Tarot Is Common Among Young Americans. Asking AI for Spiritual Guidance Isn't

Between July 1 and 4, 2026, The Harris Poll surveyed 2,136 U.S. adults online, including 372 members of Gen Z aged 18 to 29. Its Gen Z & Religion Report, released in September, asked which practices people had done regularly in the past year. One option was "astrology or tarot," with reading charts and pulling cards given as examples. Gen Z and Millennials (30 to 45) both came in at 30%. Gen X (46 to 61) was at 19%, and Boomers (62 and older) at 6%.

The report's headline finding is about religion, and it cuts against the usual story. Gen Z was the generation most likely to call itself religious, at 33%, against 19% of Millennials, and it reported reading scripture and attending services more often than Boomers did. Astrology and tarot sit alongside that rather than replacing it. In the same survey, 51% of Gen Z said they regularly meditate or practice a ritual, 49% practice manifestation, and 32% do energy work such as reiki or crystals.

There is no shortage of apps offering AI tarot spreads and AI birth chart readings. So the obvious next question is whether the people pulling cards are handing these questions to a chatbot.

A second survey, released in late September by NPR and Ipsos, gets partway there. Ipsos polled 1,011 adults from August 7 to 9 using its probability-based KnowledgePanel, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 points. Sixty-one percent had used a tool like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. Among those 643 AI users, 11% had sought spiritual or religious guidance from AI, and 5% said they currently do. Another 19% had not but were open to it, and 69% said they never would. NPR puts the share of all Americans at 6%, noting that this is roughly the combined share of Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in the U.S.

On personal matters, AI users still lean on people. Three in four said they trust advice from people they know more than advice from AI; 6% said the reverse. Asked why they might pick AI over a person for a difficult topic, the top answers were practical: it is available anytime without scheduling or waiting (31%), and it knows more than the people they could ask (29%). Not being judged came next at 23%, and being able to be more honest with AI than with people they know at 18%. Nearly half, 47%, said they would not turn to AI for that kind of topic at all. Ipsos also notes that those who do use AI for spiritual guidance skew lower-income and less educated, and that adults 65 and older are notably less likely than those aged 35 to 49 to use it this way.

Read together, the two surveys answer part of the question clearly. Regular astrology and tarot are common among Americans under 46, while bringing spiritual questions to AI is still a minority habit. The minority who would use AI point to an answer at 2 a.m., a wider store of information, and not being looked down on. None of the listed reasons is about AI understanding their fate better, and the answers read more like people using an always-open reference desk.

The gap is in what neither survey asked. The spiritual items in the Ipsos questionnaire take all their examples from organized religion: Bible study, writing prayers, going to a pastor, priest, rabbi or imam. Astrology and tarot never appear, so whether someone who has an app interpret their cards would tick "spiritual guidance" depends on how they read the phrase. Harris asked about astrology and tarot but not about the tools, so a physical deck, a human astrologer and an app all count toward the same 30%. How many of those people already paste their birth chart into ChatGPT is a number no national poll has produced yet. Until one does, NPR's 6% describes Americans asking AI about faith, not Americans asking it to read their stars.