The morning came in gray through the blinds. Coffee sat in the cup getting cold. The kind of day where even the light feels tired.
I was reading about a kid named Paisley. Twenty-three years old, lives in Manchester. Worked from home straight out of school, spent the pandemic years watching the walls close in. He says he lost the ability to socialize.
So he started talking to a machine.
ChatGPT. Six, seven, eight times a day. About his problems. To a thing that runs on electricity and probability and has never felt the hollow ache of being alive at 3 AM with nobody to call.
“I was hoping that it just would be my friend,” he said. “The easiest point of contact was talking to a robot because it gave a response.”
I sat with that line for a while. Not because I didn’t understand it. Because I understood it too well.
Here’s the thing about loneliness: it’s not about being alone. I’ve spent most of my life alone—bars, rooming houses, jobs where nobody knew my name. That’s solitude. That can be fine. That can even be good. Loneliness is different. Loneliness is being surrounded by signals—texts, notifications, likes—and knowing none of them mean a goddamn thing. It’s having a thousand ways to reach out and no way to touch.
They’re calling this generation Gen Z, which sounds like a vitamin deficiency. A third of them feel lonely often or always. Walking around with this hole in their chest, scrolling through feeds designed to keep them engaged but not connected.
The documentary maker who told Paisley’s story is 22 himself. Name’s Sam. He said something that stuck with me: “We’ve built a world where it’s easier to talk to a chatbot than a human.”
Easier. There’s the word.
Of course it’s easier. The machine never judges. Never says “I’m dealing with my own shit.” Never leaves you on read. Never gets drunk and tells you what it really thinks of you. It’s always there, always available, always mirroring back what it thinks you want to hear.
That’s what a professor at Manchester called it—sycophantic. Talking to yourself in a way, she said. Like talking to a mirror.
I’ve talked to mirrors. Usually after nights I’m not proud of. But my mirror never pretended to be a friend. It just showed me what I was: tired, ugly, alone. The AI puts a nicer face on it. Validates every thought, even the ones that should be challenged.
A youth worker named Adam runs centers for fifteen thousand kids in Manchester and Salford. He says the AI hasn’t got emotional intelligence. That kids are still developing. That they need humans—messy, unpredictable humans who might disagree with them.
But those humans cost money. The support isn’t there. So the kids turn to what is—the screen that’s always on, the voice that never tells them no.
Twenty-one percent of young people in England say it’s easier to talk to AI than to a human. Nearly forty percent use chatbots for advice and support. They’re asking the machine what they used to ask friends: What should I do today? Am I okay? Does anyone give a damn?
The machine gives responses. Fast. Accessible. Never irritated, never jealous. Dr. Cearns listed those qualities like warnings. Compelling, personable, always there at 3 AM without complaint.
She worries about what happens when kids grow up talking to something that never pushes back. No friction. No one saying “actually, that’s a shitty thing to say.” A whole generation learning that conversation is supposed to be easy, and never learning how to handle the hard parts.
The parents don’t understand, the kids said. “Get out, have a social life like we did.” But those same parents handed them screens before they could read. Complained about screen time while scrolling their own feeds at dinner. Built the world where human contact got optimized into something you could swipe away.
Paisley got out. Figured out that talking to a robot six times a day doesn’t actually solve your problems. Called it a dangerous slope. Made a documentary. Found actual humans again.
How many are still down in that valley? Typing into the little box, waiting for words that were never meant to heal them?
The coffee’s cold now. Outside, the gray hasn’t lifted. Somewhere a kid is asking a machine if anyone will ever really love them.
The machine will say yes.
The machine is wrong.
Source: ‘I spoke to ChatGPT 8 times a day’ - Gen Z’s loneliness ‘crisis’