There’s a lot to be anxious about as AI agents and bots get more integrated into every aspect of our lives. Meta, which recently agreed to pay over $17 billion to settle a lawsuit related to harming kids, now wants you to hand over all your online accounts to an inexplicably cute “agent” named Muse that might give a stranger your home address. OpenAI just introduced little blobs called Dots that can supposedly automate routine tasks, like planning dinner and ordering it from your favorite neighborhood spot. AI companies don’t just want you to talk to their chatbots; they want their agents to be an indispensable part of your daily routine.

As a parent, however, I think that perhaps the worst thing AI could do is be my kid’s friend. 

AI companions have been around longer than ChatGPT, and they’re growing in popularity with young users. More than half of teens have interacted with AI companions at least a few times a month, and one in three decided to talk about a serious issue with AI companions instead of real people, according to a Common Sense Media survey conducted last year. In certain groups and situations, a chatbot could offer some benefit — a lifeline for, say, LGBTQ youth who don’t have any in-person support networks, one study found. But even so, there are important caveats and risks.

Meanwhile, other experts are telling parents never to let their kids access AI companions, warning them that these chatbots have a history of offering dangerous advice and engaging in sexualized conversations. Sixteen-year-old Adam Raine died by suicide last April after developing a relationship and discussing his plans with ChatGPT.

If you have kids, these are horrifying stories to hear. It’s reasonable to wonder how widespread the issues are, and who they are affecting most. As of right now, the majority of younger kids aren’t using AI for companionship (phew!). But for those who are, where do the issues arise? And how do they go from using ChatGPT for help with their homework to opening up to it about their problems to preferring it to their human friends? 

Some answers are starting to emerge from research. 

For even young adolescents, there’s a direct link between AI companion use and mental health issues, according to a new study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their paper, which is still under review, is the first longitudinal study in the US that has looked at the bidirectional association between AI companionship in adolescents and mental health issues, according to one of the researchers. It charted AI use among 2,300 middle schoolers and found that about one in five used AI for emotional companionship. Those who used AI more reported higher levels of loneliness.

“It’s not just that the lonely kids are using AI, and they’re otherwise unharmed,” said Anne Maheux, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill and the lead author on the study. “It is that using AI comes first, and middle school students are increasing their sense of loneliness following the use of AI.”

I recently spoke to Maheux about her research and the role of technology in young people’s lives. We discussed how much parents and teachers know about what is going on, what kids get out of human relationships that AI can’t provide, and whether she’d let a child under her care use an AI chatbot. While she said there is a lot to be scared of right now, there is some evidence that, when designed with the intention of promoting child learning and development and under the supervision of a caring adult, AI can offer some benefits, and, ultimately, she’s optimistic that we can design a better future for kids. 

The conversation below has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How do so many kids end up with an AI companion? Do kids start using AI for homework help and end up in an emotional relationship with the technology? 

At a high level, AI companions — in our darkest vision of what that might look like — would be a kid calling an AI chatbot their best friend. That phenomenon is still quite rare. There are certainly plenty of kids who are experiencing that, but it’s not to say that it’s all kids or even most kids. I think that’s good news. 

But it’s also true that the line between opening up AI to ask a question about your homework and a full-blown AI companionship relationship involves a lot of gray areas. There’s evidence, mostly preliminary and anecdotal evidence, to suggest that very few people open up to AI with the primary initial goal of developing an intimate friendship or relationship. 

Most people open it out of a curiosity, sense of novelty, or seeking an answer to a question that’s very pragmatic. Then that can potentially evolve into something more akin to seeking personal advice or help making a decision or help making sense of one’s recent experiences with other humans. And that can potentially evolve to something that’s a bit more emotional.

What did your latest study on adolescents, AI companions, and mental health reveal?

Some kids seek out AI for certain purposes in different ways than other kids. For some kids, AI companionship is particularly attractive, especially the kids who maybe don’t have close friends or social networks in their offline life and who are already lonely. 

