TL;DR
Young adults are using AI chatbots to draft dating lines, party icebreakers, and real-time in-person responses. Psychologists warn it creates “self-mistrust.” A relationship coach suggests capping AI rehearsal to once a week.
A growing number of young adults are using AI chatbots to script not just their texts but their in-person conversations, the Wall Street Journal reported. Niharika Abbaraju, a 20-year-old cancer researcher, uses ChatGPT at work for research, but off the clock it becomes her conversation coach, drafting dating app lines, party icebreakers, and real-time responses to whoever is standing next to her. When a conversation drifts toward a book she has not read, she pulls up an AI summary to fake her way through it.
She is not alone. The pattern extends across a generation of young adults who let chatbots steer their dating messages and social interactions, particularly those with social anxiety. The results are sometimes obvious: Austin personal trainer Andrea Wallace noticed a date’s texting grammar suddenly improved, a tell. Northwestern student Lucas Dvorak’s girlfriend told him using AI on her felt “creepy.” Kalin Lincoln, 20, uses ChatGPT to cool down angry emails and prep notes before difficult conversations, but says it backfired at least once, giving her the opposite advice she needed.
Clinical psychologist Ashleigh Golden warns that asking AI to check whether your texts “sound okay” quietly teaches you to distrust your own instincts. Mental health professionals call the pattern an “epidemic of self-mistrust.” Relationship coach Alexandra Friedman suggests capping AI rehearsal to once a week and using a chatbot for what to say, never how to say it. Wharton researchers coined “cognitive surrender” to describe people deferring to AI even when it is wrong, and the social version is the same phenomenon applied to personality rather than facts. The AI version of you is more articulate. The in-person version is the one who has to sustain the conversation.
A study found AI advice made people three times less accurate but twice as confident, and the social parallel is precise: outsourcing conversations builds confidence in the script, not in yourself. Every uncomfortable moment avoided is a confidence-building opportunity lost. The chatbot handles the hard part. The anxiety stays exactly where it was.
