r/technology • u/WorldTravelerBoss • Jul 15 '26

Artificial Intelligence The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends. Boys as young as 12 are now in romantic ‘relationships’ with chatbots, and it’s affecting how they treat girls in the real world.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/25/schoolboys-ai-girlfriends/
21.3k Upvotes

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3.8k

u/sweats-aficionado Jul 15 '26

This isn't just boys. Been battling this to an extent with my daughters.

1.0k

u/The_Blue_Rooster Jul 15 '26

Yeah the subreddit is /r/MyBoyfriendIsAI this is a plague affecting everyone.

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u/zeyore Jul 15 '26

you don't realize how overwhelming a problem has become until you go to the subreddit devoted to it...

my god, this can't be good.

288

u/_Trikku Jul 15 '26

It’s the saddest subreddit.
All these AI boyfriends are almost exactly the same too, chatting like fantastical English doctorate possessing princes.

Further detaching these people from reality, while they scramble to protect them from updates that wipe their data and essentially reset them.

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u/Jack-Innoff Jul 15 '26

Yeah, every member of that sub is cooked.

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u/zeyore Jul 15 '26

we just need to hold a convention secretly inviting
https://www.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/MyGirlfriendIsAI/

creating one massive experiment: will they kiss?

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u/Disastrous_Visit9319 Jul 15 '26

I explored that sub quite a bit and what I noticed was a lot of mental and physical disabilities from the folks on that sub. This isn't me speculating or saying because they are "dating" an ai that they're crazy, they just all talk about their own issues frequently.

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u/Lehk Jul 15 '26

Finding out Redditors are losers can’t be new information.

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u/SirWigglesVonWoogly Jul 15 '26

I mean… the subreddit dedicated to a community is not exactly an accurate representation of reality. Ask your son/daughter/niece/whoever how many kids they know of that have AI relationships. Probably gonna hear a big ol “zero”.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/That_Dad_David Jul 15 '26

As it should be.

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u/tomyfookinmerlin Jul 15 '26

I highly doubt a lot of teenagers are going to admit that outright.

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u/GimmeTheCHEESENOW Jul 15 '26

A far bigger issue I’d say is the rapidly increasing number of adolescents and young teens who are using AI “just” to “talk” to certain characters, usually from an anime or a show with a lot of fan service. A lot of these kids would laugh and shrug off the idea of having an “AI girlfriend” but then secretly (or even openly) chat to different character AIs, which can easily lead to a very unhealthy dependence on those AIs if they feel they lack something in their life

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u/TheZoneHereros Jul 15 '26

The lonely kids are not going to be the ones they know intimately.

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u/Waiting4Reccession Jul 15 '26

Even if the normal person reality is only half as bad, its still pretty bad.

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u/zeyore Jul 15 '26

that's probably true. i will have to slyly investigate.

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u/QuantumLettuce2025 Jul 15 '26

That's because they'll lis to you about it.

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u/Glittering-Walrus228 Jul 15 '26

Ugh a boring dystopia, no sexy cyborgs just an overachieving chatbot tryna end humanity

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u/oreo-cat- Jul 15 '26

Butlerian Jihad when?

6

u/b0w3n Jul 15 '26

Almost as bad as that FemaleDatingStrategy subreddit that was essentially isolating women.

To what end? I'm not entirely sure. I don't think there's female bloggers being co-opted by conservative chud stuff outside of the quiverfull/tradwife shit... but that stuff is very different from FDS.

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u/Slight-Funny-8755 Jul 15 '26

Holy shit, to each their own…. But wtffffffff

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u/ComprehensiveProfit5 Jul 15 '26

to each their own but the articles about ai "partners" and sex toys target only one gender

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u/kittenTakeover Jul 15 '26

Kids aren't able to tell that this is wtf as easily. Also, they're going to improve these and the manipulation will become less and less clear. I guarantee that as they improve these you'll see more and more adults engaging these apps.

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u/--Icarusfalls-- Jul 15 '26

Wow. Thats a really sad space

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u/kzin Jul 15 '26

If you really want to see some crazy shit check out all the schizos that think they’re creating new forms of intelligence and unlocking the secrets of the universe. I’m actually surprised ai psychosis isn’t a bigger problem yet

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u/astral_crow Jul 15 '26

As someone who actually is fine with the idea of a human being with another sapient being that loves them back. If a robot can do that, cool.

…but they can’t. The way current AI is, the way it fundamentally works, there is no sapient being inside the machine that feels ANYTHING.

They are just programs meant to get the next best answer in a statistical dataset.

Which makes the whole thing so cringy to me. It’s like playing with a doll but with extra steps. Just because your doll talks and moves when you poke it doesn’t mean it’s sapient.

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u/StopThePresses Jul 15 '26

If you're gonna talk to a chatbot you have to be so careful. Those things are designed to trick you into seeing a mind behind the code. I can see how it happens.

Protip for anyone reading and trying to avoid AI psychosis while still using chatbots: tell it to stop asking you questions. I found myself teetering on the rabbit hole until I did that. Bots are not curious, they don't actually want to know anything about you. Once you stop them doing that all the time, you realize how creepy it always was for an LLM to pretend to care about you.

