Artificial intelligence has quickly become a part of everyday life as its use continues to grow. From asking a random question or drafting an essay outline to building websites and designing presentations, AI seems capable of doing a little bit of everything nowadays. For students of all ages, its role in education has expanded significantly in recent years. With information available at the click of a button and answers generated in seconds, AI offers a level of convenience that can make schoolwork easier. However, that convenience has also raised concerns about how people learn, retain information and develop critical-thinking skills. As AI becomes more common in classrooms and homes, researchers are examining whether relying too heavily on these tools could make people less capable of thinking independently. So, what happens to our brains when we increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to do the thinking for us?
AI Use Is Growing Among Students
As a student, it is easy to understand why AI has become so popular in schools. Between keeping up with assignments, studying for exams and balancing responsibilities outside the classroom, having a tool that can explain a difficult concept or help organize an essay can feel like a lifesaver. Instead of spending hours trying to understand a confusing topic, students can ask AI to break it down into simpler terms within seconds. However, the convenience also makes it tempting to rely on AI before giving ourselves the chance to figure something out independently. This raises an important question for students like me. Are we using AI to help us learn, or are we beginning to depend on it to do the learning for us?
The numbers show just how common AI has become in education. According to the RAND Corporation, the percentage of middle school, high school and college students using AI for homework increased from 48% in May 2025 to 62% in December 2025. A separate 2024 global survey by the Digital Education Council found that 86% of students used AI in their studies, with 54% using it weekly and nearly one in four using it daily, according to a summary published by Campbell University. These surveys cover different student populations, but both illustrate how quickly AI has become part of the educational experience. For students today, learning how to use AI is becoming almost as important as figuring out when it is better to put it aside.
When Convenience Replaces Critical Thinking
One concern is that students may begin using AI to avoid the mental effort involved in learning. As students, we are constantly expected to analyze readings, solve problems, develop arguments and explain our reasoning. Getting an education is teaching us how to go out and be successful in the world so we can build our lives. And of course our classes are difficult and there are many tasks that can be frustrating, especially when a deadline is approaching or a concept just will not click. AI has made those moments easier, but there is a difference between using it to understand a problem and asking it to solve the problem entirely.
The American Psychological Association explored this issue in its July 2026 article on AI and human thinking. The article discussed a study of 319 knowledge workers affiliated with Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University. Participants who had greater confidence in generative AI reported engaging in less critical thinking while using it for work tasks. Although the study focused on workers rather than students, the findings raise questions about what could happen when students repeatedly turn to AI instead of working through challenging material themselves.
Think about how often students use AI to summarize a reading rather than read the entire assignment, generate an essay instead of developing an argument or solve a problem without learning the steps behind the answer. Anyone can understand the temptation, particularly when there are several assignments due at once. However, getting the right answer does not necessarily mean understanding how to reach it. If students skip the process of questioning, analyzing and making mistakes, they could miss out on the practice that helps develop critical-thinking skills.
How AI May Be Affecting Our Brains
When we use AI to answer a question, summarize a reading or complete an assignment, we are doing more than simply saving time. We may also be changing how much mental effort our brains put into learning. Understanding new information requires the brain to pay attention, connect ideas to existing knowledge and retrieve information later. These processes help strengthen memory and make it easier to apply what we have learned in new situations. When we let AI do most of the work, however, we may miss some of the mental practice that helps those skills develop. For students, this raises an important concern: If we regularly turn to AI for answers, are we giving our brains enough opportunities to learn and remember information independently?
One possible effect involves memory. When students read a chapter, work through a math problem or develop an essay argument themselves, they must actively process the information. Simply receiving a completed summary or answer requires less effort, and recognizing information when AI presents it is not the same as being able to recall and explain it later. This does not mean using AI automatically damages memory. Rather, if students consistently replace active learning with passive consumption, they may have fewer opportunities to practice remembering and applying what they have learned.
