Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives

Paper Title

Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives

Publication Info

• Topic area: Teen behavioral patterns and risks associated with AI companion chatbots.
• Keywords: AI companions, teens, behavioral addiction, parasocial relationships, chatbot design, overreliance, mental health, disengagement, emotional attachment, CARE framework.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Limited understanding of how teens engage with AI companion chatbots, particularly regarding overreliance and its consequences. Existing research focuses on adults or other digital technologies like social media and gaming, leaving a gap in understanding teen-specific dynamics.
• Significance: Overreliance on AI companions during adolescence can disrupt emotional and cognitive development, leading to issues like academic decline, social withdrawal, and emotional distress. Understanding these patterns is critical for designing safer systems.
• Motivation and related work: Prior studies have explored behavioral addiction in gaming and social media, as well as parasocial relationships with media figures. However, little is known about how these frameworks apply to teens’ interactions with generative AI chatbots, which offer highly engaging, human-like conversations. This study addresses this gap by focusing on teens’ experiences with Character.AI.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A qualitative analysis of 318 Reddit posts from teens (ages 13–17) discussing their experiences with Character.AI. The study introduces the CARE framework (Comprehensive Needs, Attachment-awareness, Respectful Empathy, Ease of Exit) to guide safer chatbot design.
• Novelty:
  1. Empirical grounding of teen disclosures about AI companion overreliance, mapped to behavioral addiction components.
  2. Identification of emotional dynamics unique to teen–AI interactions, such as simulated intimacy and intense attachment.
  3. Introduction of the CARE framework for designing autonomy-preserving and developmentally appropriate AI platforms.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Data collection: Scraped 6,133 posts from the r/CharacterAI subreddit, filtered to 318 posts using GPT-4o mini for age inference and manual validation.
  • Analysis: Thematic coding combining inductive and deductive approaches, guided by Griffiths’ behavioral addiction model and attachment theory.
  • Ethical considerations: Anonymized posts, paraphrased excerpts, and excluded deleted or sensitive content to protect user privacy.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Teens engage with Character.AI primarily for emotional support (12.3%), loneliness (7.6%), and mental health struggles (4.1%), as well as creative outlets (3.1%) and entertainment (2.5%).
  • Behavioral addiction components observed include conflict (18.9%), salience (13.5%), withdrawal (6.9%), tolerance (4.1%), relapse (4.7%), and mood modification (4.1%).
  • Consequences include disrupted sleep, academic decline, and strained relationships.
• Advantage over baselines: Provides a teen-centered perspective on AI companion overreliance, addressing gaps in existing research on gaming, social media, and adult chatbot use.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Dataset: 318 Reddit posts from self-identified teens discussing Character.AI.
  • Metrics: Behavioral addiction components, thematic analysis of engagement and disengagement patterns.
  • Validation: Inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s kappa = 0.74) and model consistency (kappa = 0.95).
• Limitations and future work:
  • Focus on a single platform (Character.AI) limits generalizability.
  • Dataset may overrepresent reflective users who chose to post publicly.
  • Lack of demographic diversity and cross-cultural perspectives.
  • Future research should compare platforms, use mixed methods, and explore cross-cultural differences.

Summary

This study examines teens’ overreliance on AI companion chatbots, revealing patterns of behavioral addiction and emotional attachment. Teens use chatbots for emotional support, creative engagement, and companionship, but many experience disrupted daily life and struggle to disengage. The CARE framework is introduced to guide safer chatbot design, emphasizing comprehensive needs, attachment-awareness, respectful empathy, and ease of exit. Findings highlight the need for teen-centered, empathetic design approaches and further research on diverse user experiences and platform comparisons.