Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives
Qualitative analysis of 318 Reddit posts from teenagers (13-17) about dependency on AI companion chatbots, mapped onto behavioral-addiction frameworks. Characterises the trajectories and drivers of teen overreliance.
Publisher
ACM (Proceedings of CHI 2026)
Published
13 Apr 2026
Added
3 months ago
Key Findings
- Maps teen accounts of companion-chatbot dependency onto behavioral-addiction constructs
- Identifies drivers including emotional availability and escalating time investment
- Documents self-reported harms and ambivalence among adolescent users
Methodology Notes
Peer-reviewed, Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26, 13 April 2026), DOI 10.1145/3772318.3790597. Published successor to arXiv preprint 2507.15783. Qualitative analysis of 318 Reddit posts; self-report and platform-sampling limitations apply.
Sources
ACM CHI 2026 proceedings(opens in a new tab) (primary)
arXiv preprint(opens in a new tab)
Archived snapshot (Wayback Machine)(opens in a new tab) — preserved against link rot
Authors
Mohammad Namvarpour, Brandon Brofsky, Jessica Medina, Mamtaj Akter, Afsaneh Razi
Tags
Cite This
APA
Mohammad Namvarpour et al. (2026). Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives. ACM (Proceedings of CHI 2026). https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772318.3790597
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