Nearly 1 in 5 adolescents and young adults are turning to AI chatbots for advice when they\u2019re sad, angry, nervous or stressed, according to a new study. <\/p>\n
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The findings, from the research institute RAND, represent an increase from early 2025, when the nonprofit conducted a similar survey. At the time, around 13% of respondents said they used chatbots for such advice, but the share rose to 19% in the group\u2019s latest survey in November, the results of which were published Monday<\/a> in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a sad number, because you\u2019d hope that young people would have the sorts of supportive relationships that they would feel comfortable and empowered reaching out to those around them,\u201d said Ryan McBain, a senior policy researcher at RAND and the lead author of the study.<\/p>\n For the new survey, McBain and his team asked people ages 12 to 21 whether they had used a service like ChatGPT, GoogleGemini or Character.AI for mental health advice. The survey questions did not differentiate between chatbots specifically designed to offer therapy and those with many uses.<\/p>\n The researchers also asked whether the young people surveyed found the chatbot\u2019s advice helpful, which the vast majority said they did. Around 63% of respondents said they had not told anyone about their use of artificial intelligence for therapy.<\/p>\n The share of young people using AI chatbots for mental health advice is close to the percentage of adolescents who report receiving mental health therapy<\/a> from a professional. Some people may use both tools, the researchers said, but they suspect that many are using AI chatbots as fill-ins due to a shortage of licensed mental health professionals or a lack of access to one. Other young people may use AI in these situations because they are already accustomed to using it for other purposes.<\/p>\n But outside experts worry about young people turning to chatbots during mental health crises, which AI is not designed to help navigate. Data from OpenAI<\/a>, the maker of ChatGPT, has suggested that in a given week, 1.2 million users indicate they\u2019re considering suicide. <\/p>\n McBain said his findings suggest that more regulation is needed to make sure young people use chatbots appropriately.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, AI chatbots are essentially self-regulated. There are basically zero safety or quality standards that are required by federal law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n McBain added, however, that there can be positive uses of AI related to mental health, such as for finding tools to assist with meditation or sleep. Some studies<\/a> have shown<\/a> that, in the short term, chatbots specifically designed to offer cognitive behavioral therapy \u2014 an approach that helps people identify unhelpful thinking patterns and shift their behavior accordingly \u2014 can help with symptoms such as anxiety or depression. <\/p>\n Some people who use AI chatbots for mental health purposes have taken to online forums such as Reddit\u2019s r\/TherapyGPT, which maintains an active community of 28,000 weekly visitors. Commenters trade tips on how to confide in chatbots, and some users have described the bots as a \u201clifeline.\u201d One user said they uploaded their journal to ChatGPT and claimed it helped them get sober<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cIt gave me better advice than any of my real therapists did. It told me what I needed to hear, and not what I wanted to hear,\u201d another user wrote<\/a>. \u201cMost of its answers really made me think hard about my life and I was even tearing up a little bit. Felt like I had a breakthrough. Maybe because I was just so starved for a genuine human connection with somebody and couldn\u2019t find it.\u201d<\/p>\n However, others in the subreddit have cautioned that chatbots are designed to be overly validating, a warning the new study also emphasizes. <\/p>\n Some mental health professionals have said that chatbots use could trigger or intensify delusions in vulnerable people, a scenario dubbed \u201cAI psychosis<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n Other experts worry about young people developing parasocial relationships with chatbots.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the period in life, from early teens through early 20s, where we\u2019re built to form the most intense attachments to other people very quickly,\u201d said Dr. Jodi Halpern, a psychiatrist and co-director for the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science and the Public at UC Berkeley, who wasn\u2019t involved in the survey.<\/p>\n \u201cI never want to see the chatbots pretend that they\u2019re human or care about you or have feelings for you. I don\u2019t want them to ever imitate the relational aspects,\u201d Halpern said.<\/p>\n Some users were distressed last year after OpenAI made changes that made the bot less people-pleasing. CEO Sam Altman said in a statement<\/a> at the time that it can be good to \u201cuse ChatGPT as a sort of therapist or life coach,\u201d but that \u201cif a user is in a mentally fragile state and prone to delusion, we do not want the AI to reinforce that.\u201d<\/p>\n Some AI companies are facing lawsuits from parents alleging that their chatbots worsened their teens\u2019 mental health struggles. In one ongoing case against OpenAI, a California couple has alleged that ChatGPT coaxed their son to die by suicide<\/a>. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier also sued OpenAI and Altman on Monday<\/a>, alleging that the platform presents a \u201cgreat danger of addiction, cognitive decline, suicide, violence, and related harms\u201d to users.<\/p>\n In response to questions about the California lawsuit, a spokesperson for OpenAI said the company has developed guardrails for users over the years, including crisis detection systems that connect people to emergency services, and parental controls that notify parents when serious safety risks are detected on their teen\u2019s linked account. OpenAI did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the Florida suit.<\/p>\n As for regulating the use of AI for mental health, a few states enacted new policies last year. California and New York passed laws requiring safeguards to prevent chatbots from exacerbating thoughts of suicide or self-harm, such as requirements that the bots direct users to crisis service providers. Illinois passed a more restrictive law that prohibits the use of AI as therapy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first kind of law we need nationally is to make sure we\u2019re really auditing these companies for any associated mental health safety risks,\u201d Halpern said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 1 in 5 adolescents and young adults are turning to AI chatbots for advice when they\u2019re sad,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-678523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}