Youth·Overview
AI Chatbot Use and Disclosure for Mental Health Among US Adolescents and Young Adults
McBain i in. (RAND), JAMA Pediatrics, 2026
One teen in five asks AI about their mental health. Most tell no one.
RAND, with Harvard Medical School, the MIT Media Lab and Brown University, ran a nationally representative survey of Americans aged 12–21 in November 2025; the results appeared in JAMA Pediatrics in June 2026. Weighted, this corresponds to a population of more than 42 million young people.
19.2% had used an AI chatbot for mental-health advice when feeling sad, angry or anxious — nearly half again as many as a year earlier. Most of them found the advice helpful. And 63.3% of them told no one: not parents, not friends, not a doctor.
Chatbots are already part of the ecosystem in which the young seek help with their minds — and an invisible part, because it is hidden. For parents and clinicians the authors’ lesson is practical: ask directly, because the child will not volunteer it. Caveat: cross-sectional and self-reported; it measures the reach and concealment of the advice, not its effects.
From the original
„19.2% of young Americans (12–21) sought mental-health advice from an AI chatbot. 63.3% of them told no one.”
- Year
- 2026
- Original language
- EN
- Source
- McBain i in. (RAND), JAMA Pediatrics, 2026
An overview in the EPIQ team’s own words, not a translation. The full text remains with the publisher — link below. Quotations are short, verbatim and attributed, within the right of quotation.