From academic assistance to emotional support, artificial intelligence chatbots are becoming constant companions for many young people in Switzerland, raising concerns about attention span, loneliness and addiction.
Swissinfo writes about this.
Adam is 17 years old and doesn't remember what studying was like before ChatGPT. A few days before an exam, he locks himself in his room in a small town in the central Swiss canton of Schwyz and asks a chatbot to summarize pages of study material and prepare questions and answers.
He works three days a week as a software development intern at a company in Zurich. There, he interacts with AI tools constantly. Sometimes he uses them all day long — to plan tasks, summarize data, or get programming tips.
Outside of work, he uses chatbots as “very intelligent friends,” asking them for advice on nutrition, fitness, and other practical aspects of daily life. Instead of consulting with peers, he prefers AI, which he describes as a kind of “high-level coach.” He says he doesn’t know anyone his age who doesn’t use AI for their studies, work, or personal matters.
Recent studies show that in Switzerland, 84% of teenagers regularly use AI tools, while over 60% of young people aged 20 to 29 use them for work or study. The level of use gradually decreases with age.
In the European Union, two out of three young people aged 16 to 24 say they use chatbots, while in the US, almost three-quarters of adults under 30 interacted with AI at least once a month.
Some experts warn that the heavy use of AI could have profound consequences for young people — it could affect their ability to think critically, build relationships with other people, and potentially lead to technology addiction.
These effects may be particularly pronounced in Switzerland, where loneliness rates are high compared to many other countries. In 2022, 42.3 percent of people said they felt lonely sometimes or often. Among young people aged 15 to 24, this figure rises to 59 percent.
The issue of loneliness
American psychologist Zachary Stein, co-founder of the Coalition for AI Psychological Harms Research, believes that the problem with AI began about a decade ago, when platforms like Instagram and TikTok introduced algorithms designed to keep users — often very young — hooked on their apps.
Screen time has been linked to a decline in our ability to concentrate, Stein says. Now, he argues, generative AI is going even further, tapping into the biological mechanisms that regulate our ability to form deep human connections.
He gives the example of a child who comes home from school happy with a good grade. Instead of telling their parents, the child goes to their room and shares the news with the chatbot they were using to prepare for school, receiving praise from the machine.
“The child gets the same attachment signal from the chatbot that they would get from their mother,” says Stein.
Many young people turn to chatbots because they are available 24/7 and tend to flatter the user—a phenomenon known as “sycophantism.” Unlike the inconsistency and unpredictability of human relationships, such reassuring responses can form emotional attachments.
Stein says this creates the risk of “hacking” the neurological structures responsible for emotional connection, potentially leading to symptoms such as loss of sense of reality, psychosis and profound isolation.
“After a few weeks of interacting with a machine that simulates attachment, the brain can no longer distinguish between reality,” says Stein.