A new survey just confirmed that the youth of the world are screwed, as its findings indicate teens would rather talk to an AI chatbot than a human. Or, at least, many are on the path to screwedom.
The survey, conducted by UK youth charity OnSide, found that 20 percent of English teens turn to chatbots because it’s “easier than talking to a real person.” Overall, the researchers found that about two in five teens have used AI for advice, some emotional support, or just to chat.
Eleven percent say they use chatbots for mental health support, 12 percent for company, and 14 percent for navigating the trials and tribulations of personal relationships with humans. The one silver lining here is that 61 percent of respondents insist that they never ask a chatbot to sort through their personal emotional baggage.
It’s probably not great that chatbots have a long, storied history of ruining people’s brains, and that chatbots (and AI services overall) have thoroughly integrated themselves into the daily life of minors, as social media apps did years ago. They are readily available, have virtually no, if any, restrictions, and parents may have little understanding of their dangers.
Just a few days ago, Stanford Medicine’s Brainstorm Lab for Mental Health Innovation teamed up with child advocacy nonprofit Common Sense Media to release a study that found that all of the major chatbots out there, like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, among others, are “fundamentally unsafe” for teens seeking mental health help.
These bots can’t reliably handle crises, are terrible at nuanced conversations, and cannot grasp the complexities of the full spectrum of human mental health conditions. You know what a really good indicator that these things are not good for teen mental health? Both Google and OpenAI are already fending off lawsuits tied to teen suicides involving chatbot interactions.
Maybe the most frightening part lies in the convenience of it all. If you want to understand why technologies become sticky, it’s because they provide a service people find valuable while being incredibly easy to use and to seamlessly incorporate into their lives. AI chatbots do exactly that. Even if the response it spits out is fundamentally flawed on several levels, people will often accept the semblance of a result, or a mostly correct result, over nothing.
An AI chatbot can respond instantly at 3 AM when everyone else is asleep. It is the ever-ready, ever-present, ever-eager best friend that might convince you that you are a misunderstood demigod whose most insane ideas should be celebrated.
It makes sense why, according to OnSide, 19 percent of respondents say conversations with a chatbot are just easier than those with a human, and why six percent claim they have no one to talk to, and another six percent trust AI more than people.
Our world is breeding legions of teens and children who don’t have a lot of reason, or even the means, to go out and socialize. And why would they? The world is wildly expensive, and these kids have little autonomy. They do not have the means to be independent. So, we have generation on top of generation of indoor kids.
Social skills are eroding at a rapid pace, and here comes an AI chatbot to make a teen think that this hyper agreeable, algorithmically-driven chatter is a good enough facsimile of human interaction, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
AI hasn’t just woven itself into kids’ lives in record time; it’s directly influencing their upbringing.
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