ranked alongside them. More than 80 percent of the young users were on personal accounts rather than school-issued ones, and over half used AI at least once a week. In other words, most of this use happens where schools cannot see it.

In the US, one in three finds AI chat equal to talking with friends

The United States is further ahead. In a 2025 survey of 1,060 teens aged 13 to 17 by the nonprofit Common Sense Media, 72 percent had used an "AI companion" — AI designed for conversation and relationships — and one in three said conversations with AI were as satisfying as, or more satisfying than, conversations with real friends. One in three users had also chosen to share something important with an AI instead of a person. At the same time, 80 percent of users still spend more time with real friends than with AI companions, and younger teens showed a stronger tendency to trust AI.

The real issue is the absence of friction

What deserves attention is not whether children use AI, but how. Conversations with AI carry none of the friction that comes with human relationships. Opinions never clash, nobody keeps you waiting, and you can never be disliked. Yet children learn how to be with other people precisely through disagreement, awkwardness, and making up afterward. Frictionless conversation feels good to adults too — this is not only a children's issue. The finding that younger children trust AI more readily suggests that learning to keep a healthy distance from AI needs to start early.

What parents can do

Since more than 80 percent of use happens on personal accounts, a child's exchanges with AI are visible only at home. Confiscating devices or banning AI would simply push that use out of sight. Instead, build a relationship where you can ask, "So what did you talk about with the AI?" — and look at its answers together, asking each other, "Is this actually true?" That alone turns AI from something that isolates a child into a topic of family conversation.

At Digital Kodomo BASE's facility in Ota City, Tokyo, children encounter AI around a shared screen, together with friends and staff. When someone is sitting next to you, poking fun at the AI's answers and showing each other the results happens naturally. Before a child "talks to AI alone," we offer the experience of "touching AI together" — at our free sessions.