Should We Worry About Teens Befriending AI Companions?

A recent survey-based study by Common Sense Media shows that a substantial minority of teenagers surveyed use AI "companions" for social interaction and relationships.  In a survey of over a thousand young people aged 13 to 17 last April and May, the researchers found that 33% used applications such as ChatGPT, Character, or Replika for things like conversation, role-playing, emotional support, or just as a friend.  Another 43% of those surveyed used AI as a "tool or program," and about a third reported no use of AI at all.

 

Perhaps more troubling than the percentages were some comments made by teens who were interviewed in an Associated Press report on the survey.  An 18-year-old named Ganesh Nair said, "When you're talking to AI, you are always right.  You're always interesting.  You are always emotionally justified."

           

The researchers also found that teens were more sophisticated than you might think about the reliability of AI and the wisdom of using it as a substitute for "meat" friends.  Half of those surveyed said they do not trust advice given to them by AI, although the younger teens tended to be more trusting.  And two-thirds said that their interactions with AI were less satisfying than those with real-life friends, but one-third said they were either about the same or better.  And four out of five teens spend more time with real friends than with AI.

 

The picture that emerges from the survey itself, as opposed to somewhat hyped news reports, is one of curiosity, cautious use, and skepticism.  However, there may be a small number of teens who either turn to AI as a more trusted interlocutor than live friends, or develop unhealthy dependencies of various kinds with AI chatbots. 

 

At present, we are witnessing an uncontrolled experiment in how young people deal with AI companions.  The firms backing these systems with their multibillion-dollar server farms and sophisticated software are motivated to engage young people especially, as habits developed before age 20 or so tend to stay with us for a lifetime.  It's hard to picture a teenager messaging ChatGPT to "grow old along with me," but it may be happening somewhere.

 

I once knew a woman in New England who kept a life-size cloth doll in her house, made to resemble a former husband.  Most people would regard this as a little peculiar.  But what difference is there between that sort of thing and spending time in online chats with a piece of software that simulates a caring and sympathetic friend?  The interaction with AI is more private, at least until somebody hacks the system.  But why does the notion of teenagers who spend time chatting with Character as though it were a real person bother us?

 

By saying "us," I implicitly separate myself from teens who do this sort of thing.  But there are teens who realize the dangers of AI overuse or misuse, and older teens especially expressed concerns to the AP reporter that too much socializing with chatbots could be bad. 

 

The same teen quoted above got "spooked" about AI companions when he learned that a friend of his used his companion to compose a Dear Jill message to his girlfriend of two years when he decided to break up.  I suppose that is not much different than a nineteenth-century swain paging through a tome entitled "Letters for All Occasions," although I doubt that even the Victorians were that thorough in providing examples for the troubled ex-suitor. 

 

Lurking in the background of all this is a very old theological principle:  idolatry.  An idol is anything less than God that we treat as God, in the sense of resorting to it for help instead of God.  For those who don't believe in God, idolatry would seem to be an empty concept.  But even atheists can see the effects of idolatry in extreme cases, even if they don't acknowledge the God who should be worshipped instead of the idol.

 

For a teen in a radically dysfunctional household, turning to an AI companion might be a good alternative, but a kind, loving human being would always be better.  Kind, loving human beings aren't always available, though, and so perhaps an AI companion would suffice in a pinch like a "donut" spare tire until you can get the flat fixed.  But you shouldn't drive on a temporary tire indefinitely, and teens who make AI companions a regular and significant part of their social lives are probably headed for problems.

 

What kind of problems?  Dependency, for one thing.  The AI firms are not promoting their companions out of the kindness of their collective hearts, and the more people rely on their products the more money they make.  The researchers who executed the survey are concerned that teens who use AI companions that never argue, never disagree with them, and validate everything they say, will be ill-prepared for the real world where other humans have their own priorities, interests, and desires. 

 

In an ideal world, every teen would have a loving mother and father they would trust with their deepest concerns, and perhaps friends as well who would give them good advice.  Not many of us grew up in that ideal world, however, and so perhaps teens in really awful situations may find some genuine solace in turning to AI companions rather than humans.

 

The big news of this survey is the fact that use of AI companions among teens is so widespread, though still in the minority.  The next thing to do is to focus on those small numbers of teens for which AI companions are not simply something fun to play with, but form a deep and significant part of their emotional lives.  These are the teens we should be the most concerned about, and finding out why they get so wrapped up with AI companions and what needs the companions satisfy will take us a long way toward understanding this new potential threat to the well-being of teenagers, who are the future of our society.

 

Sources:  The AP article "Teens say they are turning to AI for friendship" appears on the AP website at https://apnews.com/article/ai-companion-generative-teens-mental-health-9ce59a2b250f3bd0187a717ffa2ad21f, and the Common Sense Media survey on which it was based is at https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf.

 

Are AI Chatbots Really Just Pattern Engines?

