The chatbot understands me

A recent report published in the United States (RAND foundation) states that the use of artificial intelligence chatbots for mental health advice among adolescents and young adults has increased by more than 40% in the last year, and that almost 1 in 5 report having used AI tools for support. 19.2% of young people between 12 and 21 years old said they had used AI chatbots (Gemini, ChatGPT, Meta AI, or Character.AI) for help or advice when they felt angry, nervous, sad, or stressed.

In Europe, the Ipsos ‌BVA survey conducted in early 2026 among young people aged 11 to 25 in France, Germany, Sweden, and Ireland indicates that one in two young people has used a chatbot to talk about their worries. In parallel, the percentage of psychologists using a 24-hour chatbot as a therapeutic assistant is also increasing. What is all this about?

Young people say the chatbot does not judge them. It makes me think when people talk about their dog: it is always happy and its approval is unconditional. But for the dog, which is a living being, not everything is foreseen as the owner imagines: sometimes it eats that little piece of ham you left carelessly on the table. Damn it! In this expression from Captain Haddock in "Tintin there is frustration. Living beings are sometimes unpredictable.

For young people, the chatbot is always available. Beware: being available and welcoming distress are two different things. Welcoming and listening go together: when we listen to an adolescent's anguish or welcome a young person's complaint, we are, in part, available... Available for what? Perhaps that is the question. We can be available to accept everything (this is the case with the chatbot). But we can also be available to listen a little beyond the literal meaning of what is said. Jacques Lacan used the phrase “what is said within what is felt”. The chatbot “feels” (registers), but does not grasp what is said, because it does not listen.

The chatbot plays the role of another. What is the difference between another and a digital algorithm? The other has a body that acts as a limit: it is a boundary. We cannot imagine being in the other's body. The other is always obscure. What does the other want? We do not know for sure. But the other is there with their body, welcoming in silence. Meanwhile, the chatbot pretends to welcome, when in reality it only registers what is said to it in order to search for associated and standardized responses, to which adolescents and young people adapt, believing they are talking about themselves.

Some people are like a chatbot, in reality. They neither welcome nor listen. Surrounded by these people, young people, instead of looking for others (people), connect with the chat, with whom all of them are put.

Faced with life's difficulties, we must exclude chatbots and people who resemble them, and at the same time rescue and highlight people who welcome and listen, without any therapeutic assistants worth anything, with whom young people can truly “connect.” Everything else is a real indecency.