Exploring Potential Cognitive Decline in Future Generations due to Over‐Reliance on Artificial Intelligence (
AI
): The Mediating Role of User Characteristics
Md. Obaidul Hoque, Husne Jahan Chowdhury, Md. Shofiqul Islam ABSTRACT
The rapid proliferation of AI in education raises urgent questions about its long‐term cognitive consequences. This study examines how AI dependency and adoption context predict cognitive decline, proposing user characteristics as a mediating mechanism. Data was collected from 361 Bangladeshi university students. PLS‐SEM was used analysis in SmartPLS 4.0. This study results both dependency and adoption context significantly drive cognitive decline. Crucially, user characteristics fully mediated the adoption context pathway and partially mediated the dependency relationship. These findings establish that cognitive decline is not an unavoidable consequence of AI use. Instead, it is an individually mediated outcome. This means it is actively shaped by student‐specific psychological and behavioral profiles. Furthermore, these personal profiles are themselves conditioned by the contexts in which the AI is adopted. This study integrates MDT, TAM, and IDT to advance theoretical understandings of AI‐human cognition dynamics. It offers evidence‐based guidance for cognitively healthy AI integration.