<p>Your next best friend might be living in a server farm in Nevada.</p><p>That's not a joke, just where we've arrived.&nbsp;</p><p>In the past year, a third of the UK population has used a chatbot for companionship or emotional support, according to the AI Security Institute's <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.aisi.gov.uk/frontier-ai-trends-report#6-societal-impacts">Frontier AI Trends Repor</a>t. Eight per cent do this weekly, four per cent every single day. If AI friendship hasn't knocked on your family's door yet, it soon will.</p><blockquote><p><strong>Key Takeaway:</strong> Research shows AI companionship doesn't cure loneliness; it deepens it. Studies from Aalto University and MIT link regular chatbot companionship to greater isolation, lower wellbeing, and addictive use patterns, especially among people already lonely or socially isolated. The people most in need of connection are the ones most at risk from AI friendship.&nbsp;</p></blockquote><p>I recently had the privilege of giving a keynote talk on this at the brilliant <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://everythingconference.org/">Everything Conference</a> in London. The 700-strong audience was warm – as you'll hear, we had a lot of laughs (I’ll forgive the organisers for putting me on after famed Oxford academic John Lennox, though – a tough act to follow!). But this is one serious topic. You can watch the full talk below.</p><div data-youtube-video="" style="display: flex; justify-content: center;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bkikI_eS5rQ" start="0" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" style="text-align: center; max-width: 100%;"></iframe></div><p id="0b0849f4-8780-47db-afcd-fa8746734f22" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 18pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 17pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><strong>We're Living Through a Friendship Recession</strong></span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You've seen the headlines. Call it the loneliness epidemic or the friendship recession, something is wrong. Every fifth person you pass on the street has no close friends. Every fourth person is regularly lonely. Humans long for relationship and feel its absence deeply.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Into this gap has stepped what’s now called the loneliness economy: clubs that charge hefty monthly fees to help you meet others, services to help you rent friends by the hour (I kid you not), and now, the ability to create your own AI friend from scratch.</span></p><h2 id="72ce9c42-a1cd-4ef0-8b62-6ff29c65244d" data-toc-id="72ce9c42-a1cd-4ef0-8b62-6ff29c65244d" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;"><strong>Why We're Choosing AI Friends Over Real Ones</strong></h2><p>Apps like Replika and Character.ai let you design a companion with your choice of name, face and personality. Friend.com sells a chat-enabled pendant you can talk to throughout the day, with a billboard campaign promising it will "ride the subway with you" and "never leave dirty dishes in the sink." These apps and more promise to create the ultimate friend. Friend.com founder Avu Schiffman has even declared that the future of relationship is digital.</p><p>People give three reasons for preferring an AI friend to a human one: it's always available, it's never judgemental, and it offers friendship entirely on our terms. Unlike a human friend, you can confess your worst moment to a chatbot and it will tell you that you're only doing your best, and if it ever was to challenge you, you can fix such a ‘glitch’ with one click on a dropdown menu.</p><p>But here's what stopped me in my tracks preparing this talk: those three qualities we want in an AI friend – always available, endlessly affirming, a friendship entirely on our terms – are also three classic traits of narcissistic behaviour. A friend that’s always available isn’t a friend, but a servant. A friend that only affirms isn’t a friend, but a sycophant. A friendship built on our terms isn’t friendship, it’s a transaction. So no wonder AI friendship instils narcissistic behaviour in us. Placing us as the central beneficiary, it draws us into a toxic relationship but makes us the toxic friend.</p><h2 id="ad2a4922-266d-4bbe-be24-8792a9459861" data-toc-id="ad2a4922-266d-4bbe-be24-8792a9459861" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;"><strong>What the Friendship Research Actually Shows</strong></h2><p>Some early research suggested AI companions might ease loneliness. The problem with these studies, however, is that they relied on very small datasets – in some cases, tracking a mere week’s chatbot use. Longer, more probing studies are now telling a more troubling story.