It’s estimated that more than half of all U.S. teens are regularly using companion chatbots powered by large language models and generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The programs, such as Character.AI, Replika and Kindroid, are intended to provide companionship, according to the companies that make them. But a recent study from Drexel University published in the Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, suggests that teens are concerned that these attachments are becoming unhealthy and affecting their lives offline.
Teens are becoming concerned about their attachment to AI chatbots
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Since the early 1970s, when the Nixon administration launched the “war on drugs,” Gallup has been asking Americans how they feel about problems surrounding illicit drugs. But the war has not gone well and Gallup’s [...]
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Law enforcement agents misused crowd-control weapons during protests against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations in 412 verified incidents across 16 U.S. cities from when immigration enforcement protests escalated in Los Angeles in June 2025 [...]
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Deep inequalities in taxation played a key role in fueling the French Revolution, according to a new study published by the ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin). For the first time, economists have substantiated this with figures. [...]