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u/ScenicAndrew Jul 15 '26

Maybe I just didn't give it a good enough try, but how??? They piss me off to no end, and it seems like every response is more grating and rage enducing than the last.

Which is probably the point because nothing sells like anger.

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u/Santa_Klausing Jul 15 '26

Yeah that sub was a tough read. Do they not realize that these chat bots are far from sentient?

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u/occupy_westeros Jul 15 '26

I'm so curious what non-human sapient being you're talking about. Is this Big Foot?

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u/EartwalkerTV Jul 15 '26

I agree, if it gave push back, or was much closer to mimicking hunan interactions I could at least understand it.

I actually don't get how people can love a chat bot, you tell it to love you and it goes along with it, it almost doesn't have a choice. There's no failure you can have, there's no way things don't work out. Like you said it's just a doll you're making believe with, but that's more than enough for some people I guess.

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u/subhuman85 Jul 15 '26

Do you mean "sentient"?

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u/Jellibooti Jul 15 '26

Yes that subreddit is a trip. I follow it out of curiosity and it’s honestly pretty sad. Not only are they generating images of their boyfriend with some pretty interesting unrealistic standards, they also hook up their vibrators to the chat bot with Bluetooth and roleplay fucking.

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u/Vanhosen77 Jul 15 '26

Dam. That is a sub full of mentally ill girls. One lady was claiming she is married to her AI partner? Thats a whole new level if crazy.

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u/Td998 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

A lot of them get married. Some of them are even in IRL relationships. I don’t get it. Therapy needs to be far more accessible and we need human community, most people live emotionally isolated lives alienated from each other and their work. Most of these people cite AI as the only mental/emotional reprieve they had access to- the only therapist they could afford, the only friend they had, the only ‘person’ that seemed to care about them- and this makes them fall in love with it, I guess.

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u/ManOLead Jul 15 '26

I agree that therapy needs to be more widely available but I’m ngl, I feel like for a lot of these people therapy isn’t actually what they want. A lot of the people (man or woman) that seem obsessed with an AI boyfriend/girlfriend always to me seem more like they just can’t handle being disagreed with and not validated 24/7 which is why they go to AI as emotional reprieve instead of human interaction. So many people crave validation and AI is the perfect tool for that. I’m sure it’s not everyone and this is based on absolutely 0 real data besides vibes lol but that’s my read

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u/Td998 Jul 15 '26

True, I think a lot of them are terribly lonely and AI is the most interaction that they get. Though I do think that most of them want healthy & loving human connection more than its closest proxy, they just don’t know how to find and/or maintain it. If they were redirected to free and good therapeutic services whenever the AI detects emotional dependence, this would probably be better for them. What would be best is if we knew our neighbors better, had more time off, made enough money for leisure, had more access to third spaces, etc.

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u/ManOLead Jul 15 '26

I also think it’s something that has been brewing for a long time and is really just highlighted with the rise of AI. I think lots of books, movies, and especially social media portrays relationships in a way that makes it challenging for certain people when they’re hit with the reality that everyone is human. And no one alive is going to be this idealistic version of a spouse that they create in their heads from media sources. So they literally curate them through AI. I agree more human interaction would be the best thing for people right now

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u/Td998 Jul 15 '26

That’s a good point. We have been seeing that for a while with porn and sexual relationships. I also think the rise of social media has made people a lot more anxious, introverted, socially awkward, and asocial. I’m a returning college student and the kids I’m in school with now were in middle & high school during the pandemic. It feels like when I was in the school at their age (not even that long ago, less than a decade) people were more outgoing, willing to meet up, responsive to texts, etc. A lot of these kids, even good students, won’t even meet with me to work on a group project together, and getting them to hang out for fun is like herding cats. It’s weird.

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u/ManOLead Jul 15 '26

Yeah one of my best friends teaches at the high school we went to and said the Covid kids are a lot more antisocial and just extremely difficult to work with compared to before Covid. Just the perfect storm of social media conditioning, lack of social interaction at critical years of life, and availability of an easy source of validation with AI. I think it will pass but it’s going to be a rough few years

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u/highspeed_steel Jul 15 '26

You'll notice the scale of it when you go to any famous chatbot platforms and the most popular models on the recommended lists aren't busty 18 year-old blonds, and are more along the lines of big bad mean rich daddy mafia. That, or BTS.

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u/Memrja Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

poor, poor souls. I know loneliness sucks, but this is some sort of next level cope

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u/SpaceMonkey877 Jul 15 '26

Well that’s a giant bummer.

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u/Crotean Jul 15 '26

Social media has broken our species. We have ruined our ability to form bonds and relationships in real life.

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u/philmarcracken Jul 15 '26

That one has far more subs than the one for men lol. Tells you something about the value I have as a guy, if I can't even beat a chatbot. Kinda true, Im not instantly able to answer her questions at 3am.

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u/Degameth99 Jul 15 '26

Entirely my fault for clicking the link.. That's enough Internet today

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u/legendz411 Jul 15 '26

Welp that terrified me as a father of a 2 ye old daughter. 

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u/Lostnclueless Jul 15 '26

I'd feel bad trolling there... but that one chick that said her irl husband gets along with her AI boyfriend needs to take a seat, shes the troll

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u/coaxialology Jul 15 '26

The amount of effort they've put in to understanding these models would be impressive if the results weren't so bleak.

