By the summer of 2025, around 700 million people were logging into ChatGPT every week, and around 188.58 million visiting the platform daily[1]. Together they sent close to 18 billion messages in that time. That works out at about 26 messages a week for each active user, or just under four a day. A joint study[2] by Harvard and OpenAI[3], released[4] through the National Bureau of Economic Research, analysed more than a million conversations to see how habits have changed over the last year.
Daily life drives most conversations
ChatGPT is used more at home than in offices. In June 2024, just over half of messages were unrelated to work. A year later, the share had risen to nearly three quarters. Much of that traffic was tutoring, cooking ideas, or planning tasks. The authors describe the trend as “home production rather than formal labour,” pointing out that work use has grown but personal requests are rising faster.
What people ask it to do
Almost eight out of ten chats fall into three areas. Practical guidance, like how-to help, makes up close to a third. Information seeking has risen from 14 to 24 percent in a year. Writing now accounts for about a quarter, often editing or reworking drafts. Programming remains small at just over four percent. Messages about relationships or reflection are under two percent. Image generation took off in 2025, lifting multimedia to seven percent of use.
Asking questions leads the way
Nearly half of all messages are questions, people wanting answers or explanations. Four in ten are task-based, such as writing or coding. The rest are expressive conversations. Asking has grown during the year, while doing has slipped. The study notes that asking “is the category most often associated with high quality.”
Work habits in detail
In the workplace, writing is still the main task. Four out of ten work conversations are editing or polishing text, with most based on drafts supplied by the user. Practical guidance is another quarter, and technical help sits just above one in ten. When mapped against U.S. labour categories, more than 80 percent of work use was linked to documenting information, problem solving, or decision support.
Who is using it
The gender gap seen at launch has narrowed. In January 2024, 37 percent of users had feminine names. By July 2025, it was 52 percent. Younger people dominate in numbers, with nearly half of all messages coming from under-26s, but older groups are steadily growing. Adoption has been strongest in lower-income countries, where growth has been four times faster than in wealthier regions.
Education and jobs
Education plays a part in how people use the tool. Graduates send more questions, while those with less formal schooling send more task requests. Occupations show similar divides. Business and management users send mostly writing requests, while those in computing focus on technical help. Across the board, though, documenting and problem solving appear again and again.
Satisfaction over time
Feedback has become more positive. In late 2024, good interactions outnumbered bad ones three to one. By mid-2025, the gap had widened to four to one. Self-expression gets the best ratings, technical help the lowest. Asking tasks are judged most helpful overall.
Why it matters
The study shows a system becoming part of ordinary routines. Most use is now outside formal jobs, often invisible to economic statistics, but visible in how people organise their time. Whether it is tutoring, writing support, or factual questions, ChatGPT has moved from novelty to everyday habit.
Notes: This post was edited/created using GenAI tools. I
Read next: AI Chatbots Produced Phishing Emails That Fooled Seniors In A Reuters Test[5]
References
- ^ 188.58 million visiting the platform daily (www.digitalinformationworld.com)
- ^ study (www.nber.org)
- ^ OpenAI (openai.com)
- ^ released (www.nber.org)
- ^ AI Chatbots Produced Phishing Emails That Fooled Seniors In A Reuters Test (www.digitalinformationworld.com)