Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 31 July 2026 · From issue 15
Parents pay 60% more for teen AI tools when they think peers already use them.
Leonardo Bursztyn, Alex Imas et al., Social dynamics of AI adoption in parents’ educational decisions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Parents pay much more for teen AI tools when they think other teens already use them. In a study of about 2,000 parents, raising the guessed share of peers using AI from 20% to 80% pushed willingness to pay up by more than 60%. Telling parents about possible skill risks changed their beliefs but not their own buying choices. It did make them want schools to restrict AI use much more.
How much more parents would pay for teen AI tools when they believed most peers already used them.
About 2,000 parents in a hypothetical payment experiment, not real behavior.
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