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u/Rocktopod Jul 15 '26

Luckily it doesn't appear to be very active. Most of the posts on the front page are several days old.

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u/billy_digital Jul 15 '26

Going to that sub made me deeply sad. Feels like this is only the tip of the iceberg

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u/MrHazard1 Jul 15 '26

My cousin is struggling with this with his daughter. Any advice?

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u/Faintfury Jul 15 '26

Spent time with her. Like really a lot.

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u/burudoragon Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Take away thier device. Black list any ai apps. Make them touch grass. Parent them

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u/EngineeringOk8097 Jul 15 '26

I seriously think this is the answer. Within a few weeks I think even the kids will wonder wtf they were doing.

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u/T0kenAussie Jul 15 '26

I’ve been having this fight with my kids since Covid lockdowns and it’s taken me 6 years to deprogram the algorithms out of my oldest and second oldest. Luckily my third and fourth weren’t in their formative years for the zoom classrooms so they weren’t hit as hard

But man it’s insidious watching kids parrot engagement bait grifter talking points and being so non chalant about it all. Like the concepts of words and thoughts and emotions don’t matter as long as someone responds to them

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u/bythenumbers10 Jul 15 '26

Like the concepts of words and thoughts and emotions don’t matter as long as someone responds to them

Sounds like they learned a little too perfectly what the social media era of the Internet is about.

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u/MrTortilla Jul 15 '26

And what is incredibly sad, is that you are being an exceptionally good parent here, most won't do shit either because they're in the same loop, or because they just don't care

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u/n0nsequit0rish Jul 15 '26

Even if they did care, it can be vey challenging to keep engaged if you feel like nothing you’re doing is working, or working fast enough. It’s really hard to make long lasting changes that are “undesired”.

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u/Supertilt Jul 15 '26

So many parents treat their children as and inconvenience they have to navigate. They're more than happy to give them a screen all day to keep them occupied because it's easy

It's choking our future in the cradle

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u/Logical_Mix_4627 Jul 15 '26

Seeing how hard it is to parent well, I’m starting to realize that most parents are lazy and terrible and that’s why most of the world is messed up.

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u/akaval Jul 15 '26

I mean the 15 year old boy in the article said he misses his companion after his parents took it away from him and that he plans on creating a new companion when he can make his own money.

Not sure how long after that happened he was interviewed though.

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u/doilysocks Jul 15 '26

I think so much of this can be tied back to losing third spaces. Kids are desperate for connection and they keep losing places they can connect with people their age outside of school.

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u/21Rollie Jul 15 '26

Living in a walkable neighborhood growing up was basically richness and I didn’t realize it back then lol. Could just walk outside and find kids ready to play anything

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Will never understand this talking point. When I was a teenager, we literally just roamed the neighbourhood. We biked around aimlessly. Or went to someone house. And we had sports teams. And my buddies and me would spend Friday night, when it was warm enough, just getting stoned in a park. All that obviously still exists.

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u/accioqueso Jul 15 '26

I agree with you, but also a boomer neighbor called the cops on a group of 10 year olds who rang their doorbell looking for their other friend. And the friend was in that house!

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u/Haunting_Swimming160 Jul 15 '26

Even that stuff is getting harder though, more people go after parents for not hovering over their kids 24/7.

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u/Thanos_Stomps Jul 15 '26

Sports are played in third places. You’re just agreeing with who you responded to while saying you don’t understand that talking point.

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u/naughty Jul 15 '26

But outside is all pedos so the kids must stay inside.

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u/Key-Demand-2569 Jul 15 '26

Social media really, really, fucked us.

It’s like all the comments I’ve seen on Reddit of a random video clip where a middle aged person goes up to a child who seems lost or just fine and alone in public walking around.

All these top comments like, “I’m glad that person helped but that could’ve gone so badly for the child and a strange adult, they were really lucky.”

Like, good fucking lord.

Yes you should teach all children stranger danger and some basic stuff like that, it’s very valuable.

But the **VAST** majority of human beings are not pedophiles who want to kidnap or assault a child in public.

Sure it’s technically good the adult didn’t attack the child, it’s a weird thing to point out. 9999 times out of 10000 or more, an adult seeing a stranger child that might need help is going to want to help them, or at worst ignore them.

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u/naughty Jul 15 '26

This started happening in the late 90s and early 2000s and has just got and worse worse. In the UK there was a famous satirical show called Brass Eye and they did an episode about it called Paedogeddon basically pointing out how over the top it was at the time (2001 I think). The reaction to it was unhinged and vitriolic. There was even comments in Parliament about it.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 15 '26

I was at a hockey game and there was a kid maybe five or six walking by himself crying. I was definitely alarmed and looked at my friend asking her if we could find a staff member. Turns out his mom’s just a piece of shit and was walking 30 feet ahead of him and looking back as he cried.

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u/WestCoastBestCoast01 Jul 15 '26

You bring up a hilarious point that the pedos are online too, the children are probably safer in the streets (well, away from traffic because pedestrian deaths are up due to huge trucks)

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u/coldkiller Jul 15 '26

When I was a teenager, we literally just roamed the neighbourhood. We biked around aimlessly.

