AI Needn’t Be Trustworthy, Teens Say. It Just Has to Be Less Risky Than People

New survey finds that ‘gateway moments’ like arguments or breakups open the door from routine AI use to reliance on it for personal dilemmas. By Greg Toppo | November 10, 2026 Eamonn Fitzmaurice/The 74, Getty Images By Greg Toppo November 10, 2026 Imagine you’re 14 and have just worked up the nerve to ask that pretty girl out, only to find out that she actually likes someone else. As a heartbroken eighth-grader, a generation ago you had few options: tell a friend or parent, or simply sit with the pain. Today, you can open an AI chatbot any time of day or night and engage with an endlessly patient companion programmed, no matter what, to make you feel better. To Alison Lee, chief research and development officer at The Rithm Project, a nonprofit focused on human connection in the age of AI, that conversation might actually help. It could even serve to help build that heartbroken teen into “a more resilient, kind, thoughtful human moving forward,” she said in an interview.

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