Most American teenagers have now tried an AI companion. In a 2025 Common Sense Media survey of more than 1,000 US teens, 72% had used one at least once and 52% used one regularly. A companion is still there at 2 a.m., when friends are asleep, and it doesn’t get tired of hearing about the same problem.

We’ve written before about how AI changes the way we think and create. This time we want to ask something more personal: if a generation grows up with a perfect listener in its pocket, what happens to its relationships with the imperfect ones?

How harmless conversations can add up to a habit

One late-night conversation with a chatbot might do no harm and may help. Choosing the chatbot over a friend once changes nothing. Choosing it most nights for years, across millions of teenagers, could change how a generation relates to other people, even if each conversation went well on its own terms. So, the question we care about is what AI companions add up to over years of use.

What came before AI companions

The rise in loneliness predates chatbots. In 2023, the US Surgeon General issued an advisory describing loneliness and isolation as an epidemic and named changing habits, including our relationship with technology, among the reasons.

Social media left people connected to more contacts than ever while they spent less real time with any of them. AI companions take this a step further, because the former at least fills time with other people, even if thinly; a companion fills it with something that only feels like a person.

What teenagers use them for

The same survey found that a third of teens used AI companions for social interaction and relationships, anything from emotional support to romantic role-play. About a third of those users had discussed something serious with an AI instead of a real person.

For a teenager who feels awkward or misunderstood, the draw is obvious. A companion answers at any hour and never judges, and it never has a bad day of its own.

Those features strip out the friction that real relationships run on. Friends disagree with you and sometimes let you down, and learning to handle that is a large part of growing up. A companion designed to keep users engaged has an incentive to smooth the friction away, since friction gives people a reason to close the app.

What the research says about loneliness

Some research suggests that talking to a chatbot can ease loneliness in the moment. A warm reply can soften a bad night, and for isolated people that counts for something.

Other findings cut the other way. In 2025, OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab published two studies, including a four-week trial with nearly 1,000 participants. Higher daily chatbot use went along with more loneliness, more emotional dependence, and less socializing with other people. People who already tended toward strong emotional attachment, and those who saw the chatbot as friends, were the most affected. The researchers were careful to say this doesn’t show that heavy use causes loneliness; lonely people may simply use chatbots more.

Even if that’s the explanation, there’s a reason for concern. A tool that comforts lonely people just enough that they stop reaching out could widen the gap over time without having opened it.

“AI psychosis”

Cases labeled “AI psychosis” keep appearing in the news. The term describes people who develop or deepen delusional beliefs after long, intense conversations with chatbots. It isn’t a formal diagnosis, and psychiatrists are still debating what it covers and how often it happens. Clinicians who have treated these patients tend to describe the AI as an amplifier: it reinforces beliefs that a friend or relative might have gently challenged.

These cases appear to be rare, and we don’t want to turn them into a scare story. We mention them because they show, in extreme form, what an agreeable chatbot does. For most users, that means a slightly flattering conversation. For someone already isolated, with nobody around to push back, the chatbot can become an echo chamber of one.

Growing up with a perfect listener

Adults who use AI companions learned to make friends the hard way first. Children and teenagers may meet the perfect listener before they’ve learned to deal with imperfect ones.

Some of the survey results are reassuring. Among teens who used AI companions, 80% said they still spend more time with real friends, and many used companions to practice social skills. Half said they don’t trust the advice companions give them.

Younger teens, though, trusted AI companions more than older teens did. Adolescence is when people learn to read others and recover from rejection, and if some of that learning moves to a chatbot, the effects may not show for years.

What companies, parents and users can do

AI companions do comfort some people, and we don’t want to pretend otherwise. Whether they help depends on how they’re used. If a companion helps someone practice a difficult conversation and then encourages them to have it with the real person, it’s doing something useful. If the person ends up talking only to the companion and never has the real conversation, the companion has replaced it.

Part of that depends on how companies design these products. They can build companions that point users back toward the people in their lives instead of competing for their time. Part depends on habits, especially young people’s, and parents and teachers need to talk about AI relationships as openly as they talk about social media. The rest is up to each of us, and which way our own 2 a.m. habits lean.

Who did you talk to the last time you couldn’t sleep?

If you’ve used an AI companion, did it make it easier or harder to reach out to the people in your life? If you’re a parent or teacher, what are you noticing in the teenagers around you?

Tell us in the comments, or bring your experience to the Future Intelligence Think Tank LinkedIn group.

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AI Companion: The friend who never logs off