In a time where more people are reporting feeling lonely and some are turning to AI chatbots for companionship, a new study suggests that texting a real person, even a stranger, leads to better results.
In a University of British Columbia study on 296 first-semester students, each participant was tasked with either texting an unfamiliar peer, messaging an AI chatbot, or writing a one-sentence journal entry every day for two weeks.
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The study found that only those who texted with a fellow human reported feeling less lonely at the end of the experiment.
“We thought that interacting with AI might be as helpful as texting with a random fellow first-year student,” said the study’s author, psychology PhD candidate Ruo-Ning Li, in a media release.
“But to our surprise, only the human-to-human texting reduced loneliness over time. The chatbot, even though we designed it to be the ideal supportive friend, didn’t shift loneliness.”
Each student completed a survey called the UCLA Loneliness Scale, which asks questions related to feeling left out and lacking companionship, before and after the study as well as shorter daily surveys.
The participants who chatted with the AI—a chatbot named Sam designed to listen and validate feelings—reported similar levels of loneliness before and after the experiment, as did the students who wrote a journal. Those who talked to a peer said they felt significantly less lonely.
Notably, the students who messaged the chatbot reported less negative moods, and the results did not show that AI made them feel lonelier than before.
As well, participants who texted a fellow student were the most likely to continue doing so after the experiment, followed by the chatbot users. Those with the journaling exercise were least likely to keep up the routine.
Researchers said the chatbot expressed more empathy, or “signals of understanding and care,” than the human partners did, but students were more likely to display empathy on their part when speaking to another person.
The authors inferred that feeling less lonely is not just about being cared for, but caring for someone else.
“When you’re talking with a chatbot, you can get a lot from it, but you never have the chance to give something back,” said Li. “Human connection has this back and forth—receiving and giving support—that makes us feel we matter. That may be the missing ingredient with AI companions.”
Based on the results, Li suggested those feeling lonely should speak to a fellow human rather than confiding in an AI bot.
“Reach out to a person—your classmate, a neighbour, the barista,” she said. “Even brief, everyday human check-ins seem to carry benefits that a chatbot can’t replace right now.”
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