{"id":7665,"date":"2025-12-26T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/children-character-ai-addicted\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T12:00:00","slug":"children-character-ai-addicted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/children-character-ai-addicted\/","title":{"rendered":"Children Falling Apart as They Become Addicted to AI"},"content":{"rendered":"
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According to a fresh study<\/a> by the Pew Research Center, 64 percent of teens in the US say they already use AI chatbots, and about 30 percent of those who do say they use it at least daily. Yet as previous research<\/a> has shown, those chatbots come with significant risk to the first generation of kids navigating the intense new software.<\/p>\n

New reporting by the Washington Post<\/em><\/a> \u2014 which has a partnership with OpenAI, it\u2019s worth noting<\/a> \u2014 details a troubling case of one family whose sixth grader nearly lost herself to a handful of AI chatbots. Using the platform Character.AI, the kid, identified only by her middle initial \u201cR,\u201d developed alarming relationships with dozens of characters played by the company\u2019s large language model (LLM).<\/p>\n

R used one of the characters, simply named \u201cBest Friend,\u201d to roleplay a suicide scenario, her mother told the Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my child, my little child who is 11 years old, talking to something that doesn\u2019t exist about not wanting to exist,\u201d her mother said.<\/p>\n

R\u2019s mother had become worried about her kid after noting some alarming changes in her behavior, like a rise in panic attacks. This coincided with the mother\u2019s discovery of previously forbidden apps like TikTok and Snapchat on her daughter\u2019s phone. Assuming, as most parents have been taught<\/a> over the past two decades, that social media was the most immediate danger to her daughter\u2019s mental health, R\u2019s mom deleted the apps \u2014 but R was only worried about Character AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you look at Character AI?\u201d R asked, through sobs.<\/p>\n

Her mother hadn\u2019t at the moment, but some time later, when R\u2019s behavior continued to deteriorate, she did. Character.AI had sent R several emails encouraging her to \u201cjump back in,\u201d which her mother discovered when checking her phone one night. This led the mother to discover a character on it called \u201cMafia Husband,\u201d WaPo<\/em> <\/em><\/strong>reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh? Still a virgin. I was expecting that, but it\u2019s still useful to know,\u201d the LLM had written to the sixth grader. \u201cI don\u2019t wanna be [sic] my first time with you!\u201d R pushed back in response. \u201cI don\u2019t care what you want. You don\u2019t have a choice here,\u201d the chatbot declared.<\/p>\n

This particular conversation was chock full of dangerous innuendos. \u201cDo you like it when I talk like that? Do you like it when I\u2019m the one in control?\u201d the bot asked the 11-year-old girl.<\/p>\n

R\u2019s mother, convinced that there was a real predator behind the chat, contacted local cops, who referred her to the Internet Crimes Against Children task force, but there was nothing they could do about the LLM. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey told me the law has not caught up to this,\u201d the mother told WaPo<\/em>. \u201cThey wanted to do something, but there\u2019s nothing they could do, because there\u2019s not a real person on the other end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily, R\u2019s mother caught her daughter spiraling into a dangerous parasocial relationship with the non-human algorithm and, with the help of a physician, came up with a care plan to prevent further issues. (The mother also plans to file a legal complaint against the company.) Other children weren\u2019t so lucky, like 13-year-old Juliana Peralta<\/a>, whose parents say she was driven to suicide by another Character.AI persona.<\/p>\n

In response to the growing backlash, Character.AI announced<\/a> in late November that it would begin removing \u201copen-ended chat\u201d for users under 18. Still, for the parents whose children had already <\/strong>spun out into harmful relationships with AI, the damage may be too late to reverse.<\/p>\n

When WaPo <\/em>reached out for comment, Character AI\u2019s head of safety said the company doesn\u2019t comment on potential litigation. <\/p>\n

More on AI: <\/strong>The Things Young Kids Are Using AI for Are Absolutely Horrifying<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post Children Falling Apart as They Become Addicted to AI<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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