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/
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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/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/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

At ten, I’ll understand a kid scared of talking to a cop even when they’re not breaking the law. At 17 we were dealing with cops coming to kick us out of parks for smoking weed while we were also on mushrooms. I refuse to believe teens today have gotten just that much more petrified, especially when the obvious answer is that they’re just online and gaming.

Are we also going to pretend that adults spend less time reading books because they’re scared of something and not because they’re on their phones?

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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/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Their 15+ year old kids? I’m a parent. I don’t see people expecting hovering over 15 year olds.

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u/joman584 Jul 15 '26

I can tell you from hearing my neighbors talk about unsupervised teenagers, calling them unpatented children, that people do indeed think this way about teenagers trying to be independent

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Then we live in wildly different places. Nearly every parent I know with teens, which is most people I know, complains about them only ever being inside and not going out to do anything.

But if everyone here is right and the answer is that if a 16 year old gets on a bike a cop might come by and say “hey, I saw you’re riding a bike, which is perfectly legal, of course”, then teenagers have changed more radically than I thought. Because it seems obvious the answer is that the major difference between kids in the 90s and kids today is the internet and gaming. But maybe you’re all right and it’s that they live in mortal terror of seeing a cop while doing something entirely legal.

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u/constanceblackwood12 Jul 15 '26

I think you're slightly misinterpreting people's point ... but like everything else, 1) it varies from place to place and situation to situation; 2) there are multiple contributing factors; 3) all of them amplify each other.

There is, simultaneously: a closing of third spaces meant for kids/teens; increased intolerance of unsupervised kids in public places; people weaponizing nuisance ordinances & child neglect laws to report unsurpervised teens/kids; neighborhoods that aren't easy to navigate without cars, so kids can't go out on their own; fear from parents & caregivers that something bad will happen to their unsupervised kid/teen; parents & caregivers feeling judged for not aggressively supervising their kids; the internet & gaming, which keeps kids inside & "out of trouble" & gives them major dopamine hits in the process.

If you google "free range parenting" you'll see a lot of discussions about this kind of stuff.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

I’m a parent and basically all of my friends are, so I don’t know what to tell you except that everyone I know loves talking about how terrible it is that their kids only want to be on devices and don’t go out or do anything and whine to no end when they’re forced to do so. I don’t know one parent who thinks it’s terrible for their 17 year old to go outside.

My whole point was we weren’t spending our youth in spaces that have disappeared at all. They’re still there. My hometowns parks are still there, the public rinks, the sidewalks, the school yards, etc. All still there.

Maybe America has become such that every 16 year old is in an Anne Frank situation and will be arrested when they appear on a sidewalk. Maybe America is now Super North Korea like that and I just haven’t noticed because I see young people outside every day. Maybe. Probably not. But maybe. And if that’s right, third places have nothing to do with it. Teenagers couldn’t even get to third places because the Gestapo would intercept them.

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u/constanceblackwood12 Jul 15 '26

I don't know why you're jumping from "people can and do weaponize laws to make it harder to allow kids to be unsupervised" to "all 16 year olds will be arrested as soon as they step foot outside".

I am also a parent and I have a friend who had a CPS complaint filed against her for letting her 12 year old play in a park near their house unsupervised because it was "neglect". She had let that kid play in that park hundreds of times and only got reported once so no, it's definitely not all the time (and I don't think anyone claimed that) ... but the potential impact of having to deal with a CPS complaint is so huge that people will modify their behavior pre-emptively.

Same as the potential for a store owner to call the police on a group of teenagers for violating a nuisance ordinance. It doesn't happen all the time, but yes, it does happen, and it does dis-incentivize parents from letting teens go out and teens wanting to go out.

And that is not downplaying the effect of the internet/games! They are still a huge part of the problem. I don't think anyone disagrees with you on that.

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u/LoveMeSomeBerserk Jul 15 '26

Getting downvoted by non parents who think they know more I’m sure.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Teens biking and walking down the street aren’t getting arrested en masse. You people sound insane.

We had plenty of run ins with cops when we were breaking actual laws.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 15 '26

I walked my dog the other evening… kids roaming around the park on those E bikes. One kid skateboarding down the hill then chilled on the benches for a rest. A group of girls sprinting through the park on their way homes. Some teenagers brought a net to play volleyball and were playing their 90s music mix.

