04 Dec EdSource: 1 in 8 Adolescents and Young Adults Use A.I. Chatbots for Mental Health, Study Says

(Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash)

By Vani Sanganeria
EdSource

About 1 in 8 adolescents and young adults in the U.S. are using A.I. chatbots for mental health advice, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study, co-authored by Brown University School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and RAND, surveyed 1,058 adolescents and young adults age 12 to 21 between February and March.  Among young adults age 12 to 18, about 1 in 5 said they used A.I. chatbots for mental health advice. About two-thirds of those who used chatbots for mental health advice used them at least monthly, and about 93% said they found the chatbot’s advice helpful.

“There has been a lot of discussion that adolescents were using ChatGPT for mental health advice, but to our knowledge, no one had ever quantified how common this was,” said Ateev Mehrotra, a professor at the Brown University School of Public Health and a co-author of the study, in the report. “I find those rates remarkably high.”

Researchers pointed to the low cost and perceived privacy of advice provided by large language model A.I. chatbots, as well as a persistent youth mental health crisis, with 1 in 5 adolescents experiencing major symptoms of anxiety or depression in a given year. The findings also follow at least seven lawsuits against ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, alleging that the chatbot encouraged harmful delusions and suicide in users.

“Obviously, the key question is how can (large language models) be most helpful but at the same time limit their harm,” Mehrotra said. “But it changes my thinking from adolescents might use A.I. in the future and emphasizes this is already extremely common.”