Gen Z Attitudes Toward AI: Gallup Finds Anger Rising to 31%

Gen Z uses AI more than any other generation, and it’s getting angrier at it. In a Gallup survey of 1,572 people aged 14 to 29, conducted February 24 to March 4, 2026, 31% said AI makes them angry, up nine points from 2025. Excitement fell 14 points, to 22%. Hopefulness fell nine, to 18%.

Gallup calls it “the AI paradox”: more exposure, less confidence. For parents of 8- and 10-year-olds, these Gen Z attitudes toward AI are a preview of the culture their kids will grow into, and a sign that skepticism may be easier to teach than many parents assume. This article walks through the numbers, what’s driving them, and what they suggest for younger children.

Key Takeaways

• Just over half of 14- to 29-year-olds use AI weekly or daily (22% daily, 29% weekly), essentially unchanged from 2025.
• Anger rose to 31% and anxiety held at 42%; curiosity (49%) is still the most common feeling.
• Doubts center on thinking: 42% say AI will do more harm than good for critical thinking, 38% for creativity, and 80% say relying on AI to work faster will likely make learning harder.
• K-12 students’ AI use is closely tied to how often their parents use it.
• The survey was funded by the Walton Family Foundation and GSV Ventures, an education-technology investor; Gallup ran it.

What Gallup Found About Gen Z Attitudes Toward AI

Gen Z attitudes toward AI are the feelings and judgments that people born roughly from the late 1990s to the early 2010s hold about artificial intelligence. Gallup’s report, “Voices of Gen Z: The AI Paradox,” measures them each year with the Walton Family Foundation and GSV Ventures. The 2026 wave surveyed 1,572 people aged 14 to 29 across all 50 states and DC through the Gallup Panel, including 656 K-12 students. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.6 points overall and 5.4 points for the K-12 group.

Use has plateaued. 22% use AI daily, 29% weekly, 11% monthly, 20% every few months and 19% never. That’s statistically similar to 2025, even as AI access at work expanded nationally.

Feelings have soured. Asked whether AI makes them feel five ways:

• Curious: 49%
• Anxious: 42% (steady)
• Angry: 31% (up 9 points)
• Excited: 22% (down 14)
• Hopeful: 18% (down 9)

Even heavy users cooled. Among daily users, 69% feel curious, 44% excited and 38% hopeful, far above non-users (28%, 4% and 2%). But daily users’ positivity also declined significantly over the year.

Skepticism targets thinking. Pluralities say AI will do more harm than good for critical thinking (42%) and creativity (38%). Agreement that AI helps complete work faster fell 10 points to 56%; agreement that it speeds up learning fell seven to 46%. And according to the Walton Family Foundation’s release, 80% believe relying on AI to work faster will likely make learning harder in the future.

School rules are spreading, and so is suspicion. 74% of K-12 students say their school has AI policies, up 23 points. 41% believe most or all classmates use AI for schoolwork when they aren’t supposed to.

What’s Behind the Anger

Gallup’s data don’t measure causes directly, but the report and other surveys point to three pressures.

Work. Among employed Gen Zers, 48% say AI’s risks outweigh its benefits at work, against 15% who say the opposite. Gallup ties this to labor-market uncertainty, since entry-level jobs, disproportionately held by young workers, are where AI disruption is most discussed. Worry about AI and work is also high among young adults in other polling (our guide to AI and entry-level jobs digs in): Pew’s September 2026 global survey found the share of US adults aged 18 to 34 who are more concerned than excited about AI jumped from 40% in 2024 to 55%, and 56% of US adults under 35 say AI will widen the gap between rich and poor.

Learning. The sharpest doubts are about cognition. Young people seem to be noticing the tradeoff researchers are now measuring: AI can make homework faster and learning shallower.

Fairness at school. When four in ten students believe most classmates cheat with AI, honest students can feel penalized. Resentment of AI may partly be resentment of what it does to grades and trust.

Younger Teens Are More Positive, for Now

Gen Z isn’t uniform. Pew’s survey of US teens 13 to 17, fielded in fall 2025, found teens more positive than negative about AI in their own lives: 36% expect a positive personal impact over 20 years, 15% a negative one. They were more critical about society, where 26% expected a negative impact.

Gallup’s numbers also show the youngest group using AI more: K-12 students are more likely than their adult Gen Z counterparts to use AI at least weekly (56% vs 48%). And the JED Foundation’s 2026 report found middle schoolers more likely than high schoolers to turn to AI when upset. The pattern suggests younger kids are less guarded, while skepticism builds with age and experience.

Gen Z’s AI Paradox in One Table

Measure	2026 result	Change from 2025	What it suggests
Use AI at least weekly	51%	Flat	Adoption has stalled, not collapsed
Feel angry about AI	31%	+9 points	Resentment growing
Feel excited	22%	−14 points	Novelty has worn off
Feel anxious	42%	Steady	Unease is persistent
AI helps work faster	56% agree	−10 points	Efficiency claims doubted
AI speeds up learning	46% agree	−7 points	Learning tradeoff noticed
Will need AI for college (students)	52%	+5 points	Seen as necessary anyway
Will have AI skills after high school (K-12)	56%	+12 points	Growing confidence in own skills

What This Means for Parents of Younger Kids

Skepticism is already the culture

The older siblings, cousins and babysitters your 9-year-old looks up to are more likely to roll their eyes at AI than evangelize it. That gives you an opening. Healthy doubt (“Is that true? How would we check?”) won’t sound like a parent’s old-fashioned worry. It’ll sound like what the cool teenagers think.

