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The robots have taken over.

New research suggests that a majority of students use chatbots like ChatGPT for just about everything at school. To write essays. To solve complicated math problems. To find love.

Wait, what?

Nearly a fifth of students said they or a friend have used artificial intelligence chatbots to form romantic relationships, according to a new survey by the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology. Some 42% said they or someone they know used the chatbots for mental health support, as an escape from real life or as a friend.

Eighty-six percent of students say they’ve used artificial intelligence chatbots in the past academic year — half to help with schoolwork.

The tech-enabled convenience, researchers conclude, doesn’t come without significant risks for young people. Namely, as AI proliferates in schools — with help from the federal government and a zealous tech industry — on a promise to improve student outcomes, they warn that young people could grow socially and emotionally disconnected from the humans in their lives.

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In the news

The latest in Trump’s immigration crackdown: The survey featured above, which quizzed students, teachers and parents, also offers startling findings on immigration enforcement in schools:
While more than a quarter of educators said their school collects information about whether a student is undocumented, 17% said their district shares records — including grades and disciplinary information — with immigration enforcement.

In the last school year, 13% of teachers said a staff member at their school reported a student or parent to immigration enforcement of their own accord. | Center for Democracy & Technology

• Call for answers: In the wake of immigration enforcement that’s ensnared children, New York congressional Democrats are demanding the feds release information about the welfare of students held in detention, my colleague Jo Napolitano reports. | The 74
• A 13-year-old boy from Brazil, who has lived in a Boston suburb since 2021 with a pending asylum application, was scooped up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after local police arrested him on a “credible tip” accusing him of making “a violent threat” against a classmate at school. The boy’s mother said her son wound up in a Virginia detention facility and was “desperate, saying ICE had taken him.” | CNN
• Chicago teenagers are among a group of activists patrolling the city’s neighborhoods to monitor ICE’s deployment to the city and help migrants avoid arrest. | NPR
• Immigration agents detained a Chicago Public Schools vendor employee outside a school, prompting educators to move physical education classes indoors out of an “abundance of caution.” | Chicago Sun-Times
• A Des Moines, Iowa, high schooler was detained by ICE during a routine immigration check-in, placed in a Louisiana detention center and deported to Central America fewer than two weeks later. | Des Moines Register
• A 15-year-old boy with disabilities — who was handcuffed outside a Los Angeles high school after immigration agents mistook him for a suspect — is among more than 170 U.S. citizens, including nearly 20 children, who have been detained during the first nine months of the president’s immigration push. | PBS
  

Trigger warning: After a Washington state teenager hanged himself on camera, the 13-year-old boy’s parents set out to find out what motivated their child to livestream his suicide on Instagram while online users watched. Evidence pointed to a sadistic online group that relies on torment, blackmail and coercion to weed out teens they deem weak. | The Washington Post

Civil rights advocates in New York are sounding the alarm over a Long Island school district’s new AI-powered surveillance system, which includes round-the-clock audio monitoring with in-classroom microphones. | StateScoop

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Defense to restock hundreds of books after a lawsuit alleged students were banned from checking out texts related to race and gender from school libraries on military bases in violation of the First Amendment. | Military.com

than 600 armed volunteers in Utah have been approved to patrol campuses across the state to comply with a new law requiring armed security. Called school guardians, the volunteers are existing school employees who agree to be trained by local law enforcement and carry guns on campus. | COWS

No “Jackass”: Instagram announced new PG-13 content features that restrict teenagers from viewing posts that contain sex, drugs and “risky stunts.” | The Associated Press

A Tuscaloosa, Alabama, school resource officer restrained and handcuffed a county commissioner after a spat at an elementary school awards program. | Tuscaloosa News

The number of guns found at Minnesota schools has increased nearly threefold in the last several years, new state data show. | Axios

than half of Florida’s school districts received bomb threats on a single evening last week. The threats weren’t credible, officials said, and appeared to be “part of a hoax intended to solicit money.” | News 6

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