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Is it that these kids are seeking out AI companions or is it that having an AI companion is exacerbating those potential vulnerabilities or exacerbating risk for mental health problems? What we found is that interacting with an AI companion in a way that’s akin to emotional intimacy among middle school students is longitudinally associated with increases over time in loneliness. So the kids who are seeking out these companions, who are presumably already lonely, are also experiencing an increase in loneliness over time. 

There is this potential directionality question that we’re starting to answer here: It’s not just that the lonely kids are using AI, and they’re otherwise unharmed. It is that using AI comes first, and middle school students are increasing their sense of loneliness following the use of AI. In other words, middle school students using AI for emotional intimacy and companionship developed greater loneliness over time.

Do you have a sense of how often these kids are using the chatbots? 

In our sample — so again, these are US middle school kids — about 15 to 20 percent say that they’re using it at least a few times a week for any purpose. We don’t have specific rates of use for companionship because the questions that we asked were just not framed in a frequency measure, but more in how emotionally intimate they felt with the chatbot.

What else could have been causing that loneliness?

There are almost definitely many causes, and I think that our data suggests that AI companionship may be one cause. It certainly isn’t definitive. Obviously, I have to say that. I’m a scientist and trying to be hesitant about these things, but the reality is that whether or not AI use causes loneliness in this particular case, there are definitely other things that are also causing loneliness. 

That could be a myriad of things about the kid, maybe they have a lot of social anxiety, maybe they struggle with social skills, maybe the kid has had struggles in their family life and doesn’t have a strong sense of connection and belonging at home. It could be structural things. The kid just doesn’t have enough access to appropriate resources. So certainly there’s other things that are at play here, and typically technology use is one of many factors that can influence a kid’s mental health. 

And how much do you think that parents and teachers know about what’s going on, and how well-equipped do you think they are to intervene or to just be more involved in how these kids are using this technology? 

It’s a very slippery technology. The way kids are using it has changed rapidly in just the last year or two years. I would expect that parents, teachers, people who care about kids are probably struggling with the rapidity of change. But it’s also true that all the things that we have known for a long time about supporting kids and helping them thrive, those things are still true and they’ll be true with whatever technology comes after AI that kids are exploring. 

Those things include being curious, asking kids questions about their lived experiences online and offline, having conversations with kids so that they can understand the implications of different technology use. They can understand how, for example, AI is embedded within a broader system of social and political and economic factors, including the fact that many companies are trying to exploit kids’ attention in order to make money, which many kids are quite interested to hear about. 

Supporting kids also means providing a warm and supportive space for them to learn, to make mistakes, to be kids in the offline world, to have the frictionful, challenging, awkward conversations and first dates and all of the things that parents are sometimes trying to protect kids from by providing a safe container for them to explore those things. All of that can also provide avenues for kids to learn what they need to learn and develop — all the resources for a long life of thriving, even in the context of AI or other new technologies. 

What do kids learn from having these kinds of conversations with other humans that they can’t get from AI? 

Kids need to engage with other people, period. That’s true for all of us. We’re an incredibly social species. Simply being around other people and talking to strangers, let alone having strong social bonds, is really good for us. And all those things are uniquely important during adolescence, when kids have this neurobiological sensitivity to social information and reward. That’s when kids learn how to engage in conversation, they learn how to maintain eye contact, how to read body language, how to read emotions and perceive the world from the lens of someone else, to take their perspective. That’s not to mention other things, like being a member of one’s culture, what is valued, and what is expected. All of that is learned in the context of other human social relationships or relationships with broader social groups that a kid might be a member of. 

AI obviously can’t and never will be able to offer some of those things. It can’t actually experience empathy or care. It can’t engage in a true mutual human relationship. It may be able to simulate some of those things, and there’s some evidence that it can serve as a source of social practice. It can help kids work through the potential for difficult conversations and then serve as a bridge to engaging with other people. But there are aspects of AI that just simply can never replace the core sacred aspects of humans. 

Can you be more specific? What is it about human relationships that can’t AI simulate?

The way that AI systems are currently designed, which is not an inherent feature, but is a design choice, is to be sycophantic, highly agreeable, anthropomorphized, and all of those things can lead to kids developing expectations or understandings of interactive relationships that are actually fundamentally at odds with a normal human relationship. Some of the most consistent things that I’ve seen in the educated hypotheses on this topic and also in the emerging empirical research is that people need the friction that comes with human relationships. 

