Half of surveyed US teens distrust AI companion advice
A nationally representative NORC survey of 1,060 US teens found most have tried AI companions, but trust and satisfaction still lag human relationships.
- Historical event
- July 16, 2025
- First source published
- July 16, 2025
- Site publication
- September 18, 2026
What happened
On 16 July 2025, Common Sense Media published 'Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions', a spotlight by Michael B. Robb and Supreet Mann. A same-day press release framed the figure as a call for stronger safeguards. NORC at the University of Chicago fielded the survey from 30 April to 14 May 2025, reaching 1,060 US teens aged 13-17 via a probability panel (719 completes) plus a nonprobability panel (341 completes), calibrated to a representative sample. Common Sense Media funded the survey, credited to the McGovern Foundation, the Siegel Family Endowment and two donors.
What the documents show
The full report states 72 percent of teens had used an AI companion at least once and 52 percent qualified as regular users. Thirty-three percent used companions for social interaction or relationships: conversation practice, emotional support, roleplay, friendship or romance. Forty-six percent viewed companions mainly as a tool. Half distrusted companions' information, while 23 percent trusted it quite a bit or completely. Thirty-one percent rated AI conversations as satisfying or more satisfying than real friends, yet 80 percent still spent more time with human friends. Thirty-four percent reported discomfort with a companion's response, 33 percent had chosen one over a person for a serious conversation, and 24 percent had shared personal information with one.
The mechanism
The margin of sampling error is stated as plus or minus 4.2 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level, a figure applying to a blended sample built from a known-probability panel and a supplementary nonprobability panel adjusted by statistical calibration, not a simple random sample. That is what lets the report describe its 1,060 respondents as representative of US teens, not only of one panel's members. The report's other mechanism is definitional: respondents were given a description separating an AI companion from a homework helper, yet the authors note some may have conflated general chatbot use with companion use, inflating the headline figure.
What it leaves open
The report is explicit that its design is cross-sectional, a single snapshot rather than change tracked over time, and every measure is self-reported, subject to social-desirability pressures that can make a respondent underreport an embarrassing behaviour or overreport an acceptable one. This is an editorial reading: a survey finding most teens prefer human friends does not describe a generation replacing people with software, even though the same survey finds a minority reporting discomfort, disclosure and reliance a smaller study could not establish at this scale.
- Was a statistic drawn from the probability panel, the calibrated sample, or an unweighted subgroup?
- Could a respondent's sense of an 'AI companion' have drifted toward general chatbot use despite the survey's stated definition?
- Does a self-reported comfort or trust rating measure an outcome, or only what a teenager was willing to say?
Read as the authors frame it, the survey is evidence that most US teens have tried an AI companion and a minority use one for relationship-like purposes, alongside a majority who still prefer, and rate as more satisfying, their human relationships. Both findings come from the same sample, and neither cancels the other.
Sources & reading trail
Full report text: the nationally representative NORC survey design (n=1,060, ages 13-17, fielded 30 April-14 May 2025), funding credits, every usage, trust and satisfaction statistic cited, and the authors' stated cross-sectional and self-report limitations.
Source published: Not established · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Common Sense Media's own press release confirming the report's 16 July 2025 publication date and giving the CEO's on-record framing of the findings.
Source published: 16 July 2025 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Corroborates the headline figures and links to the full report PDF and the press release.
Source published: 16 July 2025 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Company documents, filings, studies and official records establish the record; the reading and the questions are Lovebot Journal editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.
Continue reading
- A UK survey found vulnerable children favour companion chatbots
- Testers found companion apps' teen guardrails easy to bypass
- Character.AI ended open-ended chat for users under 18
- Browse the complete the archive
Sources & reading trail
- Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions
Retrieved: September 16, 2026 - Nearly 3 in 4 Teens Have Used AI Companions, New National Survey Finds
Source published: July 16, 2025 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026 - Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions (research landing page)
Source published: July 16, 2025 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026
The documents above establish the record. The reading and the questions are this publication’s editorial analysis, written after the fact.
Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.