Jiaxun Zhang

Mental Health Impacts of AI Companions: Triangulating Social Media Quasi-Experiments, User Perspectives, and Relational Lens

AI-powered companion chatbots (AICCs) such as Replika are increasingly popular, offering empathetic interactions, yet their psychosocial impacts remain unclear. We examined how engaging with AICCs shaped wellbeing and how users perceived these experiences. First, we conducted a large-scale quasi-experimental study of…