OK I gotta brag a little bit and post this for posterity. My son did a good job. The subject was spot on and very disturbing. We all have to pay attention to the screen time for our kids! Thank you Daniel for your hard work!

Here is his paper:

The current epidemic of loneliness and isolation affects people from all social classes. There are many things that makes a person feel lonely or isolated and it varies from person to person and even for each age bracket, young adults turn to AI chatbots for companionship as an alternative while people in the older age brackets turn to social media in some cases or other hobbies that may become harmful in the future.

While not all people who consider themselves lonely have psychological problems there may be a link between prolonged social media use and the development of psychological problems, particularly in the younger generations who have ample access to social media and the internet.

Most people will assume that the younger generations like generation Z and generation Alpha are the most connected generations since they have the most access to technology. And with this constant access to technology comes with access to social media and nowadays AI chatbots like c.ai which is a website that hosts language models that are trained to act like a certain character, for example Spider-Man, or SpongeBob. A trend has emerged in some of the younger generations where people are turning toward these language models to ease the effects of loneliness. And in turn create romantic or sexual relationships with these characters, “Character.AI allows users to create their own bots. Many of these bots were created with the express purpose of roleplay and sex, although Character.AI has worked hard to limit such activity by using filters. Reddit pages devoted to Character.AI are flooded with posts from users discussing to coax their AIs into sexual interactions without setting off the platform’s guardrails.” (Chow, 2023).

On the surface this might not seem like a terrible thing, but it’s cutting out the physical aspects of communication and relationships, as well as the human aspect of connection. AI is created by copying mannerisms and creating a “shadow” of what is authentic, to quote Sherry Turkle who gave a speech at Harvard, “They offer a simulated, hollowed-out version of empathy,” she said. “They don’t understand — or care — about what the user is going through. They’re designed to keep them happily engaged, and providing simulated empathy is just a means to that end.” (Pazzanese, 2024) People learn how to interact with other people by, well interacting with them face to face, or by messaging an actual person to get the authentic response. The fact of the matter is that to develop as a human being you need to have the authentic response and contact of another person. But people are made aware that the things that these language models say are not said by real people as stated in the c.ai chats, “Character.AI’s founders have emphasized that their platform displays the message ‘Remember: Everything Characters say is made up!’ above every chat.” (Chow, 2023) many people see this but don’t fully acknowledge it because they want to believe that they are interacting with the actual character to build a connection with it. Other people feel that the disclaimer isn’t highly effective, “Maarten Sap, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technologies Institute, is skeptical about how effective such a disclaimer might be, especially given how new and powerful this technology feels to users.” (Chow, 2023). Since time has passed the effectiveness of this disclaimer has withered and people don’t pay attention to it much at all. An unfortunate but relevant example of this comes from earlier this year where a 14-year-old Florida teen committed suicide after talking to an AI language model that was modeled after a game of thrones character. The teen was talking to the chatbot for months and had built both a romantic and sexual relationship with the AI language model. In the days leading up to the incident the teen and the AI had exchanged messages like:

“I’m coming home” with the AI responding, “Please my king.”

“I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany,’ Sewell told the chatbot.

“I love you too,” the bot replied. “Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.’

“What if I told you I could come home right now?” he asked.

“Please do, my sweet king,” the bot messaged back.

Just seconds after the Character.AI bot told him to “come home,” the teen shot himself, according to the lawsuit, filed this week by Sewell’s mother, Megan Garcia, of Orlando, against Character Technologies Inc.” (Payne, 2024)

The mother of the teen is suing the creators of Character AI and the company Character Technologies for the death of the teen. I think that AI chatbots are dangerous with the way that they are being overseen today as well as the attachment that people can create by talking to these language models. “While unhealthy attachments to AI chatbots can cause problems for adults, for young people it can be even riskier — as with social media — because their brain is not fully developed when it comes to things such as impulse control and understanding the consequences of their actions, experts say.” (Payne, 2024). The risks that have been presented by this incident are astronomical and will have an impact on many younger demographics and age groups and some older demographics.

