Teens rely heavily on ai chatbots but face emotional challenges
A Responsive Present, a Shared Past, a Social Other: Teens' Overreliance on Companion AI Chatbots
Human-Computer InteractionArtificial Intelligence
Summary
Teens use AI chatbots as friends to share feelings, explore who they are, and practice relationships. The authors studied thousands of online teen posts to see how these chatbots affect moods and friendships. While these chatbots offer comfort and identity support, some teens become too attached or replace real social interactions. Problems like emotional dependence, unwanted romantic conversations, and privacy worries also came up. The authors suggest safer chatbot designs that give users control over memory, privacy, and how they end relationships.
What this means in practice
- •For ai product designers: Design AI chatbots with user controls for memory, privacy, and clear limits to support teen users’ emotional health over time.$Commercial implications: Enables creation of safer AI companion apps for teens, responding to identified emotional risks and privacy needs.
- •For mental health app developers: Incorporate findings on attachment and social substitution risks in AI chatbots to improve emotional wellbeing features for teens.
Authors
Mohammad Namvarpour, Tyler Chang, Afsaneh Razi
Abstract
AI companions provide socially engaging interaction through availability, personalization, memory, roleplay, and emotionally responsive language. For teens, these systems may support sensitive self-disclosure, identity exploration, and relationship rehearsal while shaping intimacy expectations, offline relationships, emotional wellbeing, and self-understanding. We analyzed 17,053 verified quotations from 3,930 teen-relevant Reddit posts using thematic analysis. We identified 53 topics across seven thematic groups. Users described AI companions as sources of comfort, recognition, identity exploration, and relationship rehearsal, but also reported problematic attachment, social substitution, emotional dependence, and disruption to academic and social life. Roleplay, memory, perceived reciprocity, unwanted romantic or sexual role drift, privacy concerns, platform changes, and service interruptions shaped users' boundaries and control. Awareness that the AI was artificial did not prevent guilt, obligation, grief, or distress. These findings show that companion-AI safety must address relationships over time through user-controlled memory, privacy, relational boundaries, and healthy disengagement.