Findings · Student survey

Nobody taught us this.

358 students told us how they use AI. Only 6% were taught it at school. They score it 6.5 out of 10 for reliability anyway.

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358 responses · updated 22 Aug 2026 · collection still open

6%
were taught to use AI in school or an educational workspace
49%
open AI several times a day
6.5/10
how much students trust what AI tells them
69%
have never paid for any AI tool
1

School taught almost nobody.

We asked where students learned to use AI. 94% taught themselves. 10% learned from YouTube. School? 6%.

“Almost everyone worked it out on their own.”

How have you learned to use AI?

n = 358
Myself
94%
Social Media (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc)
18%
YouTube
10%
Paid Course
4%
In school or educational workspace
6%

Multiple answers allowed, so shares do not sum to 100%.

2

They use it constantly. They still call it a 5.

49% of students open AI several times a day. Only 5% never touch it. But asked how much they actually depend on it for school work, the most common answer and the middle answer were both 5 out of 10.

“Reaching for it every day is not the same as leaning on it.”

Dependence on AI for school and exam prep

n = 358
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Not at allCompletely

0–10 scale. Mean 5, median 5.

3

They trust it more than anyone taught them to.

Students score AI 6.5 out of 10 for reliability. That is a lot of trust for a skill almost nobody was taught. 69% have never paid for a tool, and 21% say they don't even know where to start getting better.

“Plenty of trust. Almost no training. Nobody checking.”

What stops you from getting better at AI?

n = 358
Don't know where to start.
21%
No good free course
9%
It costs money
15%
Lack of time
27%
Nothing stops me
28%

Single answer per respondent.

Method

the honest small print

Collection
A self-completed Google Form of 15 questions, filled in online and unsupervised. Respondents were not paid; the form offered a free AI toolkit on completion, which may have drawn people already interested in the subject.
Distribution
Shared through personal and school networks and passed on by recipients. This is a convenience sample, not a random one. It leans heavily on one school and one city, and on students socially connected to whoever passed it on. Results describe the people who answered; they do not generalise to students nationally.
Sample
358 responses: 300 in school, 39 in college, 19 preparing for an exam. 72% are in Jaipur. Every chart carries the number of responses behind that question, and they are not all the same — the smallest base here is 355. "In College" and "Preparing for an Exam" are too small to compare anyone against on their own, so those answers are measured against everyone instead.
Window
Collection is still open. The window will be stated here once it closes.
Privacy
Respondents are largely 15–17. Email addresses and free-text answers are never read by this site. An offline script aggregates responses to counts and publishes only those; no individual response can be recovered.
Comparison
Your answers are never matched against any single person. Each answer is placed among all the answers to that question, and the big number counts only the people who answered lower than you. Ties are reported separately.

The whole story, on one page

free to print and share

A one-page flier titled “Who taught young people to use AI?”, in six numbered cards: 336 of 358 students taught themselves; 234 use it every single day, for homework (260), exam prep (236) and writing (157); everyone is using it daily, so who is actually teaching them?; just 22 learned it in a classroom, against 336 self-taught; 113 changed the job they want and another 102 are unsure, so 215 of 358 are making big calls about a tool nobody taught them; and what they wish someone would teach — how to use AI without depending on it, and how to spot a bad answer. The footer reads: students didn’t wait for school to catch up.
  1. 01The questions
  2. 02Your results
  3. 03What we found
  4. 04The report
  5. 05Your card

Next

The report

The whole survey written up, as a PDF you can cite.

Open the report