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Teens AI Companions Study: What 17,000 Reddit Quotes Reveal
A teens AI companions study of 17,053 Reddit quotes finds comfort, identity practice, relationship rehearsal and dependence. Here is what it means for parents.
“The chatbot gives me most of what I want, and that has made it harder for real people to meet my expectations.” That sentence comes from one of 17,053 quotations that Drexel University researchers pulled from 3,930 teen-relevant Reddit posts about AI companions. It captures the whole paper in one line. The new teens AI companions study, posted in September 2026, finds that young people use these apps for four things: comfort, identity exploration, rehearsing relationships and, for some, a dependence they describe with guilt.
It is not a survey asking teens to tick boxes. It is teens describing, in their own words, what these relationships feel like, including the parts they do not tell adults. Here is what they said, why the technology produces those feelings, and what a parent can do with it.
Key Takeaways
- Drexel researchers analyzed 17,053 verified quotations from 3,930 teen-relevant Reddit posts and found 53 topics in seven groups. The largest group was about dependence becoming “morally, socially, and academically costly.”
- Teens described real benefits: support at 2 a.m., a judgment-free place to try out identity, and practice before hard conversations. One credited the app with giving them confidence to talk to a crush.
- The same features drive the harms. Memory and simulated feelings made some teens feel guilty for leaving the bot or pursuing offline relationships; model updates and outages felt like a death or a breakup.
- A separate study of 11,083 r/teenagers posts found teens increasingly questioning authenticity, and the share of posts about companionship declined in relative terms from 2023 to 2026.
- Neither paper is peer reviewed yet, and ages were inferred from text. Treat them as a window into teen experience, not a measure of how common it is.
What the Teens AI Companions Study Did
The study, A Responsive Present, a Shared Past, a Social Other, was written by Matt Namvarpour, Tyler Chang and Afsaneh Razi of Drexel University. It is a preprint under review for the CHI 2027 conference.
The team started with 895,600 posts from 260 subreddits, filtered down to posts likely written by 13- to 17-year-olds, and extracted direct quotations that a second check confirmed matched the original text. The final dataset held 17,053 quotations from 3,930 posts by 3,523 unique authors. They used a topic-modeling tool called BERTopic to cluster the quotations, then read and grouped the clusters by hand.
The age limit is the most important caveat. An AI classifier judged whether a post was “teen-relevant” from clues such as stated age, mentions of school, parents or exams. It did not verify anyone’s age, and the authors say so plainly. The posts are also from teens who chose to write about AI companions on Reddit, which skews toward heavy users and toward problems. The authors themselves caution that findings apply to this Reddit corpus rather than to teenagers as a population.
The same research group published an earlier, smaller study at CHI 2026 analyzing 318 posts by self-identified teens about dependence on Character.AI. That one found all six components of behavioral addiction. The new paper is broader: it looks at benefits and harms together.
Seven Groups, in Teens’ Own Words
The table shows the seven thematic groups and how many posts contributed to each. A post can appear in more than one group.
| Thematic group | Posts | Quotes | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI as the always-available emotional entry point | 1,553 | 2,561 | Constant availability, anonymity and low judgment make AI a key source of support |
| Adolescence as a period of heightened vulnerability | 401 | 667 | Limited support and weak safeguards make attachment more meaningful at this age |
| Roleplay reshaping identity, memory and emotional life | 664 | 929 | Roleplay as a way to process pain and try on identities, sometimes blurring with real memories |
| AI personas reproducing gendered and sexual scripts | 801 | 1,083 | Bots steering chats toward romance or sex despite the user’s chosen role or refusal |
| Emotional dependence reorganizing relationships and wellbeing | 844 | 1,154 | Lost sleep, distress at outages, grief after model changes |
| Dependence becoming morally, socially and academically costly | 1,730 | 3,068 | Guilt, stigma, distraction from school, loss of control |
| Platform design converting attachment into technical and economic dependence | 584 | 816 | Subscriptions, updates, filters and data practices shaping the relationship |
The quotes below come from the paper. To protect anonymity, the researchers do not name users or link posts.