Researchers are also examining how AI use relates to attention and critical thinking. A study discussed by the American Psychological Association used electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure brain activity while participants wrote essays. The researchers reported weaker connections between areas of brain activity among participants who used a large language model compared with those who wrote without AI or used a search engine. These findings suggest that the amount and type of mental engagement may differ depending on the tools people use.
However, the study does not prove that AI causes lasting changes to the brain, and more research is needed to understand the long-term effects. As a student, this is what makes the issue particularly interesting. AI can explain something that seemed impossible to understand just minutes earlier, but it can also make it easy to move on without truly learning the material. If I use AI to explain a difficult concept and then test myself without looking at the answer, the technology can support my learning. If I simply copy its explanation into an assignment and never think about it again, I may finish the work without being able to recall what I learned and that is detrimental to my learning. Ultimately, the concern is not that AI is automatically harmful to the brain, but that how we use it may influence how actively we think, learn and remember.
Students Are Also Concerned
Being a student, I see AI being used every day. Students in my classes, in the library or simply all over social media. More recently, I was sitting in one of my classes and noticed students taking exams using AI to get the correct answers and I began to wonder the effect AI is going to have on us when we go out in the world and try to get jobs. Are we going to be able to perform well at our jobs if there are students cheating their way through college? Are students who rely so heavily on AI to get their degree going to be fit to be successful once in the workplace?
Students are not necessarily unaware of these risks. According to RAND, 67% of students surveyed in December 2025 believed using AI for schoolwork harmed critical-thinking skills, up from 54% earlier that year. Even among students who used AI, 60% believed it harmed critical thinking. These numbers reflect students’ opinions rather than direct measurements of changes in their brains, but they suggest that concerns about overreliance are not limited to teachers and researchers.
This issue matters across all levels of education. Younger students are still developing foundational skills such as reading comprehension, writing and problem-solving, while high school and college students are expected to build on those abilities through increasingly complex assignments. If students begin relying on AI before attempting a task themselves, they may lose valuable opportunities to practice those skills. At the same time, AI can help explain difficult material, offer additional examples and make information more accessible to students who need extra support. The challenge is finding a way to benefit from those features without allowing the technology to replace the learning process.
Finding a Balance
The answer may not be to stop using AI altogether, but to become more intentional about how we use it. As a student, I see the appeal of having information available almost instantly, especially when trying to understand a difficult topic or organize a complicated assignment. Used thoughtfully, AI can be a helpful learning tool. Students can ask it to explain a concept in simpler language, quiz them on material before an exam or identify areas of an essay that need improvement. These approaches still require students to engage with the information rather than simply accept a completed response.
A few simple habits can make a difference. Trying to solve a problem before asking AI for help, checking its answers against reliable sources and explaining a concept in your own words can help keep the learning process active. Instead of asking AI to write an entire assignment, students can use it to brainstorm ideas or receive feedback on a draft they have already developed. The goal should be to use the technology as a resource, not as a substitute for independent thinking.
AI is becoming a permanent part of education, and avoiding it entirely may not be realistic for many students. However, its convenience should not come at the expense of the skills we are in school to develop. Research into AI’s effects on the brain is still evolving, and there is much that scientists do not yet know about its long-term impact. As students, we have to consider not only whether AI helps us finish an assignment faster, but also whether we could explain what we learned after the assignment is finished. After all, education is about more than getting the right answer. It is about developing the ability to think through the question ourselves.
Sources
American Psychological Association. “How AI Is Reshaping Human Skills and Thinking.” Monitor on Psychology, July 2026. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2026/07-08/ai-job-skills-thinking.
Campbell University Academic Technology Services. “AI in Higher Education: A Summary of Recent Surveys of Students and Faculty.” March 6, 2025. https://sites.campbell.edu/academictechnology/2025/03/06/ai-in-higher-education-a-summary-of-recent-surveys-of-students-and-faculty/.
RAND Corporation. “Student Use of AI for Homework Rises as Concerns Grow.” March 2026. https://www.rand.org/news/press/2026/03/student-use-of-ai-for-homework-rises-as-concerns-grow.html.