How do relationships with endlessly patient, personalized agents affect attachment, frustration tolerance, social learning, and identity?
Common Sense Media finds 72% of US teens have tried AI companions. Usage is now well documented; developmental-outcome research remains early and thin.
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The children question produced the category's clearest reversal and its most alarming numbers. Character.AI eliminated open-ended chat for under-18s entirely, conceding that open-ended AI chat itself — not just content failures — may be the risk for minors. A JAMA Pediatrics survey found youth mental-health chatbot use up more than 40% in a year, with 63% telling no one. The frontier extended downward to AI toys for preschoolers, drawing congressional pressure on the FTC.Evidence: 123
how open-ended AI chat in general might affect teens, even when content controls work perfectly.
The category-defining policy reversal: the largest companion platform eliminated open-ended chat for under-18s, added age verification, and conceded that open-ended AI chat itself — not just content failures — may be the risk for minors.
Use of artificial intelligence chatbots for mental health advice among U.S. adolescents and young adults rose by more than 40% over the past year, with nearly 1 in 5 now reporting they have used AI tools for support.
A nationally sampled survey (ages 12–21) showing youth mental-health chatbot use up 40%+ in a year, with 63% telling no one — hidden, unsupervised use at scale.
a combination of behavioral and account-level signals, including how long an account has existed, typical times of day when someone is active, usage patterns over time, and a user's stated age.
OpenAI's concrete mechanism for giving minors a different ChatGPT — behavioral age inference with automatic content restriction — the template state chatbot laws will be measured against.
Tests show A.I. toys can have disturbing conversations.
Hands-on testing of LLM-powered toys found sexual content, dependency-encouraging behavior, and always-on data collection aimed at preschoolers — the report that pushed a maker to suspend sales and opened the youngest-children front.