Totally normal summer day in the city.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Yeah, I do. You guys just don’t want to admit that what actually changed was how much there is for kids to do online.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

I’m a lawyer, hook me up with the case law. Find me a bunch of cases with parents convicted of neglect for a 16 year old walking down a sidewalk or riding a bike. Not one news story of some neighbor calling cops on a kid. Find me this supposed proof of actual liability.

And for the millionth time - when I was young, cops pestering us was a periodic fact of life. But we wanted to be out and independent. So we did what kids do.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Wow that’s not a 16 year old at all.

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u/AlwaysBagHolding Jul 15 '26

Yeah, my friends and I got harassed and searched by cops all the time as teenagers, I’d almost argue it’s good to have those experiences as a minor when the consequences are lower so you can learn how to deal with cops, and instill a healthy lifelong distrust of them.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 15 '26

Hell I was sitting outside my house after my older neighbor friend graduated high school 20 years ago and cops rolled up with guns out.

They were at the wrong house before my friends older sister told the cops to fuck off because they wanted to go to the kid next doors house who was a known problem child. I guess he pissed someone off enough they threw his mom’s BBQ through their back window.

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u/Perfect_Plan_8256 Jul 15 '26

I use to get pulled over walking to the store to get chips

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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/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

No, I’m not. Because the claim is that third places stopped existing. And they haven’t with respect to sports. Like not at all.

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u/DDisired Jul 15 '26

third places stopped existing

I'm not sure anyone is claiming this. What I've seen the claim (like the person you responded too) is they are getting less accessible, not that we're losing it completely. They said "losing third spaces", not "no third spaces".

If 20 years ago a kid had 3-6 accessible 3rd options spaces, but now there are 1-3, then that's still losing but not eliminating.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

I’m saying every place I hung out as a teen is still there and equally accessible. Every one of them. I wasn’t a teen in the early 90s, so none of us hung out at malls. Those did go away, but hanging out at the mall stopped being cool by the time I was a teenager anyway.

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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/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

No one gets the cops called on them for riding a bike. I see young people riding bikes every day all the time. No one calls the cops on 17 year olds walking down the sidewalk. Again, I see it every day.

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u/coldkiller Jul 15 '26

It happens all the time lmao

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

So a cop came up to you for walking down a sidewalk in a city and said “hey! One more step and I’m arresting you for…being outside”? That happens all the time? I’m a lawyer. Hook me up with all the people this is happening to and I’ll get my buddies in crim defense and civil rights organizations to make the easiest money they ever made.

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u/coldkiller Jul 15 '26

So a cop came up to you for walking down a sidewalk in a city and said “hey! One more step and I’m arresting you for…being outside”?

Yes, have you ever visited an actual big city? Cops will try and fuck with you all the time

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u/AlwaysBagHolding Jul 15 '26

Small towns are worse. There’s nothing worse than a bored cop.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

I’ve lived exclusively in big cities for 40 years.

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u/bobbi21 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

You seriously believe cops never abuse their power and do things they shouldnt? Wow.

Ever heard of loitering? Thousands of people arrested or given warnings for that. You get cops even warning you about that a few times youll stop going out.

Also cps being called on parents for neglect. Happens all the time too.

These are common knowledge. Any google search will bring up thousands of articles of this stuff happening everywhere

You seem to have lived a very privileged life to not deal with that. And a very uncurious one never looking it up. Maybe accept your life is different than others.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Sorry your reading comprehension is too poor to bother responding.

But no, I grew up very working class.

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u/b0w3n Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

What usually happens when cops get called, in my experience, is the teenagers start had been getting antagonistic to a random person/house or are legitimately causing property damage.

No one's calling the cops on kids riding their bike down the road to go hang out at the park and play basketball.

People call them on kids who park in front of someone's house and sit on their cars or start digging up their lawn with their ebikes or something to that effect. This stuff has been increasing in frequency the last few years. We have a park near my house, a bunch of kids go play and some of the neighbors leave them snacks and drinks, but there's a smaller group that pop tires, key cars, and/or steal shit. They were also ding-dong-ditching one guy (who works overnight) over and over for weeks. Often the cops can't differentiate the two because the kids will use the larger group as cover for their behavior.

