Turkish children adopt AI at twice Europe's rate, but safety concerns loom

Across Türkiye, nine in ten children between the ages of ten and sixteen have folded artificial intelligence into the rhythms of daily life — a pace of adoption that outstrips nearly every European peer. Yet speed and comfort are not the same thing: fewer than a third of these children feel safe in the digital spaces they so readily inhabit, and one in four now turns to an algorithm rather than a human being when seeking emotional counsel. The EU Kids Online 2026 study, drawing on surveys of more than 28,000 young people across nineteen countries, places this paradox at the center of a larger