Teen Girls Outpace Boys on AI Use When Given Control

Teenage girls with high AI agency use artificial intelligence at a higher rate than boys — 88% versus 83% — according to new research from Girls Who Code that upends the assumption that women's lower AI adoption reflects disengagement.

The study, titled Agency in the Age of AI and led by Girls Who Code CEO Taralah Wajid Stanton's organization, found the gender gap in AI usage is not a lack of ability or interest. "When they can decide, girls don't opt out; they engage on their own terms," the report states.

Women make up only 22% of the AI workforce and have long adopted AI at lower rates than men. The Girls Who Code data reframes part of that gap as deliberate boundary-setting rather than reluctance. Girls choose privacy over personalization at 71%, compared with 62% for boys. They are more likely to wait for AI to be tested before using it — 65% versus 53% — and to avoid it if it causes harm, at 45% versus 33%.

The report lands as institutions across the country are making similar judgment calls. New York City, the nation's largest school system, instituted a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI through eighth grade, while permitting limited, supervised use in high school. NYC school leaders are not rejecting the technology; the report characterizes them as being discerning about how they adopt it for students.

The same demand for control is showing up outside schools. This summer, a South Philadelphia library ran workshops called "Avoiding AI," teaching patrons how to turn off AI features on their devices. The Philly sessions followed a Maine librarian's version that drew requests from dozens of librarians asking how to build similar events. As the Maine librarian put it, the movement "isn't about rejecting technology altogether so much as it is about advocating for more control, agency, and freedom in how people use technology."

The report argues companies should meet that demand with clear opt-outs, explanations of how AI features use personal information, and channels for users to influence what gets built. One corporate response is already underway: Microsoft and the American Federation of Teachers recently released a National AI Safety & Privacy Standard that establishes those types of guardrails for schools.

Stanton draws a straight line between the teenage girl setting limits on a chatbot and the library patron learning to switch off AI on a phone. Both want to decide when, where, and how the technology belongs in their lives.

For an industry where senior executives regularly warn their own products could pose existential risks, the message from the data is blunt: users want to control how they adopt tech, not be automatically opted in. Knowing when not to use a tool, the report argues, is as much a competency as knowing how to use it.

The report's closing point carries commercial weight for AI developers chasing younger demographics. "Before headlines warned AI could end humanity, teen girls were already setting the standard for AI ethics by practicing discernment," it reads. Companies that treat young users' caution as a design constraint — rather than a adoption problem to be engineered away — may find the gender gap closing on its own.