&nbsp;</p><p>Researchers at Aalto University combined large-scale Reddit data with in-depth interviews and found that while AI companions could comfort lonely users in the moment, users’ online language increasingly showed signs of distress and loneliness over time. Other work backs this up: regular chatbot companionship has been linked to greater isolation, lower wellbeing, and patterns of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mar.21899">addictive use</a>, with the risks concentrated among the people most vulnerable to them – the lonely and socially isolated – as <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.12605">MIT researchers</a> have found.</p><p>It gets worse. According to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.01395">other studies</a>, people who lean on AI companions become more demanding of others, more convinced they're right when they're wrong, and less able to resolve conflict. That's the real cost of an AI friend. It doesn't just fail to cure our loneliness; it trains us to become worse friends to the humans in our lives.</p><h2 id="52cc567e-942a-4feb-9086-0f7614d4a9a1" data-toc-id="52cc567e-942a-4feb-9086-0f7614d4a9a1" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;"><strong>What a Real Friend Can Do That AI Never Will</strong></h2><p>At Friendship Lab we define a real friend as someone we can talk to, depend on, grow with and enjoy. Becoming that kind of friend is a sacred calling. Having one is a sacred trust. In the talk I end with the story of Erica and Emily, and an act that no AI chatbot could ever replicate. If the AI friend trend continues, we’ll rob ourselves of the finest things human beings can offer – touch, warmth, and safe, platonic physical presence.</p><p>If you're wondering how to make real friends rather than synthetic ones, start small: reach out to one person this week, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.friendshiplab.org/newsletter">ask a real question</a> and stay curious about the answer, or save years of trial and error by taking our proven friendship course. Overcoming loneliness starts with one honest conversation, not one more app.</p><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 12pt; margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><strong>The future of friendship is, and always will be, human.</strong></span></p><hr><h3 id="f572a584-4dab-45c1-bf6a-7e46197524ac" data-toc-id="f572a584-4dab-45c1-bf6a-7e46197524ac" style="margin-top: 12pt; margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: left; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.2;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To invite Sheridan to speak at your conference, tell us about your event </span><a target="_blank" href="https://www.sheridanvoysey.com/speaking/invite/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>here</u></span></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.&nbsp;</span></h3><hr><h2 id="5c72779d-bec9-4ef5-8261-47c1a99dcd5a" data-toc-id="5c72779d-bec9-4ef5-8261-47c1a99dcd5a" style="margin-top: 12pt; margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Common Questions</span></h2><h3 id="18d2d026-3533-447f-a8ef-378d8143df6b" data-toc-id="18d2d026-3533-447f-a8ef-378d8143df6b" style="text-align: left; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.2;">Can an AI chatbot really cure loneliness?&nbsp;</h3><p>No. Longer-term studies show regular AI companion use is linked to greater isolation and lower wellbeing over time, particularly for people who are already lonely.</p><h3 id="707012f2-32e8-46f4-837c-2d406b622ee2" data-toc-id="707012f2-32e8-46f4-837c-2d406b622ee2" style="text-align: left; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.2;">Why do people turn to AI friends instead of real ones?</h3><p>AI companions offer three things people want: constant availability, unconditional affirmation, and friendship entirely on their own terms. These same three traits are classic markers of narcissistic behaviour.</p><h3 id="4a71022a-f6a6-4beb-9482-2d6aaebc19db" data-toc-id="4a71022a-f6a6-4beb-9482-2d6aaebc19db" style="text-align: left; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.2;">How do I make real friends instead of relying on AI?&nbsp;</h3><p>Start small. Reach out to one person this week, ask a real question and stay curious about their answer. Take your feelings to a human, not a chatbot. Learn friendships skills to build fulfilling relationships.</p><p><br></p>

A third of the population now turns to AI chatbots for companionship. Sheridan Voysey unpacks what the research really shows about the cost of a "friend" that never challenges you.

An AI 'Friend' Won't Cure Your Loneliness. Here's What the Research Actually Shows

An AI 'Friend' Won't Cure Your Loneliness. Here's What the Research Actually Shows

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