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 today 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."
AI companions have come under heavy scrutiny in the months following the filing of two separate lawsuits against Character.AI and its benefactor, the tech giant Google, over allegations that the company released a negligent, reckless technology that emotionally and sexually abused multiple minors, resulting in physical and psychological harm. One of the youth at the heart of these lawsuits, a 14-year-old in Florida named Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide after extensive interactions with bots on Character.AI with which the teen engaged in intimate and sexually explicit conversations.
In a separate safety assessment published earlier this year, researchers from Common Sense and Stanford University's Brainstorm lab warned that no AI companion was safe for kids under the age of 18. But while that report focused deeply on content and safety pitfalls — interactive sexual or violent content easily generated by companion bots, the unreliability of the bots' ability to provide accurate and helpful information, and the unknowns surrounding how access to agreeable, always-on social companions might impact kids' developing minds — this latest study was aimed at understanding the breadth of use of companions among young people, and how integrated they've become in day-to-day teen life.
"Society is grappling with the integration of AI tools into many different aspects of people's lives," Robb said. "I think a lot of tools are being developed without children in mind, even though they are being accessed by users under 18 quite frequently... but there hasn't, to date, been much research on what the AI companion environment is for children."
The most widely-reported use case teens reported was entertainment, while many others said they use AI companions as "tools or programs," as opposed to friends, partners, or confidantes; around 80 percent of teen users also reported that they spend more time with real, human friends than they do any AI companions, and about half of teens expressed skepticism around the accuracy and trustworthiness of chatbot outputs. In other words, many teens do seem to be setting healthy boundaries for themselves around AI companions and their limits.
"I don't think teens are just replacing human relationships wholesale with AI companions; I think a lot of teens are approaching them fairly pragmatically," said Robb. "A lot of kids say that they're using it for entertainment and to satisfy their curiosity, and the majority still spend a lot more time with real friends and say that they find human conversations more satisfying."
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