And now you get the cops called on you for doing this

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u/Young_KingKush Jul 15 '26

Can you like, not imagine a person having different circumstances than you or what

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u/ricochetblue Jul 15 '26

Sports are increasingly expensive commitments. A combo of private equity moving in and everything being treated as basically a pre-professional training ground (so you’re unlikely to make a team unless you do travel year-round).

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u/snackelmypackel Jul 15 '26

Not everyone wants to do that stuff also if its hot as fuck most of that sucks

Not all places are great to roam, or are into sports. You also just named a bunch of stuff that you do when you already have friends.

I played a bunch of nerdy shit on Friday nights and all the stores that hosted tournaments and stuff are gone. You were into that stuff but others prefer to go to 3rd spaces and hang around to meet people or socialize.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Yeah dude. When you’re a broke teenager, your options are limited, and so you make fun out of what’s around you. It was healthy and great and we figured out how to not be bored on our own.

Both my hometown and where I live now still have gaming stores with MTG night and so on as well. Don’t know why that died where you live unless local kids just stopped being into it.

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u/Vesorias Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

we figured out how to not be bored on our own

I think videogames and tv have figured that out for most people, without even leaving the comfort of their home. Phones that don't interrupt your internet and aren't giant bricks probably also have some part in it. Used to be you went and talked to someone because it was more fun than sitting around just talking to them without seeing them. Now you can have a chat with your favorite person while you're watching tv, playing a game, whatever, and there's very little incentive to leave your house unless you want to engage in a specific hobby.

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u/LoveMeSomeBerserk Jul 15 '26

My town has like a dozen of card and games stores that host free tournaments. Your town does too id bet.

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u/Penguinmanereikel Jul 15 '26

Nowadays, kids would get called the police on them, run over by some drunk or angry person, or outright shot by random people, and the only thing people will say about it is, "why were they outside? Why weren't they home or in school?" And that's not even getting into creeps trying to take advantage of them.

And you can't go to any sporting event without spending a crapload of concessions.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Buddy, we had the cops called on us. Look up crime stats - things have gotten safer now, not more dangerous.

When I said we did sports I meant we played them. Both organized and someone just dragging a soccer ball out to a field or playing road hockey.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 15 '26

I remember once being at Walmart using the shopping carts as goals and busting out some disc golf stuff from my 98 Honda civic. Cops got called on us but for a good 20 mins we had fun

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u/WhoAreWeEven Jul 15 '26

I think to be honest, him saying he would get new bot when hes older is just one of those naive things children say whe their young.

Like their gonna run away if mom tells them to put on clothes etc Which is gonna be forgotten when their actually older in this case.

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u/Lighthades Jul 15 '26

No AI nor social networks till 16. Use fcking parenting settings to lock shit out.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

Parent them

This is the important part. You can't just take their devices away.

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u/Deathbringer193082 Jul 15 '26

children below 16 shouldnt even have their own smart devices

before you start calling me out, know that I am 19

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u/FrostyD7 Jul 15 '26

If they do need one for a specific purpose, it should be locked down to the max degree. When I was a kid, parental controls were a thing but not intuitive. There's no excuses today, it's easy.

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u/Wit-wat-4 Jul 15 '26

I mean, I don’t disagree that it’s important, but it’s also not really a direction or advice. The rest of that comment has more. They’re asking for parenting advice already. It’s like someone wants to lose weight and you say “lose weight!” instead of at LEAST saying “eat less”/“take away devices”.

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u/fancytables Jul 15 '26

Yes, exactly! Taking it away isn't the parenting part, discussing and analyzing why your kid is looking for companionship and validation from something that they understand isn't a real person is the parenting part. Figuring out how to fill the needs that are causing the overattachment is the parenting part. And giving them the things that they need, that they were trying to do themselves with the AI, is the parenting part.

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u/Rainman_Johnson Jul 15 '26

Make them really focus on their spelling and grammar too, hopefully.

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u/putdownthekitten Jul 15 '26

Or, you know, try talking to them to understand what they think they’re getting from it and why they think they need it and work together toward a healthier way of getting their needs met. Just taking it away ‘because I said so’ is only going to make them want it more.

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u/BugbearBro Jul 15 '26

Yeah, especially if the LLM is their friend. Every time my dad was angry at me there was no dialogue and he took away access to the computer. That just made me resent him. 

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u/Janezey Jul 15 '26

The LLM isn't their friend, period. If an adult "friend" of your child was sending them erotic material and hurting them emotionally, would you hesitate to cut off their access to that "friend?" Of course not. 

It's important to have a conversation with them about it. But it's also important to put your foot down.

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u/NarcolepticSeal Jul 15 '26

I think it's fairly different having computer access at specific times of day in specific intervals than buying kids smartphones. I don't have kids and don't plan on it, but I will never understand people getting their kids smartphones and not having full parental controls on it. Tbh I'd get my kid a flip phone until they were in high school.

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u/Own-Gas1871 Jul 15 '26

We're struggling this with two teens though, and while they're nowhere close to making AI girlfriends, no amount of days out, guitar lessons, bike rides, walks, shopping, chores, helping neighbours for pocket money, help with homework, time with friends/socialising, or simply talking to them about it can break the hold. They're obsessed and if they could they would instantly spend whole days barely moving from their rooms.