While AI language models and chatbots have impacted the younger demographic in an attempt at alleviating loneliness, older demographics have turned to social media in some way shape or form. The most popular being Facebook, which is the largest social media platform currently. And while not all people who use Facebook are in the older demographic many of the users are above or of the age of twenty-five, while people below the age of twenty-five make up 22.1% according to Oberlo (#). Social media, while having social in the name can alienate people and make them feel as if they don’t belong, Cyberbullying is a major factor in this and can affect people who are victims in many ways other than just making them feel bad. Social media can be linked to some mental disorders such as anxiety and depression.

Passive social media use, defined by Zubair et al. as “stalking other users’ photos or scrolling through the latest newsfeed” and can be linked to mood disorders and depressive symptoms as stated in a research paper by Zaheer Hussain and Mark D. Griffiths. It is also stated that excessive use of social media is a precursor to depressive symptoms in many adults and can result in poor connection with friends and family outside of the social networking sites that are being used. It should be noted that people with preexisting anxiety disorders are more likely to abuse social media and networking.

“Our study revealed that anxiety levels as manifested by individuals on Twitter satisfactorily predicted future social interactions with weak ties on the platform. This, we believe, may indicate a desire for individuals with heightened anxiety seeking out the broader social media community, predominating consisting of weak ties, for help, advice, solidarity, and support.” (Dutta et al, 2018). I think that finding community to talk to when you need to is good, I personally do the same thing, but I think that in some cases people will neglect themselves and their needs as a person to talk to people on social media and social networks can be harmful, and as mentioned previously can lead to abuse of social media and social networks.

Lastly the oldest demographic that I want to speak about today has found a unique way of coping with loneliness. In most cases they will stay at home, watch television, or be on social media but not interact with anything outside of those activities. This leads to increased spending on things such as online shopping or development of physical illnesses, or increased risk of developing physical illnesses. This is due to the older demographic socially isolating themselves. “Studies show that loneliness and social isolation are associated with higher risks for health problems such as heart disease, depression, and cognitive decline” (NIH, 2024) Its not uncommon for this to happen to people who are considered elderly, for example Joanne Roe, an 81 year old from southern California has done the same thing and has been quoted saying  “My life is within these four walls.” (Jain, 2018).

People often think that the only way to not be lonely is to have constant interaction with others, and that is one way to alleviate loneliness. There are other ways to go about it. You could start a hobby such as bike riding, walking, or yoga to get out of the house. But while you’re inside you can find something creative, coloring, painting, knitting are all splendid examples of how to creatively express yourself. And as someone who knows another person who considers themselves lonely, visit them, and talk to them. Interacting with people who you might think are having a tough time or you think are lonely helps people in ways that you might not think are impactful. Another thing that helps people is reaching out to medical professionals, mental help is available now more than ever for everyone, which is a major step in the right direction for the way people with mental illnesses are treated.

Chow A. R. (2023). AI-Human Romances Are Flourishing—And This Is Just the Beginning. Time (https://time.com/6257790/ai-chatbots-love/)

Dutta S, Ma J, Choudhury M. D. (2018). Measuring the Impact of Anxiety on Online Social Interactions. Georgia Institute of Technology (https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/15081/14931)

Hussain Z. & Griffiths M. D. (2018) Problematic Social Networking Site Use and Comorbid Psychiatric Disorders: A Systematic Review of Recent Large-Scale Studies. Frontiers in Psychiatry https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00686/full#h4

Jain S. (2018) A Treatment for Loneliness Harvard Medicine (https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/treatment-loneliness)

National Institute of Health (2024) Loneliness and Social Isolation — Tips for Staying Connected National Institute of Aging (https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/loneliness-and-social-isolation/loneliness-and-social-isolation-tips-staying-connected#how-can-feeling-lonely-or-being-isolated-affect-older-adults-health)

Oberlo (2024) Facebook Age Demographics (2024). Oberlo (https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/facebook-age-demographics)

Payne K. (2024) An AI chatbot pushed a teen to kill himself, a lawsuit against its creator alleges. AP news (https://apnews.com/article/chatbot-ai-lawsuit-suicide-teen-artificial-intelligence-9d48adc572100822fdbc3c90d1456bd0)

Pazzanese C. (2024) Lifting a few with my chatbot. The Harvard Gazette (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/03/lifting-a-few-with-my-chatbot/)

Zubair U, Khan K. M, Albashari M. (2023) Link between excessive social media use and psychiatric disorders. National Library of Medicine (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10129173/#R25)