What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots

There are a growing number of companies offering social chatbots that can act like friends, enemies, lovers, adventurous companions, or the manifestation of a fictional or real person you’ve always wanted to meet. You can pick A.I. Elon Musk’s brain or spar with A.I. Draco Malfoy. The myriad characters, often created by fellow users, offer drama, romance, therapy and LOLs. Apps that feature role-playing chatbots are used by tens of millions of people, with engagement times that rival or surpass those of social media behemoths such as TikTok, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The majority of teens surveyed by Pew use A.I. chatbots, with one out of 11 saying they had used Character.AI. Chatbots are surging in popularity as society is still grappling with how social media has affected young people; a wave of lawsuits is moving through the courts seeking damages from companies that plaintiffs say have deliberately created addictive products. (A jury in California recently found that Meta and YouTube were liable for $6 million in damages to one young woman.) And now parents and caregivers have a new attention-absorbing technology to reckon with.