Living with AI Companions: Sustained AI Companionship Predicts Lower Well-Being Through Lower Human Interaction

AI chatbots are increasingly used for companionship, emotional support, and personal self-disclosure; however, how social engagement with these systems unfolds over time and shapes users’ well-being remains unclear. To address this, we conducted a two-wave longitudinal study of Character.AI users, surveying 1,182 participants at baseline and 439 after a mean follow-up of 12 months. We examined how social engagement with AI companions evolves and how these longitudinal engagement patterns may influence well-being through two hypothesized pathways: sustained social engagement over time and the displacement of human social interaction. We found that interaction intensity, companionship use, and self-disclosure all showed substantial continuity over time. Greater interaction intensity at baseline predicted greater subsequent interaction intensity, companionship use, and self-disclosure. Consistent with the longitudinal engagement pathway, sustained social engagement across these dimensions was consistently associated with lower well-being. Results further support the social displacement pathway, indicating that these links were mainly explained by lower in-person social interaction.

Introduction. AI companions have rapidly become part of everyday life. A recent national survey found that roughly three-quarters of teenagers have used an AI companion, and more than half reported using them at least once a month (Robb and Mann, 2025). The growing adoption of AI companions has intensified debate about their consequences for psychological well-being. Some studies suggest that AI companions can reduce loneliness, provide emotional support, and help users feel heard (De Freitas et al., 2026, Maples et al., 2024, Merrill Jr et al., 2025, Sullivan et al., 2023, Ta et al., 2020), whereas others associate their use with greater loneliness, problematic reliance, and reduced offline social engagement (Alabed et al., 2024, Folk and Dunn, 2026, Herbener and Damholdt, 2025, Jacobs, 2024, Zhang et al., 2025b). To reconcile these seemingly contrasting findings, we need to go beyond asking whether AI companionship is beneficial or harmful and instead examine how engagement with AI companions comes to shape well-being?

Discussion / Conclusion. How AI companionship may shape well-being over time. In this work, we provide longitudinal evidence to better understand the mechanisms through how social engagement with AI companions may shape psychological well-being over time. First, we found that social engagement developed From bowling alone to chatting alone. The social displacement pathway may have implications beyond individual well-being because human relationships are reciprocal. When users redirect time and attention from family members, partners, or friends toward AI companions, others also lose opportunities for interaction, support, and shared experiences. Unlike other communication technologies that mediate interaction between people, AI companions can occupy users’ social attention without reciprocal human participation. This displacement may therefore have second-order effects, as a shift toward AI companionship may reduce not only users’ own human interaction, but also the social interaction available to those around them.