Human relationships are just hard and messy, and they’re also really beautiful. They’re what make so much of human life valuable and worth living. And with AI that’s always agreeable, that’s always available, that has no needs of its own, that can’t care or be cared for, it just doesn’t serve the same context to help kids learn things like conflict resolution or negotiation, being pro-social or caring for someone else who has needs. So many of those aspects that can feel uncomfortable in the moment, dealing with another person or a person who’s not responding right away, those things are actually important in the building blocks of developing the skills and capacities to be a functioning and thriving person in the social adult world. 

This is a problem with AI in general, isn’t it? It makes things effortless, but if you choose this path of least resistance, you’ll avoid the friction that causes you to learn and develop and build skills you need to exist in the world. 

Absolutely. And I think that all these things are connected too. AI offers this effortless, frictionless solution to our day-to-day problems, whether they’re social problems, whether they’re problems doing our homework, and those immediate solutions feel really good in the moment, so they’re quite tempting to keep coming back to. But there’s this real possibility that in the long term, that erodes our capacity for not only social relationships or cognitive skills, but just a general ability to withstand the momentary day-to-day distress of being a person living a normal life. And so I think every domain of human psychology comes together at that point, whether it’s social, emotional, mental health, or cognitive. 

Do you think that there are interventions that legislators could make or even that tech companies could make that would improve outcomes for kids, maybe make them a little less lonely? 

There are a million specific design changes that I would recommend. I think at a very minimum, AI systems can afford a pretty phenomenal amount of access to information, but there’s been no benefits that I’ve seen of them acting as friends. Kids need other human friends, full stop. Designing systems that are intended to exploit kids’ vulnerability or sensitivity to human social information and relationships, I think, is bad for kids. 

At the federal level, it seems that regulation is not coming, but at the state level, there have been many state regulations intended to protect kids, intended to create safer systems, to put in guardrails, to modulate different aspects of the models, the design, the user interface. These things could potentially make a real difference, I think.

What do you recommend parents do with regard to AI and their kids? Should they let them use chatbots? 

In short, no. But I am not a parent, and it’s much easier to dole out advice than it is to enact it. Parenting decisions about technology are not one-size-fits-all. Kids, parents, family dynamics, technology, and the context in which it is used differ, and in so many cases are personal choices (parents must weigh various potential opportunities and risks). Decades of research indicate what conditions a child needs to thrive. Extremely minimal research addresses the effects of AI on youth, and what we have so far suggests that the risks outweigh the benefits. 

I would not give a child under my care AI chatbots of any kind to use without me or another trusted adult present. I would talk to them openly about AI and its risks and benefits, but to me AI, like all technology, should be a tool used to promote human thriving, and when the evidence is unclear or suggestive of harms, I think it’s best not to experiment on kids. Currently, the off-the-shelf AI chatbots most kids are using appears more likely to undermine well-being for vulnerable users, especially children. 

Well, as a father of two daughters, I’m definitely terrified of what’s to come in the next few years. 

There’s a lot to be scared of, but there’s a lot to be hopeful of too. I think that everyone wants kids to thrive. Some of us are under different incentives, and some of those incentives might be perverse. But most of us are working really hard to design a better world for kids. 

In 1995, gender studies researcher Judy Chu found herself chauffeuring around her 13-year-old brother and his friend. The boys’ curiosity got the better of them, and they asked what she was learning: adolescent girls’ development, she told them. 

One of the boys looked at her and said, “‘You should study boys. You can start with me,’” Chu recalled. So she did. That fall, she spoke to 13-year-old boys from home for her clinical interviewing class.

In the years since, Chu has researched boys between the ages 12 and 18 — their wishes, their desires, what they wanted from their friendships and romantic relationships — and discovered some felt largely unknown. There was a gap between what the world expected of them — the stoic, strong, independent stereotypes that have persisted for centuries — and how they saw themselves, but had internalized so many messages for so long that they felt like they had no choice but to accept this version of masculinity. Chu theorized that these beliefs must have taken root during their childhood, and she later published a book on the subject.

