20% of kids have a chatbot as there therapist?

I see this glass being half full. Within 48 months these chatbots will be infinitely more effective. Is a finely tuned chatbot better than a therapist? Of course not. Is it better than no therapist, the baseline for most kids...likely yes.

Should most kids have a mechanical dog, instead of a real one? F-ck yah! BTW, I have an awesome personal robot.

Chatbots and kids' mental health

By Tina Reed, Peter Sullivan and Maya Goldman

Axios News · Jun 03, 2026

Nearly 1 in 5 youths ages 12 to 21 said they used AI chatbots for advice or help when feeling sad, angry, nervous or stressed, RAND researchers wrote in JAMA Pediatrics.

Why it matters: Chatbots aren't built to act as therapists and can miss important warning signs or mental health risks that show up subtly.

By the numbers: 19.2% of young people, or about 8.2 million nationwide, turned to chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Character.AI and Meta AI for mental health advice in 2025.

That's up from 13.1% in a similar RAND survey a year earlier and almost the same as the proportion of young people who reported receiving counseling from a mental health professional.

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of those who used the bots said they hadn't told anyone.

The study found that use was more common among females and among young adults ages 18 to 21 than among younger teens.

Youths who had spoken with a physician about their mental health in the prior six months also were more likely to report using the bots for mental health advice.