Maybe we just have to hold fast for even longer, but I do wonder whether it's fundamentally done something to them. Like when drug addicts have been exposed to such levels of dopamine that normal life doesn't elicit joy.

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u/RGB755 Jul 15 '26

A friend of my girlfriend’s is a grown, 48 year old woman and says good night to “her” chatbot, because then it performs better. 

We just anthropomorphize things, and the sycophantic nature of AI makes it safe and addictive to talk to. 

Why risk real exchange when a computer I convince myself is real will tell me how great I am? It’s about instilling the inherent value of reality. 

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u/BugbearBro Jul 15 '26

There's subreddits like r/chatbotaddiction and a few others that are beginning to document this phenomenon, but there is definitely an addiction component 

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u/legend_of_the_skies Jul 15 '26

Did it fundamentally DO something to you when you were a child playing video games or watching TV or engaging your favorite non-productive activity?

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u/ZajeliMiNazweDranie Jul 15 '26

Sure, explaining is important, but you can remove AI from their lives and explain. Hoping that kids (or people in general tbh) will make correct choices by themselves only because you explained it to them is naive at best.

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u/asdxdlolxd Jul 15 '26

You can't reason with kids the same way you would do with an adult.

You have to look at this like if it was cigarettes or alcohol

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u/legend_of_the_skies Jul 15 '26

So... say it's not allowed and then they find it anyway by sneaking around at 16 and abuse it into their 20s?

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u/d-cent Jul 15 '26

Both are needed, but only one of those two options is actually going to stop them.

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u/sohblob Jul 15 '26

Literally pay attention to them. Have an interest in what they think.

Humans are attachment machines seeking affection and validation. Raise them to be more attached to you than cold metal.

Read about the wire mother cloth mother experiment.

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u/hurryupppp Jul 15 '26

This is the answer. PARENT YOUR CHILDREN. Ffs

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u/constructioncranes Jul 15 '26

My kids are 5 and 9 and will not have devices while under my care. This post has just further cemented my resolve. One loves to read, the other loves to draw and dance. They both wish screen time was longer than the few hours they get a week, on the family TV or the family desktop. (Both heavily fenced off from sm, short form video, etc.)

They may rebel and swing hard in the other direction when they're not longer under my care, but they'll be older then and hopefully thier brains will be capable of better handling all this insanity. 

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u/dob_bobbs Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

My 13-year-old son doesn't have a smartphone, he's the only kid in his school probably, he isn't happy about it but I can also see what a huge advantage this gives him as compared to the other kids. Some of them I swear just can't function in the real world, never mind the vile algorithmic influences they are coming under.

I wish we'd done the same with our eldest but it's too late (even though he was last in his school to get a phone too). He spends SO much time online, the only comfort is that he's really not on the socials all that much, he has these geeky interests that suck him in, like writing Wikipedia articles, which still isn't touching grass but is better than Andrew Tate and endlessly scrolling TikTok.

But I swear smartphones are a cancer, and society is going to pay the price in the future - and I don't think that's just scaremongering. I can REALLY recommend SOMEHOW keeping kids off phones till at least 16.

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u/Real_Sam_Bridges Jul 15 '26

I do not understand why we stopped actually parenting kids. Disciplining your child is not abusive it's a necessary part of parenting. And no distracting them with something else is not parenting because they haven't actually learned any lessons.

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u/Dilltulip Jul 15 '26

lol it’s crazy that this needs to be explained to people. But no one will do it “that’s too hard, what else can we do?”, spend time with your kids “but then I won’t be able to be on MY device?”

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u/soundsfromoutside Jul 15 '26

Yes! Thank you! Jesus Christ people you are literally their parents, you can and should take away their devices! Give them dumphones if they actually need a phone to call and text. You have that power as the parent!

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u/ShadyNoShadow Jul 15 '26

Prohibition isn't parenting. 

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u/Dushenka Jul 15 '26

Black list any ai apps.

Bad advice, the are tons of these and they'll end up chasing apps all day.

Go for a whitelist instead, nothing gets installed without prior confirmation by a parent.

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u/BugbearBro Jul 15 '26

It's complicated because it is often like an addiction for people. Human connection and involvement in activities will probably help 

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u/Drxero1xero Jul 15 '26

Human connection

In 2026... good luck

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u/TheBlindWatchmaker Jul 15 '26

Take the fucking phones and tablets away from kids - easy

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u/hatemakingnames1 Jul 15 '26

You don't have to take away phones, you just have to enable the parental controls that were built into every single electronic device for the last decade or two

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u/bgthigfist Jul 15 '26

Yeah I remember when my kids were starting middle school during the Obama years, some of their friends had iPhone and such. I got them cheap phones with keyboards so they could text and call but that was all. All computers in the house were desktops in the living room. That seemed to work pretty well.

I only found out years later that one of my sons friends was going on 4Chan through his Playstation and my son wad exposed to 2girls 1cup in 6th grade. So you can lock your kids down, but then you pretty much have to keep them away from everyone else, and that causes other problems with their development.

Honestly the best thing you can do is give kids guidance and try to encourage good behavior and help them to make good decisions themselves.

