Anonymousabout 2 hours ago
Roughly two-thirds of U.S. teenagers have used AI chatbots, with nearly a third doing so daily, according to Pew Research Center data from late 2025. Platforms like Character.AI have faced multiple lawsuits and a landmark settlement with Google over teen suicides linked to chatbot interactions, prompting the company to ban open-ended chat for minors and spurring a wave of state and federal legislation. The phenomenon has exposed a tension between the genuine emotional support these tools provide — particularly for neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ youth — and design features that foster dependency, raising questions the science has only begun to answer.