It's not a shame not to know: why do schoolchildren prefer to ask for help from AI
More than 80% of high school students trust AI less than a real teacher in terms of education. However, when it comes to asking a real question, teenagers prefer to turn to neural networks rather than to teachers. Researchers have been paying attention to this paradox for a long time — students more easily accept feedback from AI, perceiving communication with artificial intelligence as emotionally safe, whereas the authority of a teacher can generate fear of evaluation. Read more about why teenagers prefer to use AI, even if they don't trust it, in the Izvestia article.
What the results of the study showed
A study conducted by the online school "100-point tutor" and the strategic agency RLVNT (available to Izvestia) showed that 84% of 9th-11th grade students, contrary to stereotypes, trust artificial intelligence less in education than a real teacher, even if they actively use AI in their studies.. A similar situation exists when it comes to personal and sensitive topics — 76% of respondents prefer to rely on the live environment, although there is an alternative opinion: for example, one of the study participants, a ninth-grader from Korenovsk, noted that "artificial intelligence is easier to trust because it will not judge."
However, when it comes to sources for learning, high school students are not the first to turn to teachers. To the question "Where and/or from whom do you usually seek help during your studies and exam preparation?" With many options to choose from, 41.4% said they use artificial intelligence-based chatbots and AI assistants, while 38.8% turn to teachers. In terms of the popularity of sources for teaching, teachers and tutors occupy only the fourth and fifth places after online schools, neural networks and information search on video hosting sites.
Moreover, the younger the survey participant, the more often they use AI in their studies: 49% of 16-year-olds use artificial intelligence (7.6% more than the total among the survey participants).
72.8% of respondents call the simplicity of explanation the most important factor in trusting a source. It is this aspect that the creators of AI agents often call the competitive advantage of their products and even use the query "explain in simple words" in advertising.
When asked about the criteria for trusting a person, students were more likely to name "communication on equal terms," "serious attitude," "calm reaction to statements," "sense of humor," and "use of time—tested resources such as books and printed materials." For only 1.9% of respondents, the criterion of trust in a person is the use of artificial intelligence.
At the same time, trust and a request for support for modern high school students are not always the same thing.
The survey, conducted in April 2026, involved 1,760 students in grades 8-11 across Russia.
How attitudes towards AI and teachers are changing
Sergey Druzhkin, an assistant at the Institute of Humanities at Moscow State Pedagogical University, told Izvestia about an experiment conducted at Moscow City University in April. 16 people were divided into two groups: eight wrote essays on the same topic without using AI — there was not even Internet access in the audience; the remaining eight, on the contrary, had to use neural networks. As a result, in the group that wrote the essay using AI, less than half of the subjects decided to add their thoughts, corrected and edited the final text. The rest completely trusted the neural network.
— I asked them to talk about what they wrote in the essay, including naming the arguments given in the text. And, for example, one of the students could not answer the question of who Vernadsky was, whose opinion he referred to in his essay, that is, neural networks were often trusted without any verification, the expert said.
The trend, he says, is that students are starting to trust neural networks more and more, preferring their answers rather than the teacher's knowledge.
However, Tatiana Poskakalova, a researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Modern Childhood at Moscow State Psychological and Pedagogical University, noted that communication with a live teacher and communication with AI are still aimed at solving different tasks: with proper goal setting, they do not compete, but complement each other.
— A teacher is a carrier not only of information, but also of life experience. He's a mentor. Communication with a teacher goes far beyond a simple answer, it contains an emotional component, reflection, creativity, knowledge of the student's abilities, etc., she explained.
Dmitry Kazakov, chairman of the Teacher trade union and a teacher of history and social studies, says this: schoolchildren are using AI more and more every year, but the teacher has long since ceased to be the subject of knowledge.
— The era of the Internet in Russia has been going on for almost 20 years, and before that there were already sources that were contacted besides the teacher. A teacher is also about education, about approaches to education. This is a personality that influences the student not only through knowledge," the source said.
What is happening should be considered not in the context of contrasting AI and a teacher, but in the historical perspective of accumulating tools for working with information, said Dmitry Abbakumov, PhD in Education, academic director at the Foxford online school.