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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/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

That they live somewhere bikes don’t exist? Or walking outside is illegal? Or no one they know lives in an apartment or home they can hang out? Or their city or town has no parks or fields at all?

Yes, I can imagine that. It’s obviously not real, but I can imagine it. My point would still be that I grew up only ever going to “third places” that still exist.

And I still don’t understand why so many people are pretending not to know the actual major difference between the 90s and today, which is gaming/internet/streaming/phones, all of which make it extremely easy for teens (or anyone) to feel fully indulged alone in their home. Reddit 100% acknowledges that today’s youth grew up exposed to constant brainrot and iPads and got sucked into unhealthy media dependencies, but when we talk about why teenagers don’t have outdoor lives anymore, Reddit prefers to pretend it’s because there are no malls that young people already stopped hanging out in by 1992.

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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/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Around 98% of the sports I did as a youth was fucking around with my friends and, like today, costs zero. All of the outdoor rinks I lived on in winters are still there. I still go when I’m my hometown in winter. It’s me and a bunch of 30+ year olds.

You guys need to get a lot more honest with yourself and admit that phones and streaming and gaming quality is what changed and teenagers just prefer those.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 15 '26

Brother I’ve played on the beaches of Brazil they used sandals as goals and a soccer ball can’t be that expensive.

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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/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Yeah that’s the real point. Kids today don’t want to go out. They’re content in their homes.

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u/AaronRodgersMustache Jul 15 '26

It’s because they scratch the social itch online via gaming, texting, posting online. Take that away, force them to go be social in person, even if they’re gaming in person together.

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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/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Yeah! Little less fun when you had psychedelics in the system than just being stoned. But yes.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

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u/AlwaysBagHolding Jul 15 '26

Every time I get around some of my high school buddies we reminisce about this massive party we were at that got busted, where we all ran through a muddy cornfield from the cops and hid in a random kid’s garage a half mile away while cops drove around spotlighting yards. Probably one of the most fun nights of my life TBH.

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u/RJean83 Jul 15 '26

In theory yes, they still exist. However teens in parks are more likely today to have the cops called on them because they are loitering. For almost anything a teen is doing now, it requires money, approval from an adult, or the involvement of another organization. Online is one of the few spaces that is free if those restrictions.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

Again, we very much had the cops come by when we hung out in parks at night smoking weed.

There is no place we were hanging out as teens that doesn’t exist anymore. Not one. What did change, massively, is the amount of socialization and entertainment teens can get while alone at home. It’s not exactly hard to identify the main difference between 1998 and 2026.

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u/OsmerusMordax Jul 15 '26

Yeah, and when it was hot we’d hang out at the mall or the movies

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u/Thanos_Stomps Jul 15 '26

Those are literally third spaces

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

I am not old enough that the mall was a thing any of us wanted to do. We just got sweaty outside.

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u/MineralDragon Jul 15 '26

Busy body Millennials call the cops on kids and teenagers that are out and about. There have even been state laws passed for criminally charge parents for child neglect for allowing this now a days. Frankly it’s ridiculous and infantilizing, and it is indeed destroying developing socialization skills.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/11/27/georgia-mom-arrested-after-her-10-year-old-went-on-a-walk-alone/76619161007/

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u/Shenari Jul 15 '26

That person was barely a millennial, literally a year or 2 into that demographic and oldest you could be as one.

It's a lot more gen x or boomers who are the ones doing this shit.

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u/therealvanmorrison Jul 15 '26

We got the cops called on us plenty.

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u/Alert-Painting1164 Jul 15 '26

It’s a classic Reddit talking point and when challenged usually ends up being something about Malls being shut now.

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u/LoveMeSomeBerserk Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

This is such a non answer. There are countless free or cheap places teens can still congregate. It’s just easier to scroll on your phone home alone than put in the effort to make human connections. Kids didn’t have that option 20 years ago.

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u/FeelsGoodMan2 Jul 15 '26

No, they were talking about third spaces going the way of the dinosaur even when I was in high school. This is technology all the way.