It’s an open question. The incidence of mental health has stabilized over the past several years. However, around a quarter (23.4%) of the U.S. population experienced some form of mental illness in 2024 according to Mental Health America. But, among youth aged 12-17, their findings reveal an even lower figure with with less than one in five suffering a mental health episode.
Among those 8.2 million youths, 19.2% used Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots for mental health advice. That figure represents a steep increase from the previous year’s 13.1%. An American success story–right?
AI-Negatives
Well, perhaps. Anecdotal evidience suggests a substantial number of adolescents and young adults engage in negative behaviors based on the advice of chatbots. Ninety-seven per cent of psychologists verify this impression along with their concern regarding Chatbots’ inability to provide nuanced advice. A few even encourage negative behavior. Those factors along with adolescent reluctance or inability to confide in a parent or trusted adult contribute to the concern surrounding chatbots dispensing psychological advice.
AI Nuances
The above concerns don’t necessarily impugn the quality of AI-given advice. The old anagram GIGO (Garbage In-Garbage Out) still applies. The fact that mental health incidents have plateaued, even declined over the past few years suggests the nation’s mental health has stabilized if not improved overall. Yet, the significant increase in the use of AI Chatbot psychological services among the more vulnerable in the population, i.e., adolescents and young adults. Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, their usage increase indicates something detrimental underlies the statistics.
Adolescent Angst
If these chatbot consultations reflect genuine responses to real-life conundrums, the issues that affect this subgroup demand examination as well. One major concern confronting the members of this group involves their future roles as adults, namely, their professions. As the most important aspect of their adult lives, their choices profoundly affect their future outcomes. That’s a lot of pressure.
Given all the options, examining some of the career-choices available becomes necesary. Though it applies only to aspiring college undergraduates, the message in the YouTube video “What Your College Major REALLY Says About You” applies here. Broken into five categories, it reveals how the students’ career choices chose them. For example, 20% of undergradsr cent become business majors to gain security and power.
Among other career choices:
- Engineering: students choose their major to avoid the messiness and uncertainty dealing with people involves.
- Helper professions such as nursing and social work: continues the approval the students’ parents bestowed upon them for being useful, a helper.
- Doctors and lawyers: receive positive reinforcement for fulfilling the goals and acheivements everyone expected of them.
Only the self-proclaimed artists and generalists addressed the issue of what their future would be by avoiding the issue altogether.
Where Does AI Come In?
First of all, it exonerates AI from much of the responsibility for these students’ career choices. It’s true some may have consulted AI through their career advisors. Nonetheless, the decisions young people make lie primarily within the parameters of social and familial pressures which shape individual personalities.
Second, such evasion and/or avoidance suggests why many adolescents and young adults don’t discuss their fears and apprehensions with parents–the pressure is too great. Why undermine the positive reinforcement that supported your entry into college? Better to deflect or divert it than deny it altogether. Better yet, confide in an anonymous, impersonal machine all your doubts and misgivings. No one gets hurst that way, at least, no one with feelings.
Finally, employing AI in such a plan of action fulfills its role in our society in another, genuinely realistic way. All the above majors choices are valid responses to real-life situations. Another real life situation these aspiring adults face involves a diminishing, changing job market. More than half of the occupations higher education trains its students for are obsolete or will be in several years. Many of these are or were entry-level positions. That first rung of the career ladder is disappearing fast.
Not only does this fact compound young adult anxiety, it hampers their abilities to cope with it. AI Chatbots form the legion of front-line, insentient troops designed to deal with the cares, feelings, and tribulations of those having difficulty adjusting to their impendng adult realities. The self-mutilations and suicides result from replacing humans with unnuanced, ill-programmed mimics of professional mental health professionals.
How AI Affects Our Mental Health
AI Chatbots are symptoms rather than perpetrators of our mental health care shortcomings. The problem is systemic. Behind the bots are medical administrators unwilling or unable to replace front-line, entry-level positions with novice humans. Behind them are business schools which celebrate efficiency and economy over feelings and expertise. And behind all those is a system that continues to graduate psychologists and social workers whose future job pool has shrunk to bucket-sized.
And like the working lives of familycaregivers, the jobs that remain feature high stress and burnout. No wonder many adolescents and young adults secretly seek solace and advice from inanimate and uncaring data advice dispensers. For them there is nowhere else to turn.
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