Half of UK parents fear AI will wreck their kid’s career

Half of UK parents with children under 30 are worried about how AI will affect their child’s future career.

The finding comes from a new tracker by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, with fieldwork conducted by Opinium across 16 to 29 April 2026.

The research surveyed 2,000 UK adults aged 16 and over, alongside boost samples of 1,002 young people aged 16 to 29, 1,000 university students, and 506 senior decision-makers at UK businesses with 11 or more employees.

A subset of 746 UK adults with children aged 0 to 29 was asked specifically about AI’s impact on their children.

Of that sample, 50% said they were fairly or very worried about how AI might affect their child’s future career, against just 15% who said they felt excited and 29% who felt neither worried nor excited. One in five (20%) parents described themselves as very worried.

Mothers are more than twice as likely to be worried (56%) than excited (9%), with 23% saying they were very worried. Fathers are far more evenly divided, with 43% worried and 22% excited.

Fathers are also almost twice as likely as mothers (39% vs. 23%) to say they have encouraged their child to learn how to use AI tools, suggesting a gendered split in how parents are responding to the technology.#

Uncertainty for everyone

Despite the level of concern, most parents have not actively engaged their children on the issue. Among parents of 11-to-29-year-olds, only 31% have had a conversation with their child about how AI might affect their future career.

A similar 30% have encouraged their child to learn how to use AI tools, and 29% have steered them toward a career less likely to be replaced or affected by AI.

Smaller shares have discouraged AI use entirely (17%) or pushed their child away from a career or subject because they think AI might replace it (16%).

The wider public shares the pessimism about young people’s prospects. The general public is more likely to say AI will leave young people worse off than their parents’ generation across every measure tested.

On finding and keeping a job, 45% expect young people to be worse off, against just 12% who expect them to be better off. On having fulfilling and meaningful work, 42% say worse off and 16% say better off.

On developing useful skills, 38% say worse off and 21% say better off. On achieving financial security, 34% say worse off and 14% say better off.

University students and young people themselves take a slightly less negative view than the general public across all four measures, but the underlying balance is still tilted toward worse off in every case.

Among university students, 37% expect young people to be worse off at finding and keeping a job, falling to 31% on achieving financial security.

Concern about young people’s specific job prospects is borne out in views on the entry-level market.

Majorities across all groups agree that AI will make the job market tougher for current students by the time they graduate, ranging from 52% of young people to 62% of employers. Among university students themselves, 60% agree, with 14% disagreeing.

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