Your own use shapes theirs

Gallup found K-12 students’ AI use closely tied to their parents’ use: frequent parental use goes with more frequent use by kids, and children of non-users are far more likely to use AI rarely or never. Whatever your habits, your kid is watching them. Our piece on the AI divide parents are creating explores what that means.

Teach purpose, not just access

Gallup’s implications section argues that “exposure alone” doesn’t build confidence and recommends “structured, purposeful AI engagement that builds genuine competence.” For a younger child, that means using AI for a specific job together, such as checking a fact or brainstorming a story, then talking about what it got wrong.

Protect the skills Gen Z worries about

If 42% of young people think AI harms critical thinking, take them seriously. Make sure younger kids do the thinking first: write the story, then ask AI for feedback; solve the problem, then check.

What not to do

Don’t read rising anger as proof AI is bad, or as a phase to dismiss. It’s a generation reporting tradeoffs it lives with. Listen to the teenagers in your life; they’re often the best AI critics you know.

A Note on Who Funded the Survey

Gallup conducted the survey, and its methods are standard. It was funded by the Walton Family Foundation, a major education philanthropy, and GSV Ventures, which invests in education-technology companies. Funders don’t write findings, and these findings are hardly flattering to AI companies. It’s still worth knowing, especially when reading the report’s recommendations about expanding structured AI use in schools.

What to Watch For Over the Next 3 Months

• Week 4: Ask an older teen in your family what they think of AI, and share the answer with your younger child.
• Month 2 red flags: Your younger child treats AI answers as automatically true, or starts using it for every creative task before trying alone.
• Month 3 self-check: Notice your own AI habits for a week. Would you want your child to copy them? For what older students want schools to do, see what 100 teens voted for in a student AI bill of rights.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Gen Z turning against AI?

Not rejecting it, but souring. Gallup’s 2026 survey found weekly-or-more use flat at about half of 14- to 29-year-olds, while anger rose to 31% and excitement fell to 22%. Curiosity remains the most common feeling at 49%. Gallup describes a generation reassessing AI’s role rather than abandoning it.

Why is Gen Z angry about AI?

Gallup doesn’t measure causes directly, but its data point to worries about work (48% of young workers say risks outweigh benefits), learning (80% say relying on AI to go faster will make learning harder) and fairness at school, where 41% believe most classmates misuse AI.

Do younger kids feel the same way?

Less so, so far. Pew found US teens 13 to 17 more likely to expect AI to affect their own lives positively (36%) than negatively (15%). K-12 students in Gallup’s sample use AI more than older Gen Zers. Skepticism appears to grow with age and experience.

Does my AI use affect my child’s?

Gallup found K-12 students’ AI use closely linked to their parents’ use: kids of frequent users use AI more often, and kids of non-users are far more likely to use it rarely or never. It’s an association, but children do model what they see at home.

Who funded the Gallup Gen Z AI survey?

The Walton Family Foundation and GSV Ventures, an education-technology investor, funded it; Gallup designed and conducted the survey through the Gallup Panel. The findings are critical of AI in several ways, but the funding is worth knowing when reading recommendations.

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About the author

Ricky Flores is the founder of HiWave Makers and an electrical engineer with 15+ years of experience building consumer technology at Apple, Samsung, and Texas Instruments. He writes about how kids learn to build, think, and create in a tech-saturated world. Read more at hiwavemakers.com.

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Sources

1. Gallup, Walton Family Foundation, & GSV Ventures. (2026). “Voices of Gen Z: The AI Paradox. More Exposure, Less Confidence Among Gen Z.” Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/file/analytics/708176/Gallup_WFF_GSV_Report.pdf
2. Walton Family Foundation. (2026, April 9). “Gen Z Resentment Toward AI Grows as Adoption Stagnates and Workplace Fears Mount.” Walton Family Foundation. https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/about-us/newsroom/gen-z-resentment-toward-ai-grows-as-adoption-stagnates-and-workplace-fears-mount
3. Silver, L., Wike, R., Fagan, M., & Lippert, J. (2026, September 17). “Globally, More People Expect AI to Cause Job Loss Than Growth.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/09/17/globally-more-people-expect-ai-to-cause-job-loss-than-growth/
4. McClain, C., Anderson, M., Sidoti, O., & Bishop, W. (2026, February 24). “How Teens Use and View AI.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/02/24/how-teens-use-and-view-ai/
5. The Jed Foundation. (2026, October 27). “New JED Research Shows Link Between Teens’ AI Use, Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors.” JED. https://jedfoundation.org/new-jed-research-shows-link-between-teens-ai-use-suicidal-thoughts-and-behaviors/