In January 2026, Count on Mothers released findings from a nationally representative study of mothers across regions and the political spectrum on artificial intelligence's impact on children across home, school, and social settings — conducted in research collaboration with academic partners at the University of Chicago and University College London. Mothers assess potential risks, transparency gaps, and the need for institutional safeguards as AI becomes embedded in children's everyday environments. Findings describe a consistent message across political ideology, region, and education level: mothers are deeply concerned about AI's impact on children and overwhelmingly believe current deployments lack adequate protections.

Related themes:

Shared Priorities and Cross-Partisan Alignment Among Mothers

Children’s Health, Safety, and Youth-Facing Environments

• Only 6% of U.S. mothers believe AI is a positive force and that children should simply "learn to use it" — one of the strongest consensus findings in the survey. 20% believe AI tools should be strictly limited for minors under 18; 34% are open to AI use only with adult oversight and clear safety standards.

• Mothers' top concerns are tightly concentrated around three developmental risks: exposure to unsafe or inappropriate content (63%), confusion between human- and AI-generated interactions (55%), and behavioral or social–emotional changes (51%). Only 8% of mothers report no specific concerns about AI and children.

• 80% of mothers do not feel fully confident they understand how their child's data are collected or used by AI systems, and 11% did not know data were being collected at all. Mothers with lower confidence in data practices show substantially higher overall concern, consistent with trust erosion when data collection is discovered after the fact.

• 43% of mothers report their child uses AI for school, and 30% report AI access through a school-issued device — institutional adoption that begins in elementary grades. Among children ages 4–7, over one-quarter encounter AI via school devices; among ages 8–12, roughly one-third do.

• 25% of mothers of children ages 8–12 report that their child uses AI to accomplish tasks such as thinking, organization, and planning — functions central to executive skill development during a critical period of brain maturation.

• Across political ideology, education level, and region, mothers consistently call for enforceable safeguards — including clear disclosure when children interact with AI, age-appropriate design, limits on data collection and behavioral manipulation, and institutional accountability that does not rely on parental vigilance alone.

Source: Count on Mothers, AI & Child Safety: Mothers' Views on a Rising Influence in Kids' Lives, January 2026. Nationally representative survey of U.S. mothers, n=2,290, fielded October 20 – November 30, 2025, weighted to reflect national distributions of political ideology, region, race and ethnicity, education level, and children's ages. Conducted in research collaboration with Dr. Dana Suskind and colleagues at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Kaitlyn Regehr and colleagues at University College London. Research led by a PhD-credentialed researcher and an MPH data scientist.

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