Ifop for Jedha AI School conducted a survey in October 2025 among French people aged 16 to 25 on young people’s uses, perceptions and appetites for AI and dedicated training.
See the detailed results : Young people and AI in 2025 – Ifop survey for Jedha AI School
1) Near-unanimous adoption of generative AI tools by young people, significantly higher than the rest of the population
Almost all young people aged 16 to 25 (89%) have already used a generative AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude, compared with 43% of the general public. The fact that young people use AI twice as much as the general French population reflects a major generational effect: Generation Z plays a key role in the adoption and spread of AI-related practices in France.
Beyond knowledge and use of these tools, frequency of use is high. Among young people who already use these tools, 82% say they use them at least once a week, including 28% who use them “every day or almost every day”. In relation to all young people under 25, 73% are weekly users, and a quarter (25%) are daily users.
2) Perceived usefulness encourages use of these tools
Another sign of AI’s breakthrough among young people is that 92% of users say these tools are useful to them on a daily basis, and almost half (43%) even consider them “very useful”. This perception is stronger among Parisians (54%) than among those living in rural or provincial towns. For young people as a whole, the perceived usefulness of these tools remains overwhelming, with 8 out of 10 (82%) believing them to be useful on a daily basis. Above all, intensity of use and perceived usefulness reinforce each other: the more often you use it, the more useful you consider AI to be: 79% of young people using AI on a daily basis consider this technology to be very useful in their daily lives, compared with an average of 38%.
This perception is illustrated by a wide range of practices that go beyond the purely academic use of AI, even though the majority of these young people are students. Among young people as a whole, the most cited uses of generative AI are research and learning (71%), 6 out of 10 cite writing texts, helping with homework and using AI out of curiosity, and 5 out of 10 use it to confide in and create images, videos or music. More “technical” uses are also emerging, cited by a quarter of young people, such as programming and coding, and creating sites, applications or their own businesses. It’s worth noting that these uses tend to be gendered (respectively 34% of men vs. 19% of women; and 32% vs. 18%).
A revealing paradox: individual optimism vs. collective anxiety
3) The data reveal a fascinating tension between the macro-social perception of AI and individual coping strategies:
At the collective level, the balance remains precarious: only 53% see the arrival of AI in the world of work as an opportunity (versus 47% who see it as a threat), and 60% anticipate a positive impact on society (versus 40% who remain pessimistic). But on an individual level, there is a real rush to seize the opportunity: 70% consider AI professions attractive for their own professional future, 52% imagine themselves working in them one day (11% of whom have already made it their project), and above all 68% are ready to train in this field. This discrepancy illustrates a professional survival reflex: young people anticipate that AI will transform, even threaten, employment in general, but feel that individually, their best strategy is to position themselves on the side of the designers rather than the impacted.
AI is perceived not simply as a useful everyday tool, but as an imperative for professional competitiveness, confirmed by training motivations where developing useful skills for the future (66%) and seeking an advantage on the job market (52%) dominate. This generation doesn’t necessarily believe that AI will make the world a better place, but it is convinced that not mastering it will make them individually more vulnerable.
4) A generation familiar and used to AI, but demanding on the ethics of using such tools
While young people seem to be very enthusiastic about generative AI and eager for training, this appetence is not without reflection on the ethics of such uses. Among the obstacles to training, the “ethical risks associated with AI” top the list for those who don’t want to train (43%). Above all, the basic principle is very clear: 85% of young people consider it important for AI training courses to include lessons on ethics and social impacts, including 4 out of 10 who consider this condition “very important” (39%). The generation that uses AI the most therefore also appears to be very keen on a normative framework for AI.
