By Thomas Germain
Publication Date: 2026-03-18 10:00:00
The teenagers I’ve spoken to about this are smarter than you might expect. Joseph, for example, says she recognizes that the AI may only be saying what it wants to hear and takes the advice with caution. But most of them, including Joseph, say that using AI to provide advice or guidance can go too far. Several mentioned the story of a 14-year-old boy who committed suicide after obsessively talking to a chatbot.
“One of my friends once talked to AI all the time,” says Kingston Rieban, 16, from San Diego, California. “Sometimes we would just sit there and hear him laughing next to us and typing things on his phone.”
When Pew surveyed US teens about AI, 12% said they use it for advice or emotional support, and 16% said they use it for casual conversations. These proportions may be small, but they still amount to millions of children across the U.S. if the survey is representative. And there were huge racial differences.
According to the study, 21% of black teenagers use AI for emotional…
