{"slug": "the-people-who-use-ai-the-most-are-also-the-most-worried-about-it", "title": "The people who use AI the most are also the most worried about it", "summary": "Pew Research Center found that 66% of U.S. adults under 30 use AI chatbots, the highest of any age group, yet 48% of them believe AI will harm society, also the highest share. Heavy users are most worried because they see both the benefits and risks up close, and younger workers face the greatest job displacement threat from AI.", "body_md": "# The people who use AI the most are also the most worried about it\n\n*Part of Teaching an AI Agent to Make Beautiful Charts*\n\nThere is a comforting story we tell about new technology: the people who use it the most stop fearing it, because they learn what it can and cannot do. The latest numbers on AI break that story in half. The U.S. adults who use AI chatbots the most are also the ones most convinced AI will do harm.\n\nPew Research Center asked more than 5,000 U.S. adults both halves of the question at once: do you use AI, and do you think it will help or hurt. Line the answers up by age and use and worry do not move together at all. Use of chatbots falls off a cliff as people get older. Worry barely budges.\n\nEach row is an age group. The blue dot is the share who have used an AI chatbot like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot; the red dot is the share who think AI will do more harm than good to society over the next 20 years. The bar between them is the gap. Going down the rows, the blue dot slides far to the left while the red dot barely moves, so the bars shrink and, at the bottom, flip.\n\n### The youngest adults are the heaviest users\n\n**66% of U.S. adults under 30 have used an AI chatbot, the highest of any age group, against just 23% of those 65 and older.** Overall, about half of U.S. adults (49%) now use these tools, up from 33% in 2024. AI went mainstream fast, and it went mainstream youngest-first.\n\nThe gap is not only about trying it once. Among under-50s, daily use clusters near the top: about 31% of under-30s and 34% of 30-to-49-year-olds reach for a chatbot every day. After 50 the habit thins out quickly.\n\n### They are also the most worried\n\n**48% of under-30s say AI will harm society, the highest share of any age group, and only 14% expect it to help.** The cohort that adopted AI fastest is the most pessimistic about where it leads.\n\nThis is not really about whether the chatbot gives a good answer. People who lean on these tools every day mostly find them useful. The unease is bigger than the tool: 63% of all U.S. adults say AI is advancing too quickly, and 71% think it will make their personal information less secure. Heavy users see the upside and the downside up close, and the downside is the part that sticks.\n\n### The heaviest users also have the most to lose\n\nWhy would the people who use AI most be the most uneasy about it? Look at who is standing in front of the technology. **Under-30s are not just the heaviest users; they are the most likely to think AI will hurt them personally, at 37%, against 28% of those 50 and older.**\n\nThat tracks the job market they are walking into. Unemployment among recent U.S. college graduates has [climbed to nearly 6%](https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-real-job-destruction-from-ai-is-hitting-before-careers-can-start), rising about twice as fast as for workers overall, and it bites hardest in the fields most exposed to automation, where new computer science graduates are around 7%. It is the same first rung [recent graduates have been struggling to reach](/2026/06/04/recent-grad-unemployment-flip/). And in the most AI-exposed jobs, [employment for 22-to-25-year-olds has fallen](/2026/06/22/ai-jobs-hit-youngest-workers/) while every older group held steady. The youngest workers are being asked to compete with a tool that does the starter tasks for free, so it adds up that they watch it most warily.\n\n### The order flips: older adults barely use AI, but still worry\n\n**By 65 and up, more U.S. adults expect AI to harm society (35%) than have ever used a chatbot (23%).** That is the only row where the dots swap order. Use drops from 66% of the youngest group to 23% of the oldest, while worry only slips from 48% to 35%.\n\nOlder adults' unease is more abstract. They are less likely to say AI will hurt them personally and more likely to worry about what it does to everyone else: scams, misinformation, the sense that something big is shifting without their say. You do not have to use a chatbot to be wary of one.\n\n### How this chart was made\n\nThis chart was built by an AI agent and graded against the [Tufte Test](https://www.goodeyelabs.com/insights/the-tufte-test?utm_source=randalolson-blog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ai-heaviest-users-most-worried), a data visualization quality standard from Goodeye Labs. The workflow behind it is public: run the same [high-signal chart workflow](https://goodeye.dev/templates/randalolson/high-signal-chart-workflow?utm_source=randalolson-blog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ai-heaviest-users-most-worried) to make your own.\n\n**Data source:** Pew Research Center, [\"Americans and AI 2026\"](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/), based on a survey of 5,119 U.S. adults conducted February 17-23, 2026. The usage and impact figures by age come from Pew's [age breakdown](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/how-opinions-and-use-of-ai-differ-by-age/). The cleaned dataset is available [here](/assets/2026/06/ai-heaviest-users-most-worried.csv).\n\nBeautiful Charts with AI\n\n## Make your own charts with the same workflow\n\nEvery chart in this series is built by the same public workflow. Fork it and run it yourself, then grade the result against the Tufte Test.\n\n### Dr. Randal S. Olson\n\nAI Researcher & Builder · Co-Founder & CTO at Goodeye Labs\n\nI’ve worked in AI for 15+ years. At Goodeye Labs, we build AI products that point frontier models at the business outcomes a team actually cares about.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-people-who-use-ai-the-most-are-also-the-most-worried-about-it", "canonical_source": "https://www.randalolson.com/2026/06/25/ai-heaviest-users-most-worried/", "published_at": "2026-06-25 16:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-25 19:18:01.552395+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-safety", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Pew Research Center", "ChatGPT", "Gemini", "Copilot"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-people-who-use-ai-the-most-are-also-the-most-worried-about-it", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-people-who-use-ai-the-most-are-also-the-most-worried-about-it.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-people-who-use-ai-the-most-are-also-the-most-worried-about-it.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-people-who-use-ai-the-most-are-also-the-most-worried-about-it.jsonld"}}