Are Teens Hooked on AI Friends?

Fifteen-year-old Aaron was going through a dark time at school. He’d fallen out with his friends, leaving him feeling isolated and alone.

At the ...

The Death of the Dining Room

The dining room is the closest thing the American home has to an appendix—a dispensable feature that served some more important function at an earlier ...

Out With Play, In with Phone-Based Childhood

In his book, The Anxious Generation, author Jonathan Haidt confirms our worst fears about what happened to Generation Z, the first generation to go through ...

13% of Chatbot Users Just Want to Talk

Most people continue to use AI programs such as ChatGPT, Bing, and Google Bard for mundane tasks like internet searches and text editing. But of the roughly ...

Gen Z Is Rediscovering the Public Library

Twenty-year-old Henry Earls dresses up to go to the library. He picks out cozy knitted sweaters and accessorizes with well-worn copies of classic books. ...

Anti-Loneliness Club Offers Friendship for a Fee

A California startup claims it has a solution to loneliness. Groundfloor, which began in the Bay Area and will soon open a location in Los Angeles, is ...

Introverts Have Taken Over the Economy

The pandemic has brought many changes to businesses, schools, and churches. Another way the pandemic altered America: It has created what might be called ...

You Can’t Truly Be Friends With AI

In 2023, an Australian man said that a chatbot had saved his life. He was a musician who had been battling depression for decades and found companionship ...

Why Have Americans Become So Sad and Mean?

In his article for The Atlantic, David Brooks says that recently he’s been obsessed with the following two questions:

The first is: Why have Americans ...

AI ‘Girlfriends’ Attract Young Men

Freya India writes in an article titled “We Can't Compete With AI Girlfriends”:

Apparently, ads for AI girlfriends have been all over TikTok, ...