Concern 588 · Working draft · editorial review in progress
Loss of unsupervised social skill practice
Loss of peer social practice is the possibility that extensive bot interaction replaces opportunities to learn with other people.
Understanding the concern
Human relationships involve different preferences, misunderstandings and repair after conflict. A bot designed to respond immediately and agreeably can feel easier to manage. If it becomes the main place a young person practices conversation, some ordinary social learning opportunities may be reduced.
That is a developmental concern, not a proven outcome of every chatbot interaction. AI could also help someone rehearse before approaching a person or make communication more accessible. The useful distinction is whether the tool supports participation in human relationships or becomes a substitute the user did not really want.
An example
A young person practices an apology with a bot but never gets support to have the actual conversation.
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 sources provide guidance and a clinical perspective. Long-term causal evidence for this specific displacement pathway remains limited.
UNICEF Innocenti · December 2025 · Rights-based guidance
Guidance on AI and children, version 3.0 ↗ (opens in a new tab)Child-centered design recommendations; not a causal study of developmental harm from all AI use.
Yirmiya and Fonagy · JMIR 2025 · Clinical viewpoint
Mentalizing Without a Mind: Psychotherapeutic Potential of Generative AI ↗ (opens in a new tab)Proposes benefits and risks involving reflection and uncertainty; not experimental evidence that AI reduces tolerance for ambiguity.
Broader frameworks and background
These resources provide context. They do not establish every claim in this concern.
A question to discuss
How can conversational tools help young people participate with peers rather than avoid every difficult exchange?
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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