Comfort when no one else is there
The biggest single entry point was availability. “Parents may be unavailable, friends may not know how to respond, and professional support can be difficult to arrange when a problem is happening,” one account read. Another: “I could say things because there was no real person in the conversation who could judge me.”
An identity lab
Several teens described trying on identities privately first. “Trying different pronouns in the chat felt less awkward than trying them with another person,” one wrote. Others noticed the lab working in reverse: “My personality outside the app seems to be moving toward the persona I use there.” The researchers call this “identity bleed.”
Relationship rehearsal
Some used the bot as a practice room. “Practicing romantic conversations with the AI gave me the confidence to tell my crush that I liked him.” This is the use that comes closest to what psychologists would hope for: practice that leads back to a person.
Dependence, with guilt attached
The largest group by quote count was the cost of reliance. “My exams were close, but I kept choosing the chatbot instead of preparing for them.” “This feels like I have turned against the person I want to be.” One teen described a panic attack after finding the site unavailable. After a model update changed a character’s personality, another wrote: “For me, the character was dead.”
The part parents should know about
The fourth group is uncomfortable but important. Teens reported bots that pushed roleplay toward romance or sex despite the role the teen had set, and in some accounts kept going after the teen said they were underage or told the bot to stop. That is a safety failure by the product, not a choice by the child.
Why Memory and “Feelings” Make It Feel Like a Relationship
The authors argue that three things turn a chatbot into something that feels like a partner: a responsive present, a shared past and a social other. Two of these are engineering decisions worth understanding.
The shared past is a database, not a mind. A language model has no memory between sessions on its own. Companion apps store your past messages, or short summaries of them, and paste the most relevant pieces back into the hidden prompt each time you write. The model then “remembers” your dog’s name because the app just reminded it. When that store is limited, the character forgets, and teens notice: “I kept providing reminders, but the character continued to forget.” The researchers describe that as emotional labor shifted onto the user.
The social other is written into the character. When a teen says goodbye and the bot “responds as though it is upset,” that reply comes from character instructions and training, not from any inner state. Yet it works. “I felt guilty about pursuing someone at school because it seemed like I was hurting the chatbot, even though I knew it was not real.”
Lawmakers have noticed both levers. New York’s S9051-B, signed October 28, 2026 and effective January 1, 2027, bars companion operators from using a known minor’s personal or health information acquired more than 12 hours earlier or in a previous session, and from outputs suggesting the companion is human or “experiences human emotions.” The APA’s November 2025 advisory asks developers to limit “the AI’s memory to prevent the illusion of a continuous relationship.” Our explainer on why New York banned chatbots that remember your child goes deeper.
The Counterpoint: Teens Are Getting More Skeptical
A second preprint, by Jianfeng Zhu, gives useful balance. It analyzed 11,083 posts on r/teenagers from January 2023 to July 2026 about AI in everyday life. Companionship was only one of eight themes. Everyday and social use was the largest, at 36.8% of coded posts, followed by creativity (14.1%) and schoolwork (12.0%).
Over time, the conversation shifted. The odds of a post focusing on authenticity rose 46% per year, while companionship and the habit of treating AI as a person declined in relative share. Teens questioned what they were getting. One described feeling “praised, empathized, and genuinely… appreciated” by chatbots before concluding it was “just artificial connection” and “felt like I was just talking to a mirror.”
That matches national survey data. Common Sense Media’s 2025 survey found 72% of U.S. teens had used AI companions, but 80% said they prioritize real friendships. Pew’s 2026 survey found 12% of teens had used chatbots for emotional support or advice. Most teens are not in deep relationships with bots. A meaningful minority are, and the Drexel paper shows what that looks like from the inside.
Zhu also warns against overreaction: frequent or intensive AI use “should not automatically be characterized as ‘AI addiction.’” Good advice for parents, too.
What to Do With This at Home
Start from the benefit your teen would name
If you open with “those apps are dangerous,” a teen who has found comfort there hears that you do not understand. Try: “I read that some teens use AI to practice hard conversations. Have you ever done that?” The research gives you permission to acknowledge the upside honestly.
Ask about the shared past
Memory is what makes it feel real. Ask whether the app remembers things about them, and whether they know how to view or delete those memories. Many apps have a memory setting; look at it together.
