Confronting Loneliness in the Age of AI Companions

Is technology making us more lonely?

It seems like a natural question to ask, as news of the loneliness epidemic persists after the COVID-19 pandemic and books like Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation sound alarms about social media’s negative impact on our young people.

Or maybe the question is our way of intellectualizing the pulsing anxiety we feel as we watch our aging parent or teenaged child spend too much time sequestered in their room, kept company only by their screens—and, increasingly, their artificial intelligence companions.

Just as AI companionship for the elderly is rapidly becoming big business in a new loneliness economy, a recent Common Sense Media study reported that nearly three-quarters of teens have used an AI companion. Of that group, one third finds serious conversations with AI to be as satisfying or more satisfying than those with human friends.

Or maybe we ask the question because, when Mark Zuckerberg claims that Meta AI friends will solve our loneliness problem, a future where human beings largely rely on AI chatbots for companionship simply wigs us out.

Whatever drives us to ask this question, perhaps we need to let it drive us. As Christians, we should lean our collective shoulder into investing in a ministry of nearness—one that can act as a source of hope and consolation in a world increasingly structured for loneliness.

Reconsidering Loneliness

To know how AI might contribute to societal loneliness, we must first become aware of the assumptions we hold about what loneliness is and how we study it.

What Makes Loneliness an Epidemic?

A recent global study found that almost 40% of adults report feeling lonely. Almost 50% of younger adults (18-24 years old) report loneliness, compared to approximately 30% of older adults (55+).

While it is reasonable to think that loneliness is on the rise because of recent worldwide and technological developments, the statistics on loneliness have actually been concerning for quite some time.

In 2004, one quarter of Americans reported having no one with which to discuss important things, up from just 10% in 1984.

Even further back, a “nationwide epidemic of loneliness” was declared in the 1980s, when loneliness was found to be correlated with smoking, alcoholism, high blood pressure, and insomnia.

The 2023 declaration of the loneliness epidemic was largely premised on a 2017 study that established chronic loneliness as a clear causal agent in lowering life expectancies. It was also found to speed up heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and exacerbate anxiety and depression.

How Do We Measure Loneliness?

Any social-scientific class on research methods will teach students the importance of “operationalization”: the process of developing indicators to empirically measure and reflect an abstract phenomena, like loneliness.

This matters for two reasons. First, how we operationalize loneliness in our studies shapes what we imagine loneliness to be. Second, it forms the solutions we pursue.

Much of what is referenced as “loneliness studies” would be better termed “social isolation studies.” Surveys often ask: Think back over the last six months and the people with whom you discussed the things most important to you. How many were there?

An objective indicator like the number of confidants a person has is a fairly decent indicator of loneliness. But at the same time, this measures only one aspect of it.

Other loneliness studies ask more subjectively-oriented questions: Do you feel understood by anyone in your life? Do you feel satisfied with your friendships?

Here, loneliness is largely a felt experience that reflects the distance between expectation and perceived reality of one’s relationships. Two people might have the same number of confidants, but their level of loneliness may differ according to their subjective evaluation of those relationships.

What Drives AI Companionship?

This distinction between loneliness as social isolation and loneliness as felt experience is important when assessing what drives AI companionship.

If we define loneliness as a problem of social isolation, we might align with psychologists who view digital technologies as forces that displace the in-person experiences necessary for healthy adolescent development.

This definition sees in-person socialization losing to algorithmically-driven social media feeds and causing more loneliness, depression, and anxiety. AI chatbots then become social crutches for young people who remain physically isolated.

However, if we understand loneliness as a felt gap between expectation and perceived reality, the story changes. It recognizes that social media has fed young people hyperreal content. This content heightens their expectations about what a worthwhile life entails and cultivates a subjective perception that everyone else is more connected and happier than themselves.

This constant social comparison leads to a deficiency-oriented assessment of their own lives, resulting in feelings of loneliness, regardless of how much sociability they actually have.

In this account, rather than isolating teens in their bedrooms, digital technologies lead to loneliness because they malform young people’s expectations. AI companionship, then, serves as a convenient salve to these feelings of unfulfillment.

Loneliness as a Feature of Modern Life

Whether we view it as social isolation or felt experience, we risk misreading the social issue of loneliness if we think that it is simply a personal problem exacerbated by technology. Loneliness is a public issue woven into the structure of modern life.

Loneliness is Not Simply a Personal Problem

Sociologist C. Wright Mills famously argued that when there is a problem experienced by an increasing number of people at a given time, it’s a mistake to solely blame the individual. One must examine the structures of society.

With increasing numbers of people reporting experiences of loneliness, it’s a mistake to look merely to an individual’s circumstance for answers. We need to recognize how society has become systemically structured for loneliness.

Loneliness Goes Deeper Than AI

Over the last two hundred years, our society has stripped away institutional arrangements that have historically sheltered people within contexts of sustained belonging.

Consider how modern Americans have relinquished the norms of multigenerational families living together in tightly-knit neighborhoods. We traded this for the idealized dream of a nuclear family living in a detached home with lawns fenced by privacy hedges.

The modern road to financial success is also paved by geographic mobility in pursuit of better schooling and better jobs, which necessitates loose networks of social ties rather than being rooted and known in one place.

Now, digital conveniences like DoorDash, Amazon, and Netflix allow us to avoid the burdens of navigating people and public spaces after a long day’s work.

In this regard, our modern world is structured to foster productivity, efficiency, consumption, and disposal—not slowness, belonging, stability, and presence. And lest we grow nostalgic for the bygone days, let’s be honest about how much we cherish the autonomy, choices, and freedoms afforded by our society’s evolution.

But the trade-off for these goods is very real. Loneliness is not a personal deficiency or failure; it is a natural by-product of modernization. Our world today is built to leave us as orphans.

Forming a Ministry of Nearness

Before leaving his disciples, Jesus gave them a promise: he would not leave them as orphans. He promised to send the Advocate, the Spirit of God who stays and abides with us.

The Pentecostal manifestation of the Holy Spirit would later be the animating breath that formed the early Church, a reminder that Jesus’ incarnation began a ministry of divine nearness that we are called to continue.

This call now comes into sharper relief in today’s lonely world.

What is a Ministry of Nearness?

Nearness looks like what psychologist Lisa Damour calls a steady, agenda-less presence.

Damour writes that good parenting involves offering a presence that is consistent, stable, and near. She recommends that love and care be expressed through the gentleness of a grounded and non-judgmental presence, rather than emphasizing words of guidance or advice.

Jesus’ everyday encounters with people consistently offered solidarity through a similar posture of steady, agenda-less presence. His ministry expressed to people that they were seen and valued, and that he was unafraid to draw near to their suffering.

In the same way, a ministry of nearness recognizes the divine significance of offering one’s embodied presence to another. It looks like a community actively engaged in the good of the local surroundings, reliably available, and known to have margin to give when margin can’t be found anywhere else in society.

A ministry of nearness invests sweat equity into better understanding how it is that race, education, class, gender, sexuality, age, immigration status, disability, and some other formative life circumstances can shape someone’s struggle with feeling lonely and unseen.