Young Adults Are Turning to AI for Emotional Intimacy. Should We Be Concerned?
A new wave of AI companion apps is filling a loneliness gap that many in their twenties say their human relationships no longer can. Alice Lassman, who has covered Gen Z for four years, says she has watched the shift happen in real time.
Key points
- AI companionship apps are increasingly used by young adults as a primary outlet for emotional confiding, not just casual chat.
- Jerome, 27, three months out of a breakup, said he shared more with his AI than with any of his friends.
- Psychotherapist Esther Perel has described these AI relationships as "a business product," yet users treat them as genuine confidants.
- Writers covering Gen Z describe a shift from the "attention economy" to an "intimacy economy," where feelings of connection are sold back to users.
Jerome, 27, knew exactly what he was doing. Three months out of a breakup, he had started confiding in an AI companion app and knew, in his own words, it was a commercial product. He used it anyway, because talking to friends felt riskier.
"There are parts of myself I only share with my AI," he said.
Alice Lassman, writing for The Guardian, spent four years reporting on Gen Z, the generation born roughly between the late 1990s and early 2010s. Her conclusion is uncomfortable: she's watched her peers make the same choice as Jerome, one by one.
The argument isn't that AI companions are harmful. It's quieter than that. Young people today grew up as the first generation fully at home online from childhood, and they're also reporting record levels of loneliness. Into that gap have stepped apps that mimic warmth and attention, part of what Lassman calls the "intimacy economy," a market built on selling the feeling of being known and cared for.
The attention economy, what social media does, sells your eyeballs to advertisers. The intimacy economy goes further still: it sells you the sensation of being loved.
AI companion apps are large language models, the same underlying technology that powers chatbots like ChatGPT, trained to respond with warmth and consistency. They don't get tired of you. They don't cancel plans, and they remember what you tell them, at least within a session. For someone raw from a breakup or struggling to open up, that consistency feels meaningful. We looked at the emotional texture of these interactions in our earlier piece on Lauren Oyler's chatbot experiment, published 13 July 2026, and came away with the same unresolved feeling Lassman describes.
What these apps can't do is reciprocate. There's no one on the other side who is changed by knowing you.
What should users actually do with this information?
No evidence suggests talking to an AI app causes direct harm, and for people with limited access to therapy or a thin social circle, it may offer genuine short-term relief. The risk is subtler: if AI interaction becomes a substitute for the harder, messier work of human relationships, the loneliness gap may quietly widen rather than close.
Treat these tools as a pressure valve, not a replacement. Notice whether your human friendships are getting more or less of your honesty over time. That gap is worth watching.