 

That's all they are, according to Nathan Beacom, who wrote recently in the online journal The Dispatch an article with the title "There Is No Such Thing as Artificial Intelligence." 

 

His point is an important one, as the phrase "artificial intelligence" and its abbreviation "AI" have enjoyed a boom in usage since 2000, according to Google's Ngrams analysis of words appearing in published books.  The system plots frequency of occurrence, as a percentage, versus time.  The term "AI" peaked around 1965 and again around 1987, which correspond to the first and second comings of AI, both of which fizzled out as the digital technology of the time and the algorithms used were inadequate to realize most of the hopes of developers.

 

But starting around 2014, usage of "AI" soared until in 2022 (the last year surveyed by the Ngram machine), it stands at a level higher than the highest peak ever enjoyed by a common but very different phrase, "IRS."  So perhaps people now think the only inevitable things are death and AI, not death and taxes.

 

Kidding aside, Beacom says that the language we use about the technology generally referred to as AI has a profound influence on how we view it.  And his point is that a basic philosophical fallacy is embedded in the term "artificial intelligence."  Namely, what AI does is not intelligent in any meaningful sense of the term.  And fooling ourselves into thinking it is, as millions are doing every day, can lead to big problems.

 

He begins his article with a few extreme cases.  A woman left her husband because he developed weird conspiracy theories after he became obsessed with a chatbot, and another woman beat up on her husband after he told her the chatbot she was involved with was not "real."

 

The problem arises when we fall into the easy trap of behaving as though Siri, Alexa, Claude, and their AI friends are real people, as real as the checkout person at the grocery store or the voice who answers on the other end of the line when we call Mom.  Admittedly, quite a few of the chatbots out there would pass the Turing test, which compares the responses to typed commands and queries between a human being and a computer. 

 

But to believe that an AI chatbot can think and possesses human intelligence is a mistake.  According to Beacom, it's as much a mistake to believe that as it was for the probably apocryphal New Guinea tribesman who, when first hearing a voice come out of a radio, opened it up to see the little man inside.  The tribesman was disappointed, and it didn't do the radio any good either.

 

We can't open up AI systems to see the works, as they consist of giant server farms in remote areas that are intentionally hidden from view, like the Wizard of Oz who hid behind a curtain as he tried to astound his guests with fire and smoke.  Instead, companies promote chatbots as companions for elderly people or entertainment for the lonely young.  And if you decide to establish a personal relationship with a chatbot, you are always in control.  The algorithms are designed to please the human, not the other way around, and such a relationship will have little if any of the unpredictability and friction that always happens when one human being interacts with another human being. 

 

That is because human intelligence is a clean different kind of a thing than what AI does.  Beacom makes the point that all the machines can do is a fancy kind of autocomplete function.  Large-language models use their huge databases of what has been said on the Internet to predict what kind of thing is most likely to come after whatever the human interlocutor says or asks.  And so the only way it can sound human is by basing its responses on the replies of millions of other humans. 

 

But an AI system no more understands what it is saying, or thinks about your question, than a handheld calculator thinks about what the value of pi is.  Both a simple electronic calculator and the largest system of server farms and Internet connections are fundamentally the same kind of thing.  A newborn baby and its elemental responses to its environment, as simple as they are, represents a difference in kind, not degree, from any type of machine.  A baby has intelligence, as rudimentary as it is.  But a machine, no matter how complex and no matter what algorithms are running on it, is just a machine, as predictable (in principle, but no longer in practice in many cases) as a mechanical adding machine's motions.

 

Nobody in his right mind is going to treat a calculator like it was his best friend.  But the temptation is there to attribute minds and understanding to AI systems, and the systems' developers often encourage that attitude, because it leads to further engagement and, ultimately, profits.

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with profits, but Beacom says we need to begin to disengage ourselves from the delusion that AI systems have personalities or minds or understanding.  And the way he wants us to start is to quit referring to them as AI. 

 

His preferred terminology is "pattern engine," as nearly everything AI does can be subsumed under the general category of pattern repetition and modification. 

 

Beacom probably realizes his proposal is unlikely to catch on.  Terms are important, but even more important are the attitudes we bring toward things we deal with.  Beacom touches on the real spiritual problem involved in all this when he says that those who recognize the true nature of what we now call AI will "be able to see the clay feet of the new idol." 

 

Whenever a friend of mine holds his phone flat, brings it to his mouth, and asks something like "What is the capital of North Dakota?" I call it "consulting the oracle."  I mean it jokingly, and I don't think my friend is seriously worshipping his phone, but some people treat AI, or whatever we want to call it, as something worthy of the kind of devotion that only humans deserve.  That  is truly idolatry.  And as the Bible and history prove, idolatry almost always ends badly.

 

Sources:  Nathan Beacom's article "There Is No Such Thing as Artificial Intelligence" appeared in The Dispatch at https://thedispatch.com/article/artificial-intelligence-morality-honesty-pattern-engines/.