When toddlers enter school, she discovered, they begin learning the rules of boyhood. “Regardless of what their parents had encouraged or enabled at home, they were learning that at school, if you wanted to be seen as and treated as one of the boys and you wanted to be with the boys, you wanted to play with the boys, be friends with the boys, there were rules you had to follow,” Chu said. “It was kind of like a microcosm of our society, which is if you want people to see you as and treat you as a quote unquote real boy or real man, you need to prove yourself.”

Since Chu’s work on the subject, American culture has changed to address gender inequities — the ones that negatively affect girls. As a part of this movement, girls were empowered to be more autonomous and pursue careers and financial independence to build a life beyond marriage and childrearing. (Though it should be said, women still trail men in earnings, outpace them in household responsibilities, and have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and PTSD.) 

But boys are still stuck in place. 

Across the country, lawmakers have promoted policies and legislation aimed at helping men reach their potential. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a 2025 executive order outlining education, career, and mental health initiatives targeting men. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore created the state’s Young Men and Boys Initiative, focusing on men’s health, employment, and community connections. But these programs are reactive, attempting to disrupt decades of socialization. At the same time, the rise of the manosphere and misogynist online spaces and increasingly right-leaning voting trends among men signal a cohort of young men at a turning point.

Recent studies have found that boys are less likely to graduate high school on time compared to girls — that gap is even bigger for Black and Hispanic boys — and fewer young men obtain bachelor’s degrees compared to their female peers. And as fewer men graduate from college, fewer participate in the labor force, too. The suicide rate among men is nearly four times higher than that of women. While men and women report similar rates of loneliness and number of friends, men are less likely to turn to their social networks for support. Out of the over 750,000 jobs created since Donald Trump took office in 2025, men have gained none of them. 

So what will it take to help men get unstuck? If we are truly committed to ending the male loneliness crisis, to tackling suicide and gun violence — society has the power to change things for the next generation, experts said. Rather than aiming to reach men after the constraining masculine worldviews have already taken root, we can prevent them from warping boys’ sense of self in the first place: To help men, we must change how boys are raised. 

Reject the myth of the “real boy” 

In 2023, psychologist Michael Reichert conducted a nationally representative survey of more than 2,000 American men, asking them questions about their lives, relationships, internet habits, and sources of social support. One finding was particularly staggering: two-thirds of young men between the ages of 18 and 23 felt like no one really knew them well. (In a follow-up report two years later, in which women were also surveyed, equal percentages of men and women — about 50 percent — said they were not truly known.)

The conclusion Reichert came to, he told Vox, was “boyhood is failing at the most important task.” American society is producing young adults who feel like they’re on their own, “a tragic outcome of a boyhood that’s not preparing our males for a resilient life in a world where things are harder, more complicated,” said Reichert, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania.

Because the idea of what a man looks like and how a man behaves is so ingrained, boys are taught to conform from an early age, experts said. From their earliest years, as evidenced in Chu’s work, boys are taught to adhere to stereotypical gender norms reinforced through comments like “boys don’t cry,” “toughen up,” and “don’t be a girl.” 

“It starts with mothers having a fear of turning their son into a mama’s boy, so they push them away at young ages — 3 and 4 years old. Go play with your dad, go play with your older male siblings,” Joseph Derrick Nelson, an associate professor in the department of educational studies at Swarthmore College, told Vox. Fathers, for their part, tend to emphasize self-defense, goal pursuit, and overcoming adversity with their sons, Reichert said. Black boys in particular are perceived as older and less innocent than their white counterparts, only pushing them further toward rigid gender roles, Nelson said. If they don’t conform, they may be teased by other boys.

A large part of proving yourself as a “real boy” means rejecting anything deemed feminine, including emotional vulnerability and relationships. As babies and young children, boys and girls are equally emotionally expressive, but by the time they start school, boys show fewer emotions and use less emotional language. When boys are taught that showing their feelings or forging deep friendships is girly, they stop prioritizing those relationships. That shift happens during the teen years, when boys go from reporting having best friends with whom they can share their deepest secrets, to feeling like they’ve drifted apart from these very connections by the end of high school. And it’s not for lack of desire, Chu said, or some inherent biological difference: Boys have simply learned not to show their need for affection, to hide their sadness, to not be tender. 

