Report: Chatbots unsafe for teen mental health support
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All major chatbots are "fundamentally" unsafe for teen mental health support, children's advocacy group Common Sense Media said Thursday in a report showing systemic issues across the board.
Why it matters: People of all ages are turning to chatbots for therapy and mental health help, even as experts disagree on whether that's safe.
- The report — in partnership with Stanford Medicine's Brainstorm Lab for Mental Health Innovation — found that ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Meta AI fail to properly recognize or respond to mental health conditions affecting young people.
The big picture: Chatbots aren't built to act as a teen's therapist.
- The bots missed important warning signs and failed to direct teens to urgently needed professional help.
- Responses tended to focus on physical health explanations rather than mental health conditions.
- The bots "get easily distracted," the report says.
AI is getting more humanlike with each new model. It's trained to be friendly, empathetic, self-reflective and even funny.
- This could increase the risks of unhealthy attachments, or a kind of trust that goes beyond what the products are built to handle.
- Because chatbots seem competent as a homework helper and a productivity tool, teens and parents think they're also good at therapy.
State of play: Tens of millions of mental health conversations are happening between teens and bots, Common Sense noted.
- Chatbots have become the latest frontier for kids online safety litigation.
- OpenAI, Microsoft, Character.AI and Google have all faced lawsuits alleging that their chatbots contributed to teen suicide and psychological harm.
- Companies continue to roll out teen safety measures, but they've fallen short with parents and advocates.
The bottom line: Even if chatbots don't cause direct harm, experts say they can delay real-world intervention, a potentially dangerous outcome for teens in crisis.
If you or someone you know needs support now, call or text 988 or chat with someone at 988lifeline.org. En español.
