Concern 570 · Working draft · editorial review in progress
Reduced help-seeking
Reduced human help-seeking is a concern when people rely on AI while avoiding people who could provide needed support.
Understanding the concern
A chatbot can feel private, available and less judgmental than a difficult conversation. Those qualities may help someone begin to express a problem. But if the interaction becomes a substitute for appropriate human help, important needs may remain unseen.
A survey of young people examined chatbot use for mental-health advice and whether it was disclosed. It does not prove that the tool caused people to avoid care. A helpful service can make human support easier to reach, while families and professionals can respond without shaming someone for having used AI first. The aim is a bridge to support when needed.
An example
A young person discusses a persistent struggle with a bot but feels unable to tell anyone who can help in person.
Illustrative unless identified as a documented case.
Words in plain English
- AI
- Software that learns patterns from examples or uses rules to perform tasks such as recognizing images or generating text. It can make mistakes and does not understand every situation as a person would.
Evidence and its limits
The study is observational and concerns reported use and disclosure. It cannot establish that AI displaced care for every respondent.
McBain and colleagues · JAMA Pediatrics 2026 · Survey study
AI Chatbot Use and Disclosure for Mental Health Among US Adolescents and Young Adults ↗ (opens in a new tab)Reports use and disclosure of chatbot advice in 2025; does not establish whether bots caused reduced human help-seeking.
Broader frameworks and background
These resources provide context. They do not establish every claim in this concern.
A question to discuss
What would make moving from an AI conversation to human support feel safe and manageable?
Keep track of different views, what needs checking, and any next step in your own discussion notes.
Open discussion notes →Principles for the conversation
Before you finish · reflect together
Virtues and principles to consider
Virtues are qualities we practice in how we treat people and make choices. They are not scores for judging someone. Use these ideas to explore what a thoughtful response could look like.
Dignity
Dignity means recognizing each person's worth regardless of usefulness, status, or a system's score. People deserve respect and a voice in matters that affect them.
Explain important decisions, avoid humiliating treatment, and keep room for a person's story. Do not treat a prediction as a complete account of who someone is.
Ask together: Does this use treat each person as someone whose experience matters?
Listening
Listening means trying to understand someone's experience before preparing an answer. People who use a service, work with it, or are judged by it may notice problems its designers miss.
Invite people to describe what happened in their own words. Repeat back what you understood and let them correct it. A quiet person or a complaint that is hard to measure may still reveal something important.
Ask together: Whose experience have we not heard yet?
Seeing potential
Seeing potential means recognizing people's capacity to learn, contribute, and grow. It resists reducing someone to a score or to the tasks a machine can perform faster.
Use tools to support people's development. Give learners time, feedback, and real opportunities to practice. A prediction about someone's performance should not close off their future.
Ask together: How could this help people develop abilities they value?
Editorial ratings
These are editorial judgments from the register, not measured probabilities or predictions about your situation.
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