— Each new tool did not cancel the previous one, but changed the model of interaction with knowledge. AI is doing something fundamentally new: for the first time, the tool allows you to ask a subtle, individualized question and get a situationally accurate answer, rather than a list of sources. And there is no contradiction in the fact that teenagers try to turn to AI for help when they trust a teacher, but rather an interesting psychological dynamic," the source told Izvestia.
According to him, the teacher is perceived as an authority, but it is precisely this authority that can generate fear of evaluation — overt or hidden. The AI can ask about anything, reformulate the request, or come from the other side. This is an opportunity to test your understanding without the risk of making a mistake publicly. Abbakumov refers to a study by the Institute of Education at the University of Zurich, in which similar trends were noted in the university environment: students accept feedback from AI more easily, largely because it does not feel like an assessment.
The same study says that students liked the responses of the large language model more as "fairer and more pleasant," but at the same time, learning progress after AI messages was less than after teachers' stories. In pedagogical nuances, deep logic and disciplinary specifics, artificial intelligence is inferior.
Sergey Druzhkin also pointed out that AI is perceived by many as an emotionally safe way to gain knowledge, and ironically noted that not every teacher can be approached with the question "what is philosophy?" at the end of the course.
And the desire to ask the teacher again may be perceived by the child as a risk of appearing stupid in front of a significant adult or their peers, psychologist Yana Vlasova added.
"At the same time, the child does not realize that live interaction with people and the skill of this interaction is very important and needs to be developed," the Izvestia interlocutor emphasized. — Real learning, real close relationships cannot exist without friction, feelings of shame, vulnerability, overcoming some kind of awkwardness. If a teenager gets used to receiving support only in a sterile environment, then he risks not building up the "emotional muscle" that will allow him to withstand complex, imperfect human contacts.
The constant use of AI creates in children and adults the habit of getting a quick response here and now, develops a "lack of patience for the process," the expert warned. This also affects other areas of life: for example, it is more difficult for children to interact with their parents, because they also want to receive quick and accurate answers from them, rather than heart-to-heart conversations.
How AI is already Changing Education
Tatiana Poskakalova noted that the use of AI in teaching is changing the educational landscape, that is, the infrastructure, teaching methods, and tools for evaluating educational outcomes. Accents are shifting, functions and roles are being redistributed among all participants in the educational process, and requirements for student competencies are being updated: it is important for a modern student to be able to correctly formulate AI tasks and verify the information received.
— But what about the development of so—called soft skills — social and communication skills, creativity, teamwork, etc.? The use of AI in school forces not only to reconsider the necessary skills and principles of working with information, but also forces us to think about setting new pedagogical tasks and methods of education, - said the interlocutor of Izvestia.
A third participant has appeared in the teacher–student system — artificial intelligence itself. And he is already influencing the relationship of the first two, said Sergey Druzhkin.
— The impact can be negative: "But the neural network tells me this way, and you tell me otherwise, you are not an authority for me"; or it can be positive when the AI offers ideas, structure for essays and homework, improving human work. In fact, it all depends on critical thinking — how much a person can independently draw conclusions," he explained.
Without understanding the true educational capabilities of AI, the proper level of digital competencies and risk assessment, the use of the neural network by students can only be reduced to academic deception — cheating, searching for ready answers, Tatiana Poskakalova warned. This will also affect a decrease in cognitive abilities, critical and creative thinking skills, literacy levels, etc. Therefore, we need clear rules for using AI, raising awareness, and developing new pedagogical methods, the expert believes.
In turn, Dmitry Abbakumov pointed to a change in the "pattern of search activity", how a teenager satisfies curiosity.
— If AI helps you think, it's a resource, if it starts thinking instead of a human, it's a risk. This creates what researchers call the illusion of understanding: when an AI structures a thought for you, it's easy to mistake the finished structure for your own understanding. That is why, in parallel with mastering the tool, pedagogical work with metacognitive skills is important — the ability to track whether you understood something yourself or just accepted a ready answer," he stressed.
Izvestia sent a request to the Ministry of Education to find out the position of the department on the issue of regulating the work of AI in school education. The department has not yet commented on this issue.
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