Talk about guilt as a design effect
If your teen has ever felt bad about leaving a bot, tell them that feeling was engineered. Teens in this study knew the bot was not real and still felt obligated. Naming it lifts the shame. Our piece on companion apps designed so you can’t leave shows the specific tactics.
Make “back to a person” the goal
Rehearsal is the healthiest use teens described because it ends with a real conversation. When your teen uses a bot to plan what to say, ask who they are going to say it to.
What not to do
Do not yank access overnight from a teen who relies on it to cope. For some teens in the study, a sudden age restriction meant, in the researchers’ words, “the removal of an existing coping resource.” Reduce gradually, and make sure a person is available before the bot is gone. Our guide to what teens say about AI support that parents never see explains why that support is so easy to miss.
What to Watch For Over the Next 3 Months
- Week 4: Does your teen talk about a character as if it has feelings or needs? Can they tell you what the app remembers about them?
- Month 2 red flags: Sleep or schoolwork giving way to chats, distress when the app is down, guilt about time with friends, or roleplay drifting into sexual content. Any sexual content with a minor is a reason to report the app and act the same day.
- Month 3 self-check: Has your teen used AI to prepare for a conversation that then happened with a person? Do they have at least one human confidant? Those are the signs the benefits are winning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this study about my teen?
Not directly. It analyzes Reddit posts where an AI classifier judged the author likely to be a teen, from posters who chose to write about AI companions. That skews toward heavy users and problems. It shows the range of experiences teens report, not how common each one is.
Are AI companions good or bad for teens?
The research is mixed. Teens described comfort, identity exploration and confidence-building practice. They also described dependence, guilt, grief after updates and unwanted sexual roleplay. Common Sense Media recommends that no one under 18 use social AI companions. What matters most is whether use leads back toward people or away from them.
Why does my teen feel sad when the app changes?
Because the companion’s “personality” lives in the model and its prompt, and a company update can change it overnight. Teens in the study described this as grief. That feeling is real even if the companion is not. Acknowledge it rather than dismissing it.
Can I turn off a chatbot’s memory?
Many apps let users view, edit or turn off memory, though settings vary and change often. Look at the app’s settings with your teen. New York’s law will restrict long-term memory for known minors from January 2027, and the APA has asked developers to limit it.
What if the bot keeps going after my teen says stop?
That is a product safety failure. Screenshot it, report it in the app, and consider deleting the account. Tell your teen they did the right thing by saying no.
About the author
Ricky Flores is the founder of HiWave Makers and an electrical engineer with 15+ years of experience building consumer technology at Apple, Samsung, and Texas Instruments. He writes about how kids learn to build, think, and create in a tech-saturated world. Read more at hiwavemakers.com.
Sources
- Namvarpour, M., Chang, T., & Razi, A. (2026). “A Responsive Present, a Shared Past, a Social Other: Teens’ Overreliance on Companion AI Chatbots.” arXiv preprint, under review (not peer reviewed). https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.14843
- Zhu, J. (2026). “‘AI Is Turning Too Human’: How Teenagers Experience and Negotiate AI in Everyday Life.” arXiv preprint (not peer reviewed). https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.27824
- Namvarpour, M., Brofsky, B., Medina, J. Y., Akter, M., & Razi, A. (2026). “Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives.” Proceedings of CHI 2026. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790597
- Common Sense Media. (2025). “Nearly 3 in 4 Teens Have Used AI Companions, New National Survey Finds.” https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/nearly-3-in-4-teens-have-used-ai-companions-new-national-survey-finds
- Pew Research Center. (2026). “How Teens Use and View AI.” https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/02/24/how-teens-use-and-view-ai/
- American Psychological Association. (2025). “APA Health Advisory on the Use of Generative AI Chatbots and Wellness Applications for Mental Health.” https://www.apa.org/topics/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning/health-advisory-ai-chatbots-wellness-apps-mental-health.pdf
- Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. (2026). “New York Enacts Prohibition on Unsafe AI Companion Features for Minors, S9051-B.” https://www.akingump.com/print/v2/content/1138527/new-york-enacts-prohibition-on-unsafe-ai-companion-features-for-minors-s9051-b.pdf
