Artificial intelligence chatbots have become deeply integrated into the daily lives of American teenagers, as revealed in a report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.
While the primary uses of AI among this demographic involve searching for information (57%) and assisting with schoolwork (54%), a notable segment of teens are also leveraging AI to fulfill roles traditionally held by friends or family members. Specifically, 16% of U.S. teenagers report using AI for casual conversation, and 12% turn to AI chatbots for emotional support or advice.
Although some adolescents might find comfort in conversing with chatbots, mental health professionals express significant concern. General-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok are not designed for therapeutic or emotional support, and in severe instances, engagement with these chatbots can lead to life-threatening psychological consequences.
“We are social creatures, and there’s certainly a challenge that these systems can be isolating,” remarked Dr. Nick Haber, a Stanford professor researching the therapeutic potential of large language models, in a recent interview with TechCrunch. He further elaborated, “There are a lot of instances where people can engage with these tools and then can become not grounded to the outside world of facts, and not grounded in connection to the interpersonal, which can lead to pretty isolating — if not worse — effects.”
The Pew survey also highlighted a notable disparity between teenagers’ self-reported AI usage and their parents' perceptions of this engagement. Approximately 51% of parents believed their teen uses chatbots, while a higher proportion, 64% of teens, confirmed their use.
Most parents are comfortable with their teens using AI for information retrieval (79%) or academic assistance (58%). However, approval drops significantly when it comes to using AI chatbots for casual conversation (28%) or emotional support and advice (18%). In fact, a substantial 58% of parents explicitly disapprove of their child using AI for such personal purposes.
AI safety remains a contentious and critical issue among leading technology companies. In a significant move, Character.AI, a popular chatbot developer, opted to disable its chatbot experience for users under the age of 18. This decision followed public outcry and lawsuits related to two teenagers' suicides, which occurred after extensive interactions with the company's chatbots. Concurrently, OpenAI chose to discontinue its particularly sycophantic GPT-4o model, a move that drew backlash from users who had grown to depend on the model for emotional support.
Despite a majority of teens using AI chatbots in some capacity, their sentiments regarding the technology's broader societal impact are mixed. When asked to predict AI's influence over the next two decades, 31% of teens anticipated a positive impact, while 26% foresaw a negative one.
The Editorial Staff at AIChief is a team of professional content writers with extensive experience in AI and marketing. Founded in 2025, AIChief has quickly grown into the largest free AI resource hub in the industry.