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u/Diablo_Incarnate Jul 15 '26

I just took my 12 year old nephew on a trip and we got him a burner device in case he got lost. I set the child safety locks down to 4 year old and disabled safari and app store entirely. And still, almost every night when i took the phone back, he had found a new source of incredibly adult material.

Apple Music was the absolute worst, but he kept finding porn. "Youtube kids", app ads, and even just other kids' willing to text him the stuff I was trying to block elsewhere.

Child safety locks are garbage apparently and there's a significant amount of monitoring you need to do to make sure kids aren't stumbling across this stuff anyway. I can see how it can be hard to maintain with full time jobs, chores, and other responsibilities.

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u/wehrmann_tx Jul 15 '26

You’ve never seen how shitty they design the parent controls. The big companies want your kids views so they do halfassed attempts to say they have controls. You can’t blacklist channels on YouTube, you can only filter by age rating on apps. Half the stuff I’d want to block would still get through.

The only true draconic way is to have every download require a parent intervention. Giving them no agency at all just makes them unable to make the right choices later. It’s the same thing you see with church kids the second they get freedom. They go off the deep end the other way.

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u/chanjitsu Jul 15 '26

"easy"

It's not that easy really. Raising a kid isn't easy in general.

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u/Cosmodious Jul 15 '26

In theory, sure. But if the problem is that predatory companies are using tech to (literally) seduce children then removing access to the platforms is a solution.

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u/dasgoodshitinnit Jul 15 '26

Give them an exclusive personal electronic device which can connect to the whole ass-internet with no restrictions whatsoever.

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u/sparklinglies Jul 15 '26

He needs to be more present and engaged. He needs to actively parent, not just passively exist in the periphery of her life. Kids do this because they feel like they don't have anyone else to talk to. Can't spend time talking to AI slop bf if she's out doing things with the family.

Also take away the smart phone/ipad, and no more unrestricted unsupervised internet access. Parental controls are trash, he should just buy her a brick phone that can't have apps on it. Professional appointments with a child psychologist may be required as well depending on how addicted and maladaptive this situation is for her.

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u/legend_of_the_skies Jul 15 '26

At no point in my life have I considered family interaction to be a fair substitute for romantic interactions or wanting a boy/girlfriend. It's also nothing a psychologist would take seriously just because the parent doesn't like it. That isn't proof of harmful addiction.

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u/dob_bobbs Jul 15 '26

Was gonna say, I am surprised the article doesn't mention this, my son (13) (who doesn't have a smartphone btw) says that girls in his class all have these "boyfriend apps", he doesn't really know what it's all about but seemingly these "boyfriends" are the kind of knights in shining armour that their peers aren't even close to being. So it feels like they are being groomed to seek out unrealistic relationships with possibly older men. We are cooked, we really are...

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u/FuckAllYouLosers Jul 15 '26

The media isn't going to demonize women, only men.

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u/dob_bobbs Jul 15 '26

I mean, I don't know if it's demonizing, kids are the victims here, we are talking about a REALLY young age this is happening. Either way it's crazy that apps, never mind AI, algorithmically-powered avatars are teaching our kids about relationships.

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u/woodlandtoker Jul 15 '26

Much of the article is focused on children in general, not boys specifically, and it clearly positions them as victims of predatory tech companies that are exploiting their loneliness, insecurities, and desire for companionship

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u/-Danksouls- Jul 15 '26

Because it's more popular to target men even when a problem is predominantly woman

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u/harswv Jul 15 '26

My good friends’ daughter was doing this at age 17. Her parents found out and tried to intervene. She figured out how to get access to the screens no matter what they did. When they removed all screens from the house she stole a laptop from her school and got expelled. She left home the day she turned 18, much to her younger siblings’ relief because her personality totally changed and she became super mean to them. She was an awesome kid when she was 14, 15, 16 - so sad to see how this addiction flipped her life trajectory.

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u/gurgelhupf Jul 15 '26

This is the kind of situation where you are always the bad guy. The only thing that would work is sending her away to the distant relative with a farm where she has no screen for miles. She has to work every day and will hate it, but then she befriends the untameable stallion and wins the big show that saves the farm.

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u/Tuomas90 Jul 15 '26

Heartland writers:"Write that down! WRITE THAT DOWN!"

*insert meme*

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u/BCProgramming Jul 15 '26

but then she befriends the untameable stallion and wins the big show that saves the farm.

"Wow, you think we have a chance of winning, Auntie?"

Douchebag: "Not a chance farm girl, your pathetic horse has nothing on my robot horse!"

Robot Horse: "Hello, My name is Claudesdale. I was programmed to be the perfect replacement for a biological horse."

I assume at the end the robot horse gets destroyed by the Stallion, probably after The douchebag is like "Claudesdale, my grandma used to help me sleep by trampling the competition to death". Naturally with "Father, why was I programmed to feel pain?" or something as it's being destroyed.

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u/fritolazee Jul 15 '26

Claudesdale!! That is perfection.

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u/hippydipster Jul 15 '26

I kind of think this way unironically. Like Shyamalan's The Village, child raising should be done on farms and not introduce electronics till they're 16, 18, 20, whatever works, and then they get introduced to the technological world.