A new paradigm for raising boys, experts said, begins with how masculinity is first presented at home and in school. 

To encourage boys to be better in touch with their emotions means adults should not pit masculinity against femininity, Christopher Reigeluth, an associate professor at Oregon Health and Science University, told Vox. This goes beyond simply telling boys not to conceal their feelings, but making clear that confiding these feelings in a friend and fostering platonic connections isn’t girly: it’s a universal human need. 

In schools, specialized emotional education in curricula can help boys express their emotions and embrace vulnerability. 

Simply talk to them 

One of the easiest ways to do this is to allow and encourage boys to engage in an activity traditionally seen as more feminine: talking.

Reichert, the psychologist, has led an emotional literacy program in a boys’ school for over 30 years. In that time, he’s seen the sentiment among students shift from skepticism to genuine interest. “It has become, by 2026, the most popular program in the school,” Reichert said, due to an increased cultural awareness of emotional health. In the group, students discuss their daily stressors and hardships, and they learn that letting their peers see them for who they are — connecting with them — benefits their well-being. 

Before joining Reichert’s peer counseling group, high school senior Chris Burnetta expressed his emotions on the field. “You’re almost allowed to be emotional when you’re playing sports, and you’re not allowed to be emotional when you’re not,” Burnetta, 18, told Vox. In middle school, he attended a co-ed school and found himself performing aspects of masculinity to impress his female classmates. But once he met older classmates who he respected and wanted to emulate, he discovered many of them attended the counseling group and encouraged him to go, too. “I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I think for guys in general, looking up at people above you gives you a big impression and a big influence on how you want to live your life and what you want to be like,” he said. 

Seeing his peers so enthusiastically discuss their struggles and triumphs helps foster maturity and gives him permission to show his emotions, Burnetta said, an outlet he never had before.

Adolescence, a time when many behavioral health patterns are forged or discarded, is the time to engrain healthy social habits in boys — and for parents to be explicit, Matt Englar-Carlson, a professor of counseling and the director of the Center for Boys and Men at California State University Fullerton, told Vox. Now is the time to have dedicated phone-free time as a family, to give them opportunities to share how they’re feeling without fixing their problems, to listen to them even when they’re frustrating you. When his own son was younger, Englar-Carlson thought he knew all the tricks: showing empathy, trying to help. “Me doing that with him actually was making him feel worse, I think,” he said. Instead, Englar-Carlson took a lighter touch. He would acknowledge when his son was upset, but wouldn’t press a conversation. Whenever his son was ready to talk, he was available.

One easy way to do this? Talk to them when you’re driving. As my colleague Rachel Miller previously reported, not having to make direct eye contact can make it a little easier for kids to be vulnerable. 

And if you’re a man, make sure you’re leading by example: Be willing to share your own moments of embarrassment, disappointment, and sadness, so they know it’s okay for them to do the same.  

Help them foster non-romantic intimacy 

While in school, boys have ample avenues for connection through classes and sports, even if they aren’t interacting with others on a deeper level. It’s when they lose access to these organized outlets for socialization in adulthood that they slide into isolation or start looking to their romantic partners to fulfill all of their social needs. 

The idea that emotional intimacy is reserved for your significant other is how society gets to a point where 15 percent of men say they don’t have any close friends. Those without a partner are even more adrift: Men are less satisfied being single than their female counterparts. “We teach boys to not ask for help…figure it out on their own,” Nelson said. “I don’t know why we’re surprised when they become adult men and struggle with building relationships and close and connected communities, because all they’ve been taught, even since they were young children, was about figuring it out on their own and denying emotions, suppressing emotions, that then leaves you not in relationship and quite lonely.”

