For the first time, a majority of American adults under 30 say they’re more concerned than excited about AI. The finding comes from a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 22-28, 2026, and it tracks a broader trend: 52 per cent of all U.S. adults now say they’re more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, up from 37 per cent in 2021. Only 9 per cent say they’re more excited than concerned.
The Numbers
The shift is most pronounced among young adults. In 2021, 31 per cent of Americans aged 18-29 said they were more concerned than excited. Today that figure is 55 per cent — a 24-point jump in five years. Excitement among the same group has fallen from 25 per cent to 11 per cent.
Across all age groups, concern has climbed and excitement has dropped:
| Age group | Concerned (2021) | Concerned (2026) | Excited (2021) | Excited (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18-29 | 31% | 55% | 25% | 11% |
| 30-49 | 34% | 51% | 21% | 12% |
| 50-64 | 41% | 47% | 13% | 8% |
| 65+ | 43% | 59% | 11% | 4% |
The pattern breaks the usual adoption curve. New technologies typically see younger demographics lead on enthusiasm. With AI, young adults are now just as wary as those 65 and older.
Job Loss Is the Dominant Worry
The same survey found 71 per cent of Americans think AI will lead to fewer jobs in the U.S. over the next two decades, up from 64 per cent in 2024. Only 5 per cent think AI will create more jobs.
Among adults under 30, the figure is 73 per cent — up 12 points from 61 per cent two years ago. The youngest cohort is now just as likely as those 30 to 64 to foresee job losses from AI.
Industry Leaders Acknowledge the Trust Gap
The Pew data landed alongside a wave of signals that the AI industry is waking up to its reputation problem.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on X that negative public perception of AI is a “big problem” that’s fundamentally a “crisis of trust.” He said people “suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over” and admitted that AI companies, including Anthropic, “haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world.”
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, on a recent podcast, acknowledged the backlash is real and tied it to the industry shipping products that “regular people” don’t find compelling. “We need to actually be developing more products that just regular people can use and say, ‘I love AI because AI allows me to have a doctor on demand,’” Chesky said.
Meanwhile, Axios reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a private memo to top AI companies warning that toxic views of U.S. data centers are hurting the party’s chances in a key Ohio Senate race. The memo says internal polls show data centers are “as popular as spent nuclear waste” and have become a proxy for broader feelings about AI.
What the Backlash Looks Like on the Ground
The Wall Street Journal reported that tech companies are facing a public relations crisis over AI data center construction, leading them to offer job guarantees, clean water investments, and local perks — including $50,000 bonuses for teachers in one Louisiana parish.
On the consumer side, there’s a measurable turn toward analog technology. Dumbphones, point-and-shoot cameras, cassette tapes, and CD players are selling again. AI-free classic iPods are commanding premium prices on eBay. In-person meetups, run clubs, and board game groups are growing while online dating apps lose users.
The pattern isn’t rejection of technology broadly — it’s rejection of a specific kind of technology that people feel is being imposed on them without clear benefit. As TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez put it, “consumers understand AI well enough as it is, but don’t think the trade-offs are worth it.”
The NZ Connection
The sentiment shift has a direct New Zealand analogue. Plans for the country’s first hyperscale AI data centre in Makarewa, near Invercargill, have drawn community pushback over electricity and water use. Energy Minister Simeon Brown has said new hyperscale data centres should underwrite new power generation, and the backlash has spread to Taranaki.
New Zealand households already sensitive to electricity prices and security of supply are asking the same question American voters are: who bears the cost, and who gets the benefit? The NZ government’s approach — requiring data centres to fund their own power infrastructure — is more prescriptive than what most U.S. states have managed, but it hasn’t resolved the underlying tension.
For broader context on the trust gap, our coverage of the Stanford AI Index’s expert-public trust divergence and the Anthropic research gap between AI’s theoretical potential and real-world usage documents the same pattern from different angles.
What the Industry Gets Wrong About the Backlash
The assumption in Silicon Valley was that adoption would lead to acceptance — that ubiquity would breed comfort, as it did with smartphones and the internet. The data says the opposite is happening. More exposure to AI is correlating with more concern, not less.
Amodei’s proposed solution is to deliver on promises, citing cancer cures as an example. Chesky’s is to build products regular people love. Both are honest about the diagnosis. Neither has a concrete timeline for the cure.
The risk for the industry is that the gap between promise and delivery widens faster than trust can recover. Pew’s data shows the trend line is five years old and still pointing in the wrong direction. Retro technology trends and run club memberships are downstream signals — people aren’t rejecting the future, they’re questioning whether this particular version of it is worth the cost.
❓ FAQ
Why are young people more concerned about AI than older people? Pew’s data shows concern has risen across all age groups, but the jump among 18-29-year-olds has been the steepest — from 31 per cent in 2021 to 55 per cent in 2026. Young adults are also the most likely to think AI will take their jobs (73 per cent), and the most likely to say chatbots hurt their creativity as much as help it.
Is the backlash just about data centres? No. Data centres are a flashpoint because they’re physically visible — huge buildings, power lines, water consumption. But the Pew data shows concern about AI broadly, not just infrastructure. Job loss, creative displacement, and the feeling that AI features are being imposed without clear benefit all contribute.
Are New Zealanders equally concerned? There’s no directly comparable NZ survey, but the community pushback against the Makarewa data centre and the spread of opposition to Taranaki suggests a similar pattern. The NZ government’s requirement that data centres underwrite new power generation reflects political awareness of the same tensions.
What would change the trend? The industry’s own leaders say the answer is delivering tangible benefits — products that regular people find useful, not just AI features bolted onto existing services. The Pew data suggests the window for that is narrowing, not widening.
📰 Sources
- Pew Research Center — Young US adults are increasingly wary of AI
- TechCrunch — AI was supposed to win people over by now — it hasn’t
- Axios — GOP issues stark warning to AI companies
- CNBC — Data breach notices have already blown past last year’s total
- WSJ — Inside Big Tech’s frantic race to quell the growing backlash to AI
- 1News — AI data centres should underwrite new power generation
