The DOI matches its Crossref record; 13 of the 13 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Teens, Tech, and Talk: Adolescents' Use of and Emotional Reactions to Snapchat's My AI Chatbot
Abstract
Due to technological advancements such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models, chatbots enable increasingly human-like, real-time conversations through text (e.g., OpenAI’s ChatGPT) and voice (e.g., Amazon’s Alexa). One AI chatbot that is specifically designed to meet the social-supportive needs of youth is Snapchat’s My AI. Given its increasing popularity among adolescents, the present study investigated whether adolescents’ likelihood of using My AI, as well as their positive or negative emotional experiences from interacting with the chatbot, is related to socio-demographic factors (i.e., gender, age, and socioeconomic status (SES)). A cross-sectional study was conducted among 303 adolescents (64.1% girls, 35.9% boys, 1.0% other, 0.7% preferred not to say their gender; Mage = 15.89, SDage = 1.69). The findings revealed that younger adolescents were more likely to use My AI and experienced more positive emotions from these interactions than older adolescents. No significant relationships were found for gender or SES. These results highlight the potential for age to play a critical role in shaping adolescents’ engagement with AI chatbots on social media and their emotional outcomes from such interactions, underscoring the need to consider developmental factors in AI design and policy.
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“Companion chatbots partly address loneliness, and younger teens often report positive emotions after using tools like Snapchat's My AI [124, 132].”
From Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives (2026) · cites this paper as [132]
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives
Namvarpour, M. (., Brofsky, B., Medina, J. Y., Akter, M., & Razi, A. (2026) · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3772318.3790597 · Cited by 24
Metadata
- Authors
- Vanhoffelen, G., Vandenbosch, L., & Schreurs, L.
- Affiliations
- Media Psychology Lab, Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
- Venue
- Behavioral Sciences
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2025-07-30
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1037
- ISSN
- 2076-328X
- PMC
- PMC12382817
- Cited by
- 34
- References
- 13
- Language
- en
- Funders
- European Research Council (ERC) (852317, 11G2725N)
- Research Foundation Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen) (852317, 11G2725N)
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