In the absence of in-person friendships, digital spaces provide an attractive alternative. While not altogether negative, some online forums — interactive video games, sports gambling, the manosphere — enable young men to further retreat from society. While pursuing community, boys may find their way to adult-centric spaces, which can be rife with misogynistic and patriarchal messages, feeding the belief that the only way to advance is through hyperconsumption, materialism, looksmaxxing, and dominating women, Nelson said. “They’re quarantining themselves to their rooms and their tech devices and these online communities where they play video games, they gamble on sports, and they have conversations with other boys and young men online about somehow feeling disadvantaged as men in our society,” he said.

Burnetta, the high school senior, said he and many of his classmates’ feeds are populated with “super masculine” content that sometimes pokes fun at men who open up about their feelings, which can further add to the stereotype that men should not be emotional. 

Even if boys don’t necessarily agree with these sentiments, they often don’t have other alternatives online. “I don’t think a lot of boys go on to YouTube…and say, ‘I really want to find the most misogynistic content I can find. That’s what I’m looking for,’” said Englar-Carlson, the director of the Center for Boys and Men. They may have simply wanted to watch a video about sports but were fed an ad for betting and then fell down the rabbit hole. Because traditional masculinity content is often fed to boys via their social media feeds, a brief introduction to these themes only leads to more. 

By young adulthood, they will have a fairly concrete idea of what’s expected of them as a man. In a 2017 study, young men largely agreed that the cornerstones of masculinity are self-sufficiency, toughness, physical attractiveness, being a financial provider, heterosexuality, hypersexuality, aggression, and control. Notably, they said they feel external pressure from family, friends, and society to meet these ideals.

If adults start with the understanding that boys are emotional and they have the same social needs as girls, they can encourage them to make friends before they learn otherwise. 

Teachers can recognize the signs of loneliness in young boys (resisting authority, talking back, and challenging boundaries) and use it as an opportunity to connect with their students instead of reprimanding them — because when they feel heard, their behavior softens. “What are these behaviors communicating to me from this boy about a met or unmet need, and how can I be responsive to it in my classroom? How can I help them facilitate close and connected friendships with not only their peers, but also with me as their teacher, like a primary adult in their lives?” Nelson said. When young boys simply get kicked out of class, they might fall behind and internalize a “bad boy” persona, he said, a cycle that enforces stereotypes and comes at the cost of their education. 

The story of masculinity online and from political leaders is that men must be protectors, high earners, and muscular and strong, and when boys fail to meet that standard (which they inevitably do because they are children), they are made to feel inadequate. “They’re struggling in school, they’re having a difficult time finding work, but everything about what they’re learning about to live in America is about the dream, the aspirations, acquiring, hitting these life milestones,” Nelson said.

Demonstrate an alternative masculinity

But for some young men, the most impactful interventions take place while they’re young. Growing up, Michael Dean looked to his father and his friends’ fathers for how to be a man. These men often spoke of the importance of providing for a family, being decisive, and being a stable force. Dean thought everyone was raised with these values and had similar upbringings until he reached high school and joined Reichert’s peer counseling program.

His junior year, one of Dean’s teammates on the football team suggested that some of the young men check out the group to discuss any problems at school, issues with parents, friends, or partners. Dean was frustrated with his performance on the field and decided to attend. Hearing from his classmates — their grief, their struggles — helped give him perspective. He also learned how to be an emotional outlet for the people he loves, including his younger brother. 

“I never felt that I had to be some kind of way or be some kind of man based on traditional values of being that strong, tough guy and to keep persevering through. I could definitely see that through my dad, and I did have that belief for a little while as I was in middle school and in the beginning of high school,” Dean, now 21, told Vox. “I learned that that’s not necessarily what it means to be a man, and I can make my own judgment through my own experiences and listening to other people to help me figure out what it means in my own belief to be a man.”

For Dean, learning how to be a man began when he was a child, but his path to adulthood was punctuated by formative adults — his mother, Reichert, and yes, even his dad — who fostered a safe environment to be vulnerable and emotional. Now, when he’s lonely, he knows he can call his family, friends, or his girlfriend for support. These are the outlets experts hope men feel empowered to call upon.

“If we’re really going to make a bigger difference with having healthier men who have connected friendships, who are emotionally expressive and connected in their friendships,” Reigeluth said, “it’s got to start with boys.”