It’s just like adults to be constantly diagnosing the wrong thing in trying to “save the children.” Over the last couple of years there’s been a mostly nonsense moral panic claiming that the teen mental health crisis must be due to social media. Of course, as we’ve detailed repeatedly, the actual research on this does not support that claim at all.
Instead, the evidence suggests that there is a ton of complexity happening here and no one factor. That said, two potentially big factors contributing to the teen mental health crisis are (1) the mental health challenges that their parents are facing, and (2) the lack of available help and resources for both kids and parents to deal with mental health issues.
When you combine that, it should be of little surprise that desperate teens are turning to AI for mental health support. That’s discussed in an excellent new article in The Mercury News’ Mosaic Journalism Program, which helps high school students learn how to do professional-level journalism.
For many teenagers, digital tools such as programs that use artificial intelligence, or AI, have become a go-to option for emotional support. As they learn to navigate and cope in a world where mental health care demands are high, AI is an easy and inexpensive choice.
Now, I know that some people’s immediate response is to be horrified by this, and it’s right to be concerned. But, given the situation teens find themselves in, this is not all that surprising.
Teens don’t have access to real mental health help. On our most recent podcast, we spoke to an expert in raising kids in a digital age, Devorah Heitner, who mentioned that making real, professional mental health support available in every high school would be so much more helpful than something silly like a “Surgeon General’s Warning” on social media.
Indeed, as another recent podcast guest, Candice Odgers, has noted, the evidence actually suggests that the reason kids with mental health issues spend so much time on social media might be because they are already having mental health issues, and the lack of resources to actually help them makes them turn to social media instead.
And now, it appears it may also make them turn to AI systems.
The details in the article aren’t as horrifying as they might otherwise be. It does note that there are ways that using AI can be helpful to some kids, which I’m sure is true:
Some students, like Brooke Joly, who will be a junior at Moreau Catholic High School in Hayward in the fall, say they value the bluntness of AI when seeking advice or mental health tips.
“I’ve asked AI for advice a few times because I just wanted an accurate answer rather than someone I know sugar-coating,” she said by text in an interview.
The privacy and consistency that AI promises its young users does make a compelling case for choosing mental health care delivered via app.
Venkatesh, who said she has struggled with depression, said she appreciates that ChatGPT has no judgmental bias. “I think the symptoms of depression are very stigmatized, and if you were to tell people what the reality of depression is like — skipping meals or skipping showers, for instance — people would judge you for that. I think in those instances, it’s easier to talk to someone who is not human because AI would never judge you for that.”
AI can provide a safe space for teens to be vulnerable at a point when the adults in their lives may not be supportive of mental health care.
That said, this is another area that is simply not well-studied at all (unlike social media and mental health, which now have tons of studies).
Hopefully, we can see some actual studies on whether or not AI can actually be helpful here. The article does note that there are some specialized apps focused on this market, but one would hope those would have some data to back up their approach. Relying on a general LLM like ChatGPT seems like… a much riskier proposition.
As one youth director in the article notes, one thing that using AI does for kids is it puts them in control, at a time when they often feel they have control over so little. This brings us to yet another study that we’ve talked about in the past: one that suggests that another leading factor in mental health struggles for kids has been the lack of spaces where parents aren’t hovering over them and making all the decisions.
Given that, you can understand why kids might seek their own solutions. The lack of viable options that don’t involve, once again, having parents or other authority figures hovering over them, certainly makes them more appealing.
None of this is great, and (again) it would appear that any real solution should involve making mental health professionals more accessible to teens, such as in schools. But absent that, it’s understandable why they might turn to other types of tools. So, hopefully, there’s going to be a lot more research on how helpful (or unhelpful!) those tools actually are, or at least how to properly integrate them into a larger, more comprehensive, approach to improving mental health.
