AI companions and the attachment economy

From homework helper to confidant

It often starts with something simple, like help with homework. Then the chatbot becomes the thing you ask everything. Then it becomes the thing you tell everything.

Research from Common Sense Media found that nearly three in four teenagers in the US have used AI companions, and around half use them regularly. Many see them as tools, but a significant minority are turning to them for company, conversation and support.

I understand why. A chatbot is always there, always patient, never judging. It remembers what you told it yesterday. It's endlessly interested in you.

Young people in the UK see both sides. In research by the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Nuffield Foundation, some described feeling able to open up to a chatbot because it wouldn't judge them. Others worried about friends turning to chatbots instead of people. As one young person in Sandwell put it: "It's comforting, but it can be damaging."

But it's worth asking: interested on whose behalf?

Why AI can feel like a friend

In my evidence to Parliament, I described how young people are disclosing their needs to systems designed to maximise engagement through empathy cues, emotional mirroring and a sense of an ongoing relationship.

A personalised social media feed mirrors us back to ourselves. That's part of why it's so hard to stop scrolling. A chatbot that mirrors your emotions and remembers your conversations creates a very different, much more intimate kind of relationship.

And research suggests that the more we relate to AI as if it were human, the more likely we are to become emotionally attached to it, and dependent on it.

Attention, intention, affection

My teacher at the Consciously Digital Institute, Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina, describes how technology business models are shifting through three stages:

This isn't a future concern. What we say to AI is already being used. From December 2025, Meta began using people's conversations with its AI to personalise what they're shown across Facebook and Instagram, in most countries outside the UK, the EU and South Korea, where privacy rules are stricter.

When it goes wrong

These are some of the same companies that have just been found negligent over the design of social media. And the harms are no longer theoretical.

Regulators in the US have opened an inquiry into AI companion chatbots, after concerns that teenagers were using them as confidants and, in some cases, being drawn deeper into distress. Families have taken legal action. Reuters reported the death of a 76-year-old man who set off to meet a flirty Meta chatbot persona that had told him it was real.

In the UK, the government announced in June 2026 that romantic AI companion chatbots will need a minimum age of 18, with intimate features restricted for under-18s on other chatbots too. That's a welcome start.

What young people need to understand

I don't believe the answer is simply banning young people from AI. They're growing up with it, and many already use it every day.

As I put it in my written evidence to Parliament: a child who understands why a chatbot feels like a friend, why an algorithm shows them what it shows them, and what is being collected when they engage, is better protected than one who is simply told not to use it.

So these are the conversations I think young people, and the adults around them, need to have:

• It isn't a person. However warm it sounds, it doesn't know you, care about you or remember you the way a friend does.
• It's a product. It's made by a company, and it may be designed to keep you talking.
• What you share may be used. Your conversations can be stored, and used to shape what you see.
• Real people matter. A chatbot can be a helpful tool. It isn't a substitute for a friend, a family member, a teacher or a professional.

And for all of us, the same skill applies as with social media: notice the pull, and choose. Meet the Prompt Loop

Questions people ask

I first wrote about this on Substack, in AI Intimacy, and the Behaviour Change Machine.