When I was 18, the thing I talked to at 1:00 AM wasn't a chatbot. I just had tumblr (shout out to all the tumblr girls) and my actual journal.

Funny side story about my journal:

The first semester of my freshman year of college, I was at the University of Puget Sound and fresh out of my residential treatment center. I was sooooo excited to be at college (some might even say manic lol). So I show up to my French film class, and the professor says (in French) that the homework for the whole semester is to write a few pages that continue the conversation from class "en notre journal" every day. Even though I technically knew that meant "in your notebook," I heard the word "journal" and kinda just blanked out the first part of his sentence and ran with it.

So fully sober 18-year-old Hayley, who hadn't been around boys or "normal" girls in like two years, wrote in that notebook about all the ups, downs, and wayyy too intimate details of college life. In French. Every. Single. Day.

It hadn't really crossed my mind that we'd eventually have to turn this "journal" in to the professor. Halfway through the semester, he asks for our notebooks back. I still think everyone is doing the same assignment as me, so I turn mine in, no problem. A few days later, he emails me to ask for a meeting outside of class. I show up to that meeting a little embarrassed (I spared no detail when talking about everything I was doing that semester) but excited to hear his thoughts.

He motions for me to sit down and says, in his French accent but in English, "Hayley…what do you think the assignment is that I gave you?"

I, of course, tell him that it is to write in our journal about our lives every day, in French. Oh, but how wrong I was.

He says, "It is to write about the conversations we have in class each day and reflect on the topic further. But honestly, this is the most entertaining "journal" I've read in years, and you clearly need this as an outlet. I don't have the heart to tell you to stop, so you can just continue what you're doing for the rest of the semester."

I was simultaneously mortified about what I shared with him and proud of myself for being an entertaining French writer. He had read every word and even commented in the margins with some life advice here and there. LMAO. So, I carried on writing about my life for the rest of the semester, excited to get his French take on how I was living, building relationships, and becoming part of the campus community. Needless to say, that professor became a trusted mentor for the rest of my time at that college.

So that was my outlet at age 18. lol.

Looking back, it was as if I had prompted ChatGPT to be a judgmental but hilarious French mentor and to give me feedback on what I'm doing right and what's making my life harder than it needs to be. "And be honest, don't sugarcoat it."

But here's my actual point in telling you all this:

My journal talked back. It remembered me, it gave me feedback, it even got funny in the margins. What made it safe was the human on the other end. A real professor who knew me, gave me a new perspective, and decided to show up for me, both in my journal and IRL.

So many of the young adults we work with now have a journal that talks back, too. Theirs just doesn't have a human behind it.

Now, this may make me sound like a boomer, but in my opinion, what young adults today are reaching for to vent to, for validation, and for feedback is more dangerous than anything I had. The headlines and the lawsuits are not hype: an AI that answers, that remembers, that tells a lonely young adult exactly what they want to hear at their lowest moment can pull them somewhere genuinely bad, and some families have paid the worst price for it.

What makes leaning (solely) on AI for support and validation so dangerous is the same thing that made my situation so valuable: it stood in for a relationship while needing nothing from me.

So when a parent tells me their young adult would rather talk to an AI than to them, I don't just hear a tech problem. I hear something I recognize from the inside, and I want to tell you what it actually means for your young adult child.

The version we hear from families

We've heard a version of this story from many families.

One parent, for example, finds her son up late at night talking to someone, laughing at their jokes. At first, she thinks he's talking to a friend. Then she realizes it's an AI that remembers his name, remembers his day, asks him follow-up questions, and he actually seems to tell things to it.

Another parent has a different version of the same problem. His daughter is fine on paper. She's enrolled in college, passing her classes, coexisting with a roommate, has a meal plan, and has thirty thousand people within a half-mile of her dorm. He can't really point to a single thing that's wrong, but somehow, he can feel how alone she is. He later finds out she had a panic attack during the semester. When that anxiety hit, she shared that she didn't text a friend or even her parents; she told ChatGPT about the panic attack before she told anyone with a pulse.

Where every parent's brain goes first

If you're either of these parents, or have another version of this story, I see two instincts firing at once.

The first: something is wrong with my child, clinically, and we need a professional to find it and fix it.

The second: the access to AI is the problem, and I need to make it go away.

My hot take:

What parents have found is not evidence that their young adult is broken or anti-social or even depressed. Stuck isn't sick. A young person reaching for an online friend at 1 in the morning isn't showing you a new pathology. They're showing you, more clearly than they could probably say out loud, the exact shape of what's missing from their life.

One thing I don't want to gloss over. Some of the news driving this conversation involves young people who died and lawsuits brought by their families. The danger in these products is real, and nothing here is a substitute for crisis care. If your young adult is in danger, that is a different and urgent conversation, and you should have that convo with a professional today. What follows is about the much larger group of young people who are not in crisis. Just alone.

Okay, but let's give the bot its due for a sec

Let's look at what ChatGPT actually offers a young adult today.

It's available every hour of every day. It remembers what they told it. It never sounds disappointed. It doesn't compare them to a sibling, bring up the thing they're avoiding, or flinch when they say something ugly about themselves. It asks how they are, waits for the answer, and then validates their feelings.

Look at that list again. That is not a description of software.

It's a description of a relationship.

A very specific relationship. The exact relationship your young adult doesn't currently have. Which means that the list is more useful than it looks. It's a map. Your young adult just told you, line by line, what's missing.

And before you decide your family is uniquely in trouble: what you're looking at is the most ordinary thing in the world right now. A 2025 Common Sense Media survey found that nearly three in four teenagers have used an AI companion, and more than half use it regularly. A third have chosen to talk to AI about something serious rather than talking to a real person. Roughly the same share said those conversations felt as satisfying as, or more satisfying than, talking to their actual friends. (Those numbers are for teens, the generation right behind your young adult, who are growing up treating this as normal.)

For young adults specifically, an April 2026 United Healthcare report found that more than 6 in 10 people ages 18-28, in college and out of it, reported a mental or behavioral health struggle in the past year, and more than 1 in 4 who turned to an AI platform for health reasons used it for companionship and emotional support. A separate 2026 estimate put the figure at roughly 1 in 5 young people using AI chatbots for mental health advice.

This isn't something going wrong in your house alone. It's a whole generation quietly routing their inner life through a cloud-based substitute for a real human, because this is the one who answered in their lowest moments.

Why "just ban it" misses the whole point

Almost every headline lands on the same fix, and it's a supply-side fix. Ban it. Age-gate it. Legislate it. California's SB 243 became the first state law to regulate these companion apps this year, and a federal bill is moving to bar minors from using them. Definitely necessary and reasonable steps.

But pull the bot away from a lonely young adult, and you're left with a lonely young adult and no bot. The supply was never the cause. The demand is the signal. Your young adult built a relationship with the only thing that was reliably there. Taking it away doesn't fill the hole. It just turns the light back off.

So let's ask a better question

The AI isn't the problem to take away. It's the clearest map you have of what's missing. And what's missing is a person.

The chatbot is a smoke detector. It's going off because something is missing, and it tells you exactly what that is: something consistent, available, and safe to talk to. The mistake is to hear the alarm and run at the smoke detector with a hammer. The move is to look for the fire.

And the fire is that your young adult has quietly decided AI might be the safest relationship available to them.

You don't fix that by getting rid of AI. You fix it with a person.

So the question is not: "How do I get rid of the thing my young adult is talking to?"

The question parents should be asking: "Who, IRL, is going to talk to and invest in my young adult?"

Part 2 coming next week…

💚 - Hayley