Recently, OpenAI claimed that power users were six times more productive than casual users of artificial intelligence (AI). Meanwhile, the latest Pew Center Research results describing teen use (ages 13 to 17) of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot as well as users of Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and MetaAI, providing usage metrics, indicates that AI was precisely doing the opposite, concluding the technology was harmful to developing brains, describing it as brain rot.
How can both be true?
OpenAI Claims 6x Productivity Gains By Power Users
In the latest state of AI usage report, OpenAI statistics from users adopting the technology to help with writing, research, programming and analysis show:
- 87% of IT workers report faster issue resolution.
- 85% of marketing and product users report faster campaign execution.
- 75% of HR professionals report improved employee engagement.
- 73% of engineers report faster code delivery.
- 75% report being able to complete new tasks they previously could not do.
These OpenAI claims are based on studying power users from one million enterprise and educational customers. A power user, by definition, sends a minimum of 75 messages weekly and uses 3 or more AI tools monthly. These may include chat, browsing, coding, data analysis, and workflow integration.
ChatGPT Usage Report
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT has 800 million weekly users currently. A recently published report lists the following key findings:
- Usage of ChatGPT is accelerating among the identified one million business customers, with the average worker using it in 30% of messaging, a 19-times increase in using it for queries, and a 320-times increase within the business for use in increasingly sophisticated tasks and applications.
- These business customers claim measurable productivity gains, with AI users saving 40 to 60 minutes daily, contributing to revenue growth, product development cycles, and better customer interactions.
- International business adoption is rapidly accelerating at a 6-times rate across numerous industries, with an 11-times increase among technology companies.
- There is a widening gap between users in the 95th percentile of adoption and laggards, with the former seeing 6-fold increases in workflows where AI tools have become embedded in the organization, versus only 2-fold increases where AI is used more casually.
OpenAI claims that not only is ChatGPT being used more often, but its growing suite of AI applications is being applied to increasingly sophisticated organizational tasks in industry sectors such as information technology (IT), healthcare, manufacturing, professional services and finance. The biggest growth is happening in Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, France and Japan.
What OpenAI Doesn’t Say In Its Reports
What the statistics don’t reveal is the quality of outputs from increased OpenAI use.
A 2024 Journal of Human-Computer Interaction article that reviewed 485 studies and cited 33 empirical studies identified key concerns related to accuracy and reliability, and discussed the negative impacts of AI use and its impact on critical thinking and problem-solving.
It should be noted that the article was based on earlier releases of ChatGPT, not ChatGPT4 and 5.
AI Poses an Increasing Health Risk for Teen Users
The negative impact of AI on adolescent cognitive development is the subject of a number of recent articles and studies. According to a recent Pew Research study, 64% of U.S. teens use chatbots, with 3 in 10 between ages 13 and 17 using the technology daily. The Pew study notes that 97% of teenagers use the Internet daily, with 40% describing themselves as “almost constantly online.”
In a Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) 2025 survey of more than 1,000 students, teachers and parents, it reports that 86% of students and 85% of teachers are using AI tools. These are high percentage levels of engagement with a technology that poses unique challenges, particularly for young people. Why single them out?
The use of AI tools like ChatGPT or OpenAI’s Dall-E has a greater impact on adolescents because their brains are still forming. Along with excessive screentime and access to social media, generative AI like ChatGPT can negatively impact brain plasticity, cognitive development, critical thinking, mental health and sleep.
Youth Brain Plasticity and Potential AI Harms
A JAMA Pediatrics article published on November 18, 2025, lists the potential harms to adolescent minds and bodies that AI can cause. These include:
- Reinforcing and introducing cognitive biases derived from AI hallucinations
- Exposing young people to a technology devoid of empathy or understanding.
- Offloading of skills needed for personal growth, well-being, and success in adult life to AI.
- Receiving inaccurate mental health information that could worsen existing conditions.
- Replacing qualified traditional therapies with AI substitutes that deliver bad advice.
- Reinforcing negative self-image and sexuality through AI-idealized body images and behaviours found online.
- Displacing human connections with inauthentic AIs that feed responses to young users that can reinforce existing points of view, doubts, fears and bad behaviours.
- Displacing sleep and normal physical activity through excessive screen time and AI engagement.
What Developers and Policymakers Need to Consider
With the AI genie already out of the bottle, what needs to be done to ensure that adolescent minds can handle the ubiquity of this technology impacting their everyday lives?
Researchers into adolescent usage of AI are recognizing the need to establish guardrails specific to protecting young people. For example:
- AI developers need to improve generative AI training data to prevent misinformation from leading adolescents down rabbit holes.
- Policy makers, academics and legislators need to anticipate AI future uses to proactively develop risk mitigation strategies to promote healthy outcomes for adolescents.
If you cannot take away overwhelming Internet usage, as the aforementioned CDT data indicates is happening, in the absence of shutting off the medium to youth, it becomes necessary to consider the messages being sent by the technology to ensure malleable growing minds and bodies aren’t negatively impacted.
