Young people leaning on AI chatbots for emotional support or personal advice are significantly more likely to struggle with serious emotional problems, feel isolated, and doubt that they truly matter to others, a new uOttawa study warns.
One in five students used AI for emotional needs
A new study examined responses from 39,761 students in grades 4 through 12 across four Ontario school boards. These students filled out surveys between May 2025 and March 2026 as part of the Ontario Health and Peer Relations Study.
Out of everyone surveyed, 8,408 students (about 21%) said they had turned to an AI chatbot for help with their feelings or for advice about relationships, whether with friends, family, or others. The tendency to seek emotional support from AI was higher among older students, as well as among racialized and gender-diverse youth compared to their white or male peers.
Kamilla Bonnesen, a postdoctoral fellow at the Brain and Behaviour Lab at the University of Ottawa, explains, "Of almost 40,000 students, those who leaned on AI for emotional support were much more likely to be struggling with clinical-level emotional issues, more loneliness, and a lower sense of mattering."
Bonnesen also points out: "This doesn't mean that AI is causing these struggles. Instead, using AI in this way might be a sign that a young person needs more human connection and support."
Emotional use stands apart from schoolwork
The study found that students who used AI a lot for schoolwork were also more likely to use it for emotional reasons. Among students who sought emotional support from AI, 57.7% met the study's criteria for serious emotional problems, compared with 29.2% of those who didn't use AI in this way. These students also reported feeling lonelier and less valued by others.
Students completed anonymous, school-based surveys that covered their AI use, emotional health, loneliness, and sense of mattering. The researchers used advanced statistical models to account for the fact that students were grouped within schools and to handle any missing answers. Even after accounting for things like demographics, loneliness, mattering, and academic use of AI, using AI for emotional support was still linked to a 26% higher prevalence of clinical-level emotional difficulties.
Bonnesen co-conceptualized the study with Tracy Vaillancourt , Canada Research Chair in Youth Mental Health and Violence Prevention and Full Professor in the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Education. Bonnesen also led the statistical analysis and wrote up the results, including the handling of missing data and interpreting what they found.
An invitation to reconnect
"As chatbots become part of young people's daily lives, parents, educators and mental health professionals shouldn't just ask if youth are using AI, but why," says Professor Vaillancourt.
"When a student is turning to AI for emotional reasons, it's a good opportunity to start an open, nonjudgmental conversation," Vaillancourt adds. "It is a chance to reconnect a struggling student with meaningful human support."
Since the study was cross-sectional, it shows associations but can't prove whether distress drives youth to AI, or whether using AI might make distress worse. Still, the results suggest that turning to AI for emotional support is a sign worth paying attention to, even if it doesn't prove cause and effect.
The study, titled " Affective Generative Artificial Intelligence Use and Youth Mental Health ," was published in JAMA Pediatrics. Authorship: Kamilla Bonnesen, PhD; Amanda Krygsman, PhD; Sarah Hobson, MA; Daphne Korczak, MD, MSc; Tracy Vaillancourt, PhD.