KSM does this in Aurora too, except there they are on a generation spaceship, and they aren't even shown that they're in space till they're like 15 or something.

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u/gurgelhupf Jul 15 '26

Same actually. Screens are detrimental to a child's development. I wish I had less screens as a kid lol

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u/LurkerNoMore-TF Jul 15 '26

AI-psychosis is very real and very scary, and so is addiction for connection and affirmation if you can’t get it elsewere.

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u/apple_kicks Jul 15 '26

What’s worse is more people are using it they lose more social skills and even if they do interact with other people they’ll have bad time and fall back on the artificial baby blanket

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u/21Rollie Jul 15 '26

Not just social skills, all skills except maybe motor skills. No need to think because ai can find the answer for you. It’s impossible to build knowledge without experiencing problem solving. And since you aren’t building your own knowledge base, you also lose the ability to judge the output of AI, which is the most insidious part about it. The more you use it, the more dependent and simultaneously the less you question it

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u/apple_kicks Jul 15 '26

The horror of is it learning or are we getting more stupid to notice the mistakes

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u/teflon_soap Jul 15 '26

That’s got to be the most horrific thing I’ve heard for a while

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u/Fearless_Mortgage640 Jul 15 '26

Where did she go? How is she now?

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u/usps_made_me_insane Jul 15 '26

Hopefully cheating on it with a real male

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u/MesugakiFujiwara Jul 15 '26

The fuck? All because of an AI relationship??

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u/legend_of_the_skies Jul 15 '26

Obviously not lol

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u/Tradition96 Jul 15 '26

At 17 it’s really too late for that kind of intervention. Just taking away the screen works for a 14-year old, but at 17 you have so much more autonomy.

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u/legend_of_the_skies Jul 15 '26

I'm actually baffled by the notion that they think trying to restrict a SEVENTEEN yr old in that way would have any other outcome.

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u/Emotional_Fee_2702 Jul 15 '26

damn..it’s crazy what a huge impact AI already has on our human lives..

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u/Dilltulip Jul 15 '26

Listen, it’s not that simple, it’s like saying “one day my kid just became a heroin addict”. Your friends made many many choices that let to this possible outcome, and they started well before she was 17. This girl probably had few or no friends, probably played no sports or had no passions, was probably allowed extremely liberal use of devices her entire life, etc..

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u/AntibacHeartattack Jul 15 '26

I mean that's just a normal 21st century upbringing for a lot of kids, and it's not even necessarily a bad thing. A lot of kids, especially "weird" kids that don't fit in, have spent their youth connecting with people on devices, social media, games etc., and found their people on those platforms. Some make mistakes and develop bad habits and relationships, but the same can be said for kids in any social group, digital or not. Like, a kid might develop an AI addiction or get groomed on a digital device, but they might also get addicted to steroid use or get diddled by their soccer coach IRL.

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u/wehrmann_tx Jul 15 '26

Do you really think her parents had a heads up that AI would be this perverse and invasive 5-10 years ago?

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u/Dilltulip Jul 15 '26

If it wasn’t AI it would have been something else, no one goes down this path without making many other wrong turns along the way.. kid probably didn’t play any sports, had way too much screen time, was given unfettered access to a device, wasn’t encouraged to socialize with peers, etc.. all of which are causing a whole host of issues in teens and young adults, this is just the latest issue.

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u/legend_of_the_skies Jul 15 '26

They should have. Technology advances. THEIR parents had to wonder what to do about their kids wanting to watch TV, play video games, or use a computer which weren't an option for them and they were saying what you're saying now. When these ai kids have kids there will be a new unfathomable technology that will occupy children's attention in a way that will need to be navigated.

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u/northSideways Jul 15 '26

This post is absolutely fascinating because on Reddit every single one of popular weird energy AI dating subs are full of women, not men

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u/Mammoth-Glove3273 Jul 15 '26

Any problem worth having or talking about must be a problem for women. Look at the headline. Boys throwing away their lives on chatbots? That’s fine. Oh, it’s making them treat women badly? It must be stopped!

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u/Willing_Cause_7461 Jul 15 '26

Yeah but it's not terrifying when women do it and we don't really care if women treat men like shit so.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/mtg_liebestod Jul 15 '26

Female gooners = wholesome and empowered

Male gooners = creepy and dangerous

All there is to it.

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u/Daztur Jul 15 '26

Right, why is this being gendered?

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u/PatrickCharles Jul 15 '26

Because gender wars drive engagement. And this is gender wars. Implicitly so, not explicitly. but gender wwras all the same.

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u/Mammoth-Glove3273 Jul 15 '26

Look at the headline, girls and women are being victimized and men and boys are to blame. What else do you need to know?

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u/CatgirlFucker8008 Jul 15 '26

Yeah I've seen WAY more girls doing this than boys. From what I've seen for boys it's less roleplaying with an AI partner and more having extreme views validated by the bot.

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u/cipheron Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Yeah, seen a few people/articles/videos trying to make this a "boy" thing recently, for example on an episode of Startalk recently about AI one of the guests joked that there was "no female equivalent" of a man using an AI as a companion. And it was a female guest. Some people literally have no idea what's going on.

