EU Publishes ENESET Report on AI's Impact on Children's Socio-Emotional and Cognitive Competences

The European Commission's Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture and ENESET published the report 'Impact of AI on children's socio-emotional and cognitive competences' on 23 September 2026, with ISBN 978-92-68-39040-5 and DOI 10.2766/3470339. The report's geographical scope is the European Union, its education focus is early childhood education and care and school education, and its thematic areas are digital education and technological innovation. It synthesises documented research from neuroscience, education, psychology and related fields on AI-mediated environments, highlighting evidence specific to generative AI where available.

The report narrows the broad debate on AI and children to socio-emotional and cognitive competences and explicitly distinguishes generative AI evidence, providing a citable evidence base for EU early childhood and school education policy. For parents and teachers, it signals the need to pay attention to how children interact with AI over time; for AI education product practitioners, the opportunities and risks identified may inform product design and compliance discussions. The report is a literature synthesis without independent experiments or quantitative results, so its conclusions are limited by the scope of existing research evidence. EU early childhood and school education policy discussions gain an evidence review of AI impacts that distinguishes evidence types, with generative AI findings separately noted. Parents, teachers and AI education product practitioners can use it to focus on how sustained interaction with AI affects children's socio-emotional competences, rather than only knowledge learning.