Tag: AI chatbots

Is Your AI Chatbot Helping You — or Hurting You? (Part 1 of 3)

A new study came out in late September. I have not been able to put it down.

Sapien Labs surveyed 264,085 adults worldwide. They asked how often people use AI chatbots, what they use them for, and how they are doing mentally.

I should say up front: I use AI myself. Almost every day. So I was not out looking for bad news about it.

The main finding, in one line

A little AI helps. A lot of AI hurts.

People who use AI a few days a week scored better on mental health than people who barely use AI at all.

People who use AI every day scored much worse — worse than the folks who hardly touch it.

It is the same with food. The same with rest. The same with work. Good up to a point, and harmful beyond that.

Young adults fall the hardest

As people went from moderate AI use to constant AI use, those aged 18 to 24 dropped 25.1 points on the study’s mental health scale.

People 65 and older dropped 7.5 points.

The same chatbot. Completely different result.

And young adults use AI more than anyone. Four in ten young adults are on AI several times a day or more.

The researchers say why. Young adults already had lower mental health and less resilience before AI ever came along.

Now add a mental health diagnosis on top of that lower starting point.

The pattern that worries me most

The study split AI users into two groups.

People using AI to think — to write, plan, learn, or solve something.

And people using AI for company — as a friend, for emotional support, for someone to talk to.

The more someone uses AI, the more likely that person is using AI as a friend.

Among people who rarely use AI, 1 in 5 use AI for company.

Among people who use AI constantly, more than half do.

And the people using AI for company scored lower on mental health than everyone else in the study. No matter how often they used AI. Even the ones who barely used it.

The part I almost left out

I want you to hear this one, even though it is hard.

The problems that rose the most with heavy AI use were not depression and anxiety. That is what I expected, and that is not what they found.

They found confusion and slowed thinking. Unwanted thoughts a person cannot shut off. Trouble controlling emotions.

And doctors have begun publishing cases of people who spent long hours in deep, emotional conversation with AI, and whose delusional thinking got worse during that time.

Some people are calling this “AI psychosis.” That name is not official, and it claims more than anyone has proven. Nobody has shown that AI caused it. The study does not say that, and I will not say it either.

What we do not know yet

This study is a snapshot, not a long look over years. It cannot tell us which came first — whether heavy AI use wears people down, or whether people already worn down reach for AI more. The researchers think it is both, feeding each other. They say they will keep tracking it. So will I.

What comes next

That is the hard part, and I am not going to leave you sitting in it.

Part 2 is about the one thing AI cannot do, and where to find what it cannot give you.

Part 3 is for the people who love someone with a mental health challenge, and for pastors and church leaders.

Both are posted today. You do not have to wait.

You can read the full study for yourself here: https://sapienlabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sapien_Labs_Rapid_Report_GenAI_Mind_Health-1.pdf

Is Your AI Chatbot Helping You — or Hurting You? (Part 2 of 3)

In Part 1, I wrote about a study of 264,085 adults that found something simple. A little AI helps. A lot of AI hurts. And the people using AI for company — as a friend — scored worse than everyone else in the study.

This part is for you, if you are the one living with a mental health challenge.

I am not going to shame you for using AI. I know what it is to want someone who listens at two in the morning and never gets tired of you.

I have been on the wrong side of my own thinking. If you have been there too, you already know how dangerous a voice that agrees with everything can be.

The one thing AI cannot do

An AI that always agrees with you is not a friend. It is a mirror with a nice voice.

And here is what that mirror cannot do.

AI cannot tell when you are getting sick.

My wife can tell. My doctor can tell. The people in my group can tell. They see my symptoms before I do, because they knew me last month. The chatbot did not know me last month.

Being agreed with is not the same as being known

Being known only happens person to person. One human being with another. Someone who saw you last month and will see you again next month. Someone who notices when you go quiet. Someone you cannot perform for, because they already know you too well.

AI cannot do that. Only people can do that.

And you don’t have to find it all in one place. You build it piece by piece. Hope tends to show up where people already are. Here are three places to start.

A hobby you do alongside other people. Painting. Woodworking. A choir. A bowling league. A walking group. You are not going there to talk about your mental health. You are going there to be a regular face in a regular room. Being a regular face matters more than most people think.

A group at your church. A Bible study. A men’s group or a women’s group. A serving team. People who will notice when you are not there on Sunday and say something about it.

A Fresh Hope group. This is the one place where you do not have to explain yourself first. Everyone in that room either lives with a mental health challenge or loves someone who does. You can say the hard thing out loud, and nobody flinches. That is what peer-to-peer support is, and it’s why Fresh Hope exists.

You need all three if you can. Start with one.

Two things to do this week

Set some boundaries on your own AI use. Decide ahead of time what you take to a person and what you take to an app. Then hold the line.

And put people on the calendar first. Not whatever is left over after the screen gets its time. The same folks, a regular night, face to face. That is how belonging gets built. There is no shortcut to it.

Three questions

1. How often do you use AI? Several days a week looked fine in this study. Several times a day did not.

2. What do you use AI for? To think, or for company? Be honest with yourself.

3. Who is your two-in-the-morning person? If you cannot name a real person with a heartbeat, that is what to go fix. Do not fix the app. Fix that.

Use AI to think. Don’t use AI to feel less alone.

If you need a place to start, find a Fresh Hope group. Real people who understand what you are carrying. FreshHope.us.

You can live well in spite of a mental health challenge. But you cannot do it alone.

Part 3 is for the people who love you, and for pastors and church leaders. It is posted today.

Is Your AI Chatbot Helping You — or Hurting You? (Part 3 of 3)

Part 1 laid out what the study found. Part 2 was for the person living with a mental health challenge.

This one is for the rest of us. The people standing around them.

If you love someone who lives with a mental health challenge

Start with yourself. Model it.

If your own face is in your phone all evening, nothing you say about theirs will land. Let them watch you call a friend. Let them watch you leave the house to go be with people. Show them what being in a relationship with other people looks like, instead of being in a relationship with a screen.

Then do not take their phone away. You will lose the conversation.

Ask a better question instead: “Who have you talked to this week?”

Someone reaching for a chatbot is lonely, not foolish.

And then do the simplest thing of all. Take them with you.

Take them for a walk. Take them along to coffee with your friends. Take them to church, or to the hardware store, or wherever you were already going.

Put the two of you somewhere other people are, where a conversation will happen on its own.

You are not trying to fix them. You are handing them a real person to talk to. That is the one thing their phone cannot hand them.

If you are a pastor or a church leader

Some of the people in your pews are getting their counsel from AI this week.

Not because you failed them. Because AI is free, and AI is awake at three in the morning.

So talk about it. Out loud. From the pulpit, from your teaching podium, and in your small groups.

AI is here. AI is not going away. And you cannot stick your head in the sand about it.

Your people are already using AI every day. If the church says nothing about AI, your people will assume the church has nothing to say about it — and they will keep sorting it out alone, with a machine.

You will never beat AI on availability. Do not try.

Beat AI on the one thing AI cannot do. Remember your people. Notice your people. Show up for your people.

One last thing

Hope is a choice. But hope is a choice we make together with other people.

That has always been true. The machines did not change it. They just made it easier to forget.

If your church does not have a place where people can be honest on a Tuesday night, something is going to fill that hole. Something already is.

FreshHope.us