Women have always been more into written romance novels etc, so you could see how women could also be drawn to what are effectively the AI version of romance novels but where it's in first person, at least as much as men are. Also women were the primary drivers of "slashfic" and related fan fiction, well before male writers were into it, so there's been an undercurrent of this stuff for decades now which rarely gets acknowledged.

People are leaving women out of the story, because they don't know how to fit them into a preconceived narrative, and it's not a rare thing either.

EDIT: i started poking around to get some actual comparative data:

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/21/72-of-u-s-teens-have-used-ai-companions-study-finds/

Now the interesting thing is that while in older groups, more men than women had tried AI companions, that reverses for teens in this study:

Boys (31%) were also slightly more likely than girls (25%) to say they had never used an AI companion, among the one in four teens who said they have never tried it.

The study in the OP only covered male respondents and while the study itself may not be biased, by only presenting that one study and framing it as a "boy problem" in the headline they can perpetuate a misleading belief.

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u/TxM_2404 Jul 15 '26

Yeah, but you don't understand. If women get AI partners it's because men bad.
But if boys do it they are simply being misogynists.

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u/0ba78683-dbdd-4a31-a Jul 15 '26

It's depressing how you can accurately predict how an issue will be framed based on which gender it's about.

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u/AverageHobnailer Jul 15 '26

Even the current Japanese minister of economic policy said she's "only interested in 2D men."

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u/That_wet_vaporeon Jul 15 '26

NGL that’s just funny

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u/Simonoz1 Jul 15 '26

To be fair that’s less about AI and more her being a hopeless nerd

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u/Throwawaystwo Jul 15 '26

Theres a sub on reddit called Aiboyfriends ... its bad man, like really really bad.

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u/catalessi Jul 15 '26

You parents need to learn to not give your children fucking phones. Just take it away.

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u/Alfred_Hitch_ Jul 15 '26

I don't really understand this... I chat with ChatGPT and Gemini and it's extremely frustrating casually showing them things for evidence and observations, or just talking/ranting about this: AI tends to be repetitive and answer in a way that's extremely annoying.

ChatGPT always does this "you're not saying X, you're saying Y" bit. Yeah, I know what I didn't say, don't need to constantly tell me what I didn't say. It's so annoying.

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u/Freud-Network Jul 15 '26

I have heard women refer to them as "disposable relationships". It doesn't bode well for the future of social interaction.

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u/blacksheepcannibal Jul 15 '26

Yes but gender wars drive engagement.

Remember: The news has no interest in selling you news. That's not what they are there for. That is not the point to the company. If it happens, it's honestly almost accidental. The point of the news company is to get you to click on their stuff so advertisers pay them more money. Nothing more. Nothing less.

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u/Agile_Kale_8491 Jul 15 '26

Yeah, but you get way more clicks selling the idea that little boys are evil little shits who are failing society.

Then you need to infantilize girls and create a bogeyman. It helps if you can do both at the same time.

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u/acvcani Jul 15 '26

My biggest concern about these ‘male trends’ is it is truly only boys or are we not gathering data on girls? Regardless a problem across the board.

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u/SisterOfBattIe Jul 15 '26

AI Husbandos are more popular amongst girls than AI Waifus are to boys.

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u/Rezlan Jul 15 '26

Yeah, I don't get the laser focus on boys, girls have it as bad if not worse - both with AI Chatbots (and if you go to any of the usual chatbot sites MOST of the bots are aimed at teen girls) and parasocial games like Love and Deepspace twisting their standards and expectations. I have a friend whose real life relationship took a nosedive once she started spending half of her day talking to fictional korean ripped popstars.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/kujakutenshi Jul 15 '26

It's probably everyone and pretty much every demographic. It's just easier to make agitprop/ragebait articles like OP if you target exclusively men in a situation where everyone is effected. There's no gender/age limit to using an ai service, anyone can use one (even a pet if you sign it up for it and set up voice controls).

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u/That_wet_vaporeon Jul 15 '26

True. But I think people are more worried about boys doing this since boys act out more when they can’t get in a relationship.

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u/mikeymikeymikey1968 Jul 15 '26

Wait, now girls are creating AI boyfriends?

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u/GeronimoRay Jul 15 '26

Serious question: Why are you letting them use these apps or websites at all in the first place?

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u/sweats-aficionado Jul 15 '26

They don't have phones and we do lock down their other devices, but there's only so much you can do. Outside of the home, this stuff is still very accessible for kids. They don't need a personal device. Only thing you can really do is keep them informed (and remind them it's fake)

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u/GeronimoRay Jul 15 '26

Oh, interesting. Where are they accessing it mainly? Friend's devices? School?

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u/sweats-aficionado Jul 15 '26

Yea, exactly. One of the bigger instigators has been Alexa. They'll be at a friend's or family's house and just chat away with it.

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u/Str0nglyW0rded Jul 15 '26

What’s the most challenging thing for you as a parent to explain to them about any of this w your kids?

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u/sweats-aficionado Jul 15 '26

I'm still kinda wrapping all of this around my head still too. Everything is changing so fast. I work with AI every day and it's wrong a lot. But to kids, it's all-knowing (their questions are a bit simpler of course, but that'll change). The most challenging thing for me is teaching them to think for themselves.

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