The brain you outsource: What AI does to students’ thinking, and the order that protects it
By Nandini Bhasin, Student of Class XII, DPS, Pune
Every high schooler knows the moment. It’s 11:40 p.m., the essay is due at midnight, and a chatbot is one tab away. The output is clean, the grammar is flawless, and the deadline is met. The only thing that went missing is the thinking.
AI isn’t the villain here. But the evidence is piling up that when students use it as a replacement for thinking rather than a tool for it, they pay a cognitive price that grades don’t show.
AI use among teens is no longer a niche habit. Pew Research Center found that 26% of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 used ChatGPT for schoolwork in 2024, double the 13% recorded in 2023. A later Pew survey reported that more than half of teens (54%) used chatbots to help with schoolwork in 2025, and about 1 in 10 said...
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