About 12% of teens in the United States turn to AI for emotional support or advice

Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots have become an integral part of the lives of American teens, according to a report published by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday.

While the most common uses of AI among this demographic are searching for information (57%) and getting help with schoolwork (54%), teens are also using AI to fill roles typically filled by friends or family. 16% of US teens say they use AI for casual conversations, while 12% use AI chatbots for emotional support or advice.

Some teens may find solace in talking to chatbots, but mental health professionals are concerned. General purpose tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok are not designed for such uses, and in extreme cases, these chatbots can have life-threatening psychological effects.

“We’re social creatures, and there’s definitely a challenge that these systems can be isolated,” Dr. Nick Haber, a Stanford professor researching the therapeutic potential of LLM, recently told TechCrunch. “There are a lot of instances where people can engage with these tools and then become disconnected from the outside world of facts, disconnected from interpersonal relationships, which can lead to very isolating effects — if not worse.”

The Pew survey also shows a discrepancy between teens’ self-reported AI use and how well their parents believe they engage with the technology. About 51% of parents said their teens use chatbots, while 64% of teens reported that they do.

A majority of parents approve of their teens using AI to look up information (79%) or get help with schoolwork (58%), but far fewer parents approve of their teens using AI chatbots for informal conversations (28%) or to get emotional support or advice (18%). In fact, 58% of parents disapprove of their children using AI for such purposes.

AI safety is a controversial topic among leading technology companies, to say the least. But one popular chatbot maker, Character.AI, has chosen to disable the chatbot experience for users under the age of 18. This decision came in the wake of public outcry and lawsuits filed over the suicide of two teenagers, which occurred after lengthy conversations with the company’s chat programs. Meanwhile, OpenAI has made the decision to scrap a particularly sycophantic GPT-4o model, sparking backlash from people who have come to rely on the model for emotional support.

Although the majority of teens use AI chatbots in some way, they have mixed feelings about the impact this type of technology has on society. When asked how they think AI will impact society over the next 20 years, 31% of teens said the impact would be positive, while 26% said it would be negative.