Data privacy and AI use in primary education in Serbia: Student awareness and adult support

Student data privacy, especially among younger users, raises critical concerns since the growing use of AI tools in education. This study examines how primary school students in Serbia understand data protection in the context of AI-enhanced educational platforms. It specifically investigates the relationship between student awareness of privacy risks and adult mediation-by teachers and parents-as well as whether increased AI use corresponds with reduced adult supervision. A structured questionnaire was administered to 240 students in grades 5 through 8. Composite variables were generated from Likert-scale items and results were analyzed using nonparametric methods, including Spearman's rank correlation and the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test. The findings indicate that adult communication has a limited effect on students' data privacy understanding, although parental support appears to be more influential than teacher involvement. These results point to the urgent need for age-appropriate digital literacy initiatives, institutional accountability and targeted support for teachers and parents, since students often lack a concrete understanding of abstract privacy concepts and require structured, developmentally adapted guidance to safely engage with AI technologies.