Exploring Teenagers' Trust in Al Chatbots: An Empirical Study of Chinese Middle-School Students

TL;DR

This study investigates how Chinese middle-school students' psychological traits influence their trust in AI chatbots, revealing key predictors and the moderating role of age through surveys and interviews.

Contribution

It uniquely examines teenagers' trust in AI chatbots by integrating psychological variables and mixed methods, filling a gap in youth-focused AI trust research.

Findings

Psychological resilience positively predicts trust in AI.

Age moderates the relationship between social anxiety and trust.

Teenagers tend to overestimate their AI literacy and are influenced by social media.

Abstract

Chatbots have become increasingly prevalent. A growing body of research focused on the issue of human trust in AI. However, most existing user studies are conducted primarily with adult groups, overlooking teenagers who are also engaging more frequently with AI technologies. Based on previous theories about teenage education and psychology, this study investigates the correlation between teenagers' psychological characteristics and their trust in AI chatbots, examining four key variables: AI literacy, ego identity, social anxiety, and psychological resilience. We adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining an online survey with semi-structured interviews. Our findings reveal that psychological resilience is a significant positive predictor of trust in AI, and that age significantly moderates the relationship between social anxiety and trust. The interviews further suggest that teenagers generally report relatively high levels of trust in AI, tend to overestimate their AI literacy, and are influenced by external factors such as social media.