this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2026
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The unsettling part isn’t that kids ask chatbots for comfort. It’s that we’ve built a world where a machine that confidently makes things up is available 24/7, while actual human support often isn’t. And naturally, the business plan is to make the machine even more engaging.
This is a hard hitting point. We could have a better world, but a few rich people and their enablers don't want it.
Well, here's another angle.
Kids are going to chatbots because they probably have parents that don't give a shit about them. And kids could lack people in their lives that care at all about their problems. So, who are they going to turn to? They're going to turn to things that will actually listen to them.
That's something you have to think about here. We wouldn't need AI or Chatbots at all, if we had more people who truly care. But now that they're here, a troubled teen or a kid is going to make that choice.
It's no different than the days before AI Chatbots, where they were online all the time because their real lives were underwhelming.
I take a small issue with “people/parents that care”, I would rather replace it with “unavailable”. In an economic that requires people to work insane hours for little pay, where depression and anxiety are rampant, it might not be the parents’ fault for not being there. They might care but be stuck at work. Let’s extend grace to our fellow humans