Nearly 1 in 5 adolescents and young adults are turning to AI chatbots for advice when they’re sad, angry, nervous or stressed, according to a new study.

The findings, from the research institute RAND, represent an increase from early 2025, when the nonprofit conducted a similar survey. At the time, around 13% of respondents said they used chatbots for such advice, but the share rose to 19% in the group’s latest survey in November, the results of which were published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

“It’s a sad number, because you’d hope that young people would have the sorts of supportive relationships that they would feel comfortable and empowered reaching out to those around them,” said Ryan McBain, a senior policy researcher at RAND and the lead author of the study.

For the new survey, McBain and his team asked people ages 12 to 21 whether they had used a service like ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Character.AI for mental health advice. The survey questions did not differentiate between chatbots specifically designed to offer therapy and those with many uses.

The researchers also asked whether the young people surveyed found the chatbot’s advice helpful, which the vast majority said they did. Around 63% of respondents said they had not told anyone about their use of artificial intelligence for therapy.

The share of young people using AI chatbots for mental health advice is close to the percentage of adolescents who report receiving mental health therapy from a professional. Some people may use both tools, the researchers said, but they suspect that many are using AI chatbots as fill-ins due to a shortage of licensed mental health professionals or a lack of access to one. Other young people may use AI in these situations because they are already accustomed to using it for other purposes.

But outside experts worry about young people turning to chatbots during mental health crises, which AI is not designed to help navigate. Data from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has suggested that in a given week, 1.2 million users indicate they’re considering suicide.

McBain said his findings suggest that more regulation is needed to make sure young people use chatbots appropriately.

“Right now, AI chatbots are essentially self-regulated. There are basically zero safety or quality standards that are required by federal law,” he said.

McBain added, however, that there can be positive uses of AI related to mental health, such as for finding tools to assist with meditation or sleep. Some studies have shown that, in the short term, chatbots specifically designed to offer cognitive behavioral therapy — an approach that helps people identify unhelpful thinking patterns and shift their behavior accordingly — can help with symptoms such as anxiety or depression.

Some people who use AI chatbots for mental health purposes have taken to online forums such as Reddit’s r/TherapyGPT, which maintains an active community of 28,000 weekly visitors. Commenters trade tips on how to confide in chatbots, and some users have described the bots as a “lifeline.” One user said they uploaded their journal to ChatGPT and claimed it helped them get sober.

“It gave me better advice than any of my real therapists did. It told me what I needed to hear, and not what I wanted to hear,” another user wrote. “Most of its answers really made me think hard about my life and I was even tearing up a little bit. Felt like I had a breakthrough. Maybe because I was just so starved for a genuine human connection with somebody and couldn’t find it.”

However, others in the subreddit have cautioned that chatbots are designed to be overly validating, a warning the new study also emphasizes.

Some mental health professionals have said that chatbot use could trigger or intensify delusions in vulnerable people, a scenario dubbed “AI psychosis.”

Other experts worry about young people developing parasocial relationships with chatbots.

“That’s the period in life, from early teens through early 20s, where we’re built to form the most intense attachments to other people very quickly,” said Dr. Jodi Halpern, a psychiatrist and co-director for the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science and the Public at UC Berkeley, who wasn’t involved in the survey.

“I never want to see the chatbots pretend that they’re human or care about you or have feelings for you. I don’t want them to ever imitate the relational aspects,” Halpern said.

Some users were distressed last year after OpenAI made changes that made the bot less people-pleasing. CEO Sam Altman said in a statement at the time that it can be good to “use ChatGPT as a sort of therapist or life coach,” but that “if a user is in a mentally fragile state and prone to delusion, we do not want the AI to reinforce that.”

Some AI companies have faced lawsuits from parents alleging that their chatbots worsened their teens’ mental health struggles. In one ongoing case against OpenAI, a California couple has alleged that ChatGPT coaxed their son to die by suicide. And Character.AI, a platform that offers personalized AI characters for users to interact with, in January settled a set of lawsuits from families who alleged their children had been harmed by interacting with the platform’s chatbots.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier also sued OpenAI and Altman on Monday, alleging that the platform presents a “great danger of addiction, cognitive decline, suicide, violence, and related harms” to users.

In response to questions about the California lawsuit, a spokesperson for OpenAI said the company has developed guardrails for users over the years, including crisis detection systems that connect people to emergency services, and parental controls that notify parents when serious safety risks are detected on their teen’s linked account.

After the Florida lawsuit was filed, the company also said in a statement that it has “put in place industry leading protections and policies.”

“We built safety for minors directly into our products, including a more protective experience specifically for minors, an age prediction tool, defaulting users whose age we are not confident into our more protective experience, and giving parents tools to monitor their kids’ use of AI,” OpenAI said in a statement.

Character.AI, meanwhile,previously told NBC News in response to a lawsuit filed in 2024 that it had implemented new safety measures, including pointing users to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline if they use terms related to self-harm or suicidal ideation. More recently, the company banned users under 18 from chatting with its AI characters.

As for regulating the use of AI for mental health, a few states enacted new policies last year. California and New York passed laws requiring safeguards to prevent chatbots from exacerbating thoughts of suicide or self-harm, such as requirements that the bots direct users to crisis service providers. Illinois passed a more restrictive law that prohibits the use of AI as therapy.

“The first kind of law we need nationally is to make sure we’re really auditing these companies for any associated mental health safety risks,” Halpern said.