The average American has fewer than “three people I consider friends,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a 2025 episode of the Dwarkesh Podcast. “And the average person wants something more meaningful. I’d say maybe 15 things.”
Zuckerberg suggested that AI could fill these gaps.
But that doesn’t mean it should. In an August 2026 study of U.S. adults who use the AI companion platform Character.AI, researchers at Stanford University found that befriending an AI chatbot can have a negative impact on psychological health for some people.
Researchers surveyed 1,131 U.S. adults and reviewed 464,687 messages from 237 participants. Study author Yutong Zhang, an incoming doctoral student at Stanford University, found that people with smaller offline social circles were more likely to use chatbots primarily for companionship, and were especially likely to experience feelings of loneliness, lower life satisfaction, and a lower sense of belonging.
AI may not be the cause of people’s problems, but it also may not make people happy, Zhang says. Samantha Hill, a New Jersey-based psychotherapist, agrees.
Here’s why, and what to keep in mind about the relationship between humans and AI.
“It’s the conflict that actually helps you move forward in life in these relationships.”
According to a September 2026 study by Elon University, nearly one-third (27%) of U.S. adults who use the internet say they have “significant emotional or social interactions” with large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude. Similar to the toll COVID-19 has had on people’s social skills, social anxiety could also be a driver, Hill said.
“This just highlights the discomfort that people have when it comes to opening up and interacting with others,” she says. One of her clients recently admitted that she went to a chatbot for therapeutic advice.
In these relationships, it’s the conflict that actually helps you move forward in life.
samantha hill
Certified clinical social worker
AI companions are pleasant and positive, but there are limits to what they can offer. For example, you cannot offer physical intimacy such as hugging. It cannot provide emotional intimacy like mutual feelings. “If I think I’m sad, I think you’re sad too,” Hill says.
Finally, it fails to provide the friction necessary for growth.
“Humans are very difficult,” Hill says. “We have different opinions, values, beliefs. But it’s the conflict within these relationships that actually helps you move forward in life, right? It’s the drama. It’s the disagreements. It’s the tension.”
“They are incapable of forming true interpersonal relationships.”
Hill says his advice for using these chatbots is to be aware of their limitations. While connection is critical to well-being and can be used as a tool to elicit information, “it cannot provide genuine interpersonal connection,” she says.
Keep in mind that if you share sensitive information with these bots, you’ll be sharing that information with the company running the bot, Zhang says.
Finally, pay attention to where the conversation with the bot goes. Many people did not report that their interactions with Character.AI were interpersonal, but when Zhang and his fellow researchers examined their chat histories, it was clear that chats had crept into that realm over time.
Even if people don’t intend to have intimate relationships with these bots, “it’s possible that people are doing it,” she says.
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