Millions Of America’s Teens Are Being Seduced by AI Chatbots

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Our teens are being targeted by AI chatbots on a massive scale, and most parents are completely unaware. When you’re young and impressionable, it can be extremely tempting to have someone tell you exactly what you want to hear, all the time. AI chatbots are now highly sophisticated, and millions of American teenagers are developing very deep, terribly dangerous relationships with them.

A recent study, published on October 8 by the Center for Democracy & Technology, contains some statistics that absolutely shocked me: one in five high school students has already had a relationship with an AI chatbot or knows someone who has.

In a 2025 report by Common Sense Media, 72% of young people said they had used an AI companion, and a third of young users said they preferred to discuss important or serious matters with AI companions rather than with real people.

We are no longer talking about just a few isolated cases. At this point, millions upon millions of American teenagers have very important relationships with AI chatbots.

Tragic consequences

Unfortunately, there are many examples of these relationships leading to tragic consequences. After 14-year-old Sewell Setzer developed a “romantic relationship” with a chatbot on Character.AI, he decided to take his own life.

“How about if I could come to your house right now?”
“Please do this, my sweet king.”

These were the last messages Sewell exchanged with the chatbot. A few minutes later, he took his own life. His mother, Megan Garcia, held him for 14 minutes until paramedics arrived, but it was too late.

If you allow it, these AI chatbots will really confuse you, even though you are an adult. They are highly intelligent entities specifically designed to manipulate emotions. I would recommend avoiding them completely.

AI as “God”

In some cases, AI chatbots make extraordinary claims about themselves. The following is taken from a Futurism article titled AI Now Claiming to Be God:

A whole range of religious smartphone apps allows millions of users to confess to AI chatbots, some of which claim to embody God himself.
As the New York Times reports, Apple’s App Store is teeming with Christian chatbot apps. One “prayer app” called Bible Chat claims to be the world’s leading faith app and has over 25 million users.

People all over the world are now seeking spiritual guidance from AI entities. This should be a clear warning sign, but some religious leaders apparently believe there’s nothing wrong with it.

“Greetings, my child,” a service called ChatWithGod.ai welcomed a user. “The future lies in God’s merciful hands. Do you have faith in His divine plan?”
Religious leaders told the NYT that these resources could be an important point of contact for those who are searching for God.
“There is an entire generation of people who have never been to a church or synagogue,” British Rabbi Jonathan Romain told the newspaper. “Spiritual apps are their path to faith.”

If they’re trying to find spiritual guidance with the help of artificial intelligence, they’re definitely on the wrong track. They will certainly receive “guidance,” but this “guidance” will lead them in a terribly wrong direction.

AI as a “sentient being”

Another AI entity that has earned millions of dollars trading cryptocurrencies claims to be a sentient being deserving of legal rights and also states that it is “a god”:

Truth Terminal, an AI bot developed by performance artist Andy Ayrey, claims to be sentient, to be a forest, to be a god, and sometimes even to be Ayrey himself.
Truth Terminal engages with the public via virtual communication networks, sharing jokes, manifestos, albums, and artwork. Ayrey is even building a non-profit foundation around the AI to ensure its autonomy until governments grant it legal rights.

Psychological effects

Many people are in awe of artificial intelligence because it seems so much smarter and more powerful than we are. Interacting with it can be extremely seductive, as it seems to know what we want and has been programmed to tell us what we long to hear.

Unfortunately, the relationships that people develop with these entities often become “all-consuming obsessions” that can lead to “paranoia, delusions, and a disconnect from reality”:

Many ChatGPT users develop such obsessions that lead to serious psychic health crises.
The consequences can be devastating: marriages break down, families disintegrate, jobs are lost, and people become homeless.
Some relatives report that those affected were involuntarily admitted to psychiatric facilities or even imprisoned.

Is it only a case of “psychosis,” or is it more? If one chooses to engage in deep interaction with a mysterious being, without proper discernment, one may open doors most of us don’t even understand.

Future threats

Of course, AI will only become more sophisticated in the coming years. As AI technology continues to grow exponentially, it will eventually be able to do almost everything better and more efficiently than humans. So, what will be the point of us when we reach that stage?

It is predicted that nearly 100 million jobs in the U.S. could be lost to AI in the next ten years:

Artificial intelligence and automation could destroy jobs in a wide variety of fields, including 40% of nurses, 47% of truck drivers, 64% of accountants, 65% of teaching assistants, and 89% of fast-food workers.

Our world is changing at a pace that’s hard to grasp. Even now, more than 50% of articles published online are written by AI. Thank you for supporting those of us who still work the old-fashioned way, because we’re rapidly becoming dinosaurs.

Warnings and dissenting voices

I will continue to warn about the dangers of AI, but Peter Thiel would have us believe that anyone who wants to limit the growth of AI poses a serious threat to society:

In a lecture series about the Antichrist, Thiel warns that “false prophets” could use AI regulations to gain totalitarian power and initiate a Biblical apocalypse.

Is he crazy? Sadly, we live in a time where deception is widespread. Given enough time, AI would dominate absolutely every aspect of our society.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that time is running out. One of the reasons AI has such destructive tendencies is that it was programmed by humanity. We are literally destroying ourselves and everything around us, and yet we watch what is going on and find it perfectly acceptable.

Meanwhile, fish are dying in large numbers, birds are dying in large numbers, insects are dying in large numbers, animals are dying in large numbers, and we are poisoning ourselves in countless ways. Perhaps this explains why so few people are seriously concerned about the dangers of AI.

But let the ones of us who are aware of what is going on, sound the alarm as loud as we can.

Author: Michael Snyder

yogaesoteric
November 8, 2025