Annabel Blake

Restoration, Exploration and Transformation: How Youth Engage Character.AI for Fun, Feels and Finding themselves

Young people are among the fastest adopters of generative AI, yet research emphasises adult-designed tools and experiments rather than playful, self-directed youth use. We analysed discourse from 4,172 users in Character.AI’s official Discord, finding that the most engaged users were predominantly adolescents (50% age…