The Tech Download: Teen social media bans miss a key part of the puzzle: AI

This report is from this week’s The Tech Download newsletter. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

A new addiction is quietly taking hold among teenagers.

They’re not just doom-scrolling social media anymore. They’re increasingly locked into conversations with AI chatbots that seem endlessly knowledgeable, supportive and ever-validating. And they’re struggling to break up with it.

Roughly half of U.S. teens now use chatbots like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Character.AI for schoolwork, information, or just for fun, according to Pew Research Center. 

Meanwhile, a growing body of evidence shows that teens are using chatbots as a substitute for real-life friendships and relationships and are showing patterns related to addiction.  

Does this sound like a painfully familiar story? That’s because it is. Let’s zoom out for a second.  

When Australia became the first country to legally enforce a teen social media ban in December, it became a trial run for the rest of the world. It led to several governments, from the U.K. to Spain, France, Greece, and Canada, following suit in the months after. Meanwhile, state-level bans are gaining traction in the U.S.  

However, as a member of the generation that grew up in the throes of social media, I fear we’re 15 years too late. And as this new, shiny technology in the form of AI and chatbots takes over, experts I’ve spoken to are calling it déjà vu.  

“It is right that we use social media as a case study for what we don’t want to repeat. I mean, it’s kind of like, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,” University College London’s Associate Professor of Digital Humanities, Kaitlyn Regehr, told CNBC.  

Regehr said governments spent years catching up to social media regulation, only to repeat the same mistake by allowing untested AI products to reach children.

Earlier this year, companies including Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, and Google‘s YouTube were found negligent for failing to adequately warn users about the dangers of using their platforms, with harms ranging from addictive infinite scrolling features to body dysmorphia.  

Yet as the dangers of AI chatbots unravel, there’s shockingly little to no mention of them in most of the legislation above.  

So far, the U.K.’s teen social media ban has briefly mentioned restricting under-18s from AI ‘romantic companion’ chatbots designed to foster sexual relationships or roleplay with users. The U.S. House recently passed the KIDS Act to restrict AI chatbot interactions with children, though it still awaits Senate approval.

Regehr noted that much of the legislation, particularly in the U.K., is still limited and only touches on some of the most extreme harms, while still ignoring how chatbots more broadly can foster emotional and social dependency as well as cognitive de-skilling.

Sonia Livingstone, a professor at the London School of Economics…