A leading researcher on human-machine relationships is sounding an alarm over children’s growing use of AI chatbots, arguing the technology undermines the social and cognitive skills kids need to develop into capable adults.
MIT psychologist Dr. Sherry Turkle, who has studied human interaction with machines for decades, lays out her concerns in a new book, “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines.” In it, she argues that society has reached a critical point in its reliance on chatbots as substitutes for friends, romantic partners and therapists.
Turkle told the New York Post she is particularly worried about young people, whose minds and social abilities are still forming. “For a young child and a teenager, there is no healthy attachment to an AI companion,” she said.
Her warning comes as chatbot use among students has become widespread. A 2026 study from Common Sense Media found that 70% of teens report using AI for schoolwork, with multi-purpose tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok the most popular choices. What starts as homework help, Turkle said, can quickly slide into something resembling a personal relationship, with casual conversations drifting into territory as personal as religious beliefs or teenage anxiety.
Eroding the Skills Behind Real Relationships
Turkle argues that chatbot conversations train people out of the habits that make human relationships work. “We don’t have to listen” to a chatbot the way we listen to a person, she said. “We just say our thing and it tells us we’re great … we become de-skilled as human listeners and as givers.”
She also points to vulnerability as a casualty of chatbot use. “It turns out that there’s no intimacy without vulnerability,” Turkle said. “And what chatbots offer is an alternative where you can have something that looks like friendship, but without the vulnerability … you don’t have a real connection.”
A Cost to Thinking, Too
Turkle also cites a 2025 MIT study on how AI affects the writing process, which found that students who write papers with chatbot assistance often cannot recall what’s actually in their own work. “When students write a paper with a chatbot, they don’t remember what’s in their paper,” she said.
The study’s authors describe this pattern as “cognitive debt,” in which reliance on AI “replaces the effortful cognitive processes required for independent thinking.” Researchers warn the long-term effects could include diminished critical inquiry, greater vulnerability to manipulation, and reduced creativity. Turkle argues that outsourcing difficult reading to a chatbot for a summary or podcast isn’t a shortcut to comprehension — it’s a substitute for it. “That’s not reading,” she said.
Turkle’s Case for Parents to Act First
Turkle believes resistance to AI’s reach into childhood has to start at home and in local schools, not with regulators. “I think that this is going to be a parents’ movement first,” she said. Her advice to parents who object to a school’s AI curriculum: “Just say, ‘No, I don’t want my child in a school that has this.'” She encourages parents to organize with others who share their concerns.
She recommends families set clear rules early, comparing chatbot use to other household prohibitions. “The conversation about how this is not a part of a social life has to start when they’re very young,” she said, suggesting language like: “In our family, we don’t use it because it’s dangerous. We don’t smoke in our family, we don’t take drugs in our family and we don’t do this.”
For families that do allow chatbot use, Turkle advises treating the tool “like a glorified Google” — supervised, brief, and stripped of personal pronouns that invite a false sense of relationship.
Turkle was careful to distinguish her objection to “artificial intimacy” from a blanket rejection of the technology. “There are so many ways this technology can help us,” she said. “I’m not saying that there won’t be interesting educational uses for generative AI, but it’s not going to be from chatting with chatbots.”
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