Are lonely youngsters turning to chatbots for companionship? The relationship between chatbot usage and social connectedness in Danish high-school students

Are lonely youngsters turning to chatbots to fill their social needs? The present research contributes to the ongoing scientific endeavors to understand the adoption of chatbots as social companions. Specifically, we examined how many Danish high-school students engage in friend-like conversations with chatbots, why they engage in such conversations, and whether this trend is associated with the sense of social connectedness (operationalized as loneliness and perceived social support). In pursuing this goal, a preregistered mixed-methods cross-sectional survey study was carried out. A total sample of 1599 students from 15 Danish high schools was collected. In total, 234 students (14.6%) responded that they engage in friend-like conversations with chatbots. Qualitative thematic analyses of free-text responses revealed two dominant ways of engaging with chatbots: utilitarian conversations (n = 174) and social-supportive conversations (n = 39). A major finding was that social-supportive chatbot users reported significantly more loneliness than non-chatbot users (d = 0.53) and utilitarian chatbot users (d = 0.52). Furthermore, social-supportive chatbot users also reported significantly lower perceived social support than non-chatbot users (d = -0.46). Analyses also showed significant associations between higher loneliness and less perceived social support and various situational triggers for initiating conversations with chatbots, including bad mood, a need for self-disclosure, and a sense of loneliness, but not with a sense of friendship to the chatbot as a trigger of chatbot interactions. These findings suggest a trend among some socially disconnected Danish high-school students toward using chatbots to cope with negative emotions.