A Staggering Proportion of Teens Say Talking to AI Is Better Than Real-Life Friends

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Futurism.

A new survey found that over half of American teens are regular users of anthropomorphic AI companions like Character.AI and Replika.

That’s striking on its own, as an illustration of how embedded AI companions have become in mainstream teenage life. But even more startling were the 31 percent of surveyed teens who said their interactions with AI companions were either as satisfying or more satisfying than conversations with real-life friends — a finding that shows how profoundly AI is already changing the formative and tumultuous years of adolescence.

The survey, published by the tech accountability and digital literacy nonprofit Common Sense Media, surveyed 1,060 teens aged 13 to 17 across the US. It found that around three in four kids have used AI companions, defined by Common Sense as emotive AI tools designed to take on a specific persona or character — as opposed to an assistive, general-use chatbot like ChatGPT — with over half of surveyed teens qualifying as regular users of AI companions, meaning they log on to talk to the bots at least a few times per month.

While about 46 percent of teens said they’ve mainly turned to these bots as tools, around 33 percent said they use companion bots for “social interaction and relationships, including conversation practice, emotional support, role-playing, friendship, or romantic interactions,” according to the report.

“The most striking finding for me was just how mainstream AI companions have already become among many teens,” said Dr. Michael Robb, Common Sense’s head of research, in an interview with Futurism. “And over half of them say that they use it multiple times a month, which is what I would qualify as regular usage. So just that alone was kind of eye-popping to me.”

Source: Futurism
https://futurism.com/teens-ai-friends