How Does Talking to a Chatbot Affect Loneliness?

Laurie Santos says talking to a chatbot brings an immediate, short reduction in loneliness, while longer use predicts more loneliness later. The earliest papers on chatbot effects in mental health, for teens and for adults, are only now appearing, and longer-term data on chatbots is just arriving because the tools have not been in ubiquitous use for long.

A new 12-month study from Liz Dunn's lab at the University of British Columbia traces a vicious cycle. People who already feel lonely tend to use chatbots more, because talking to real-life humans comes with friction. The conversation feels good in the moment, so returning to the chatbot gets easier, and chatbot use then predicts still more loneliness over the long term. College first-year students assigned to text a real human about the same topics they would discuss with an LLM feel better off.

Short-term benefit sits beside a long-term cost, and the cost still needs to be understood.