One-quarter of 13- to 17-year-olds in England and Wales have used artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for mental health advice and support, a study published Dec. 9 has found.According to the results of the Youth Endowment Fund’s (YEF) survey, 25 percent of teens in those countries are turning to chatbots for help, making AI more commonly used than other established online or telephone-based resources, including mental health or wellbeing websites (22 percent), chat groups and forums (18 percent), or mental health apps (15 percent).
The findings are part of the YEF’s report on mental health and experiences of violence among young people.
The foundation, which surveyed nearly 11,000 13- to 17-year-olds in England and Wales about their experiences over the past 12 months, said that “teenage children with higher rates of mental health difficulties are more likely to have direct experiences of violence, as victims and perpetrators.”
While the portion of all those surveyed using AI chatbots was already considerable (25 percent), rates were even higher for those who said they had been a perpetrator (44 percent) or victim (38 percent) of serious violence. Figures were lower (23 percent) for those who said they were neither a perpetrator nor a victim of violence.
Perpetrators and victims of violence also used other online services at a high rate.
Forty-two percent of perpetrators and 44 percent of victims of serious violence said they used mental health or well-being websites; 41 percent of perpetrators and 37 percent of victims of serious crime said they had used chat groups or forums; and 37 percent of perpetrators and 38 percent of victims of crime said they had used mental health apps.
The YEF said that online resources for mental health and support are being “disproportionately accessed by those who are not receiving in-person professional help.”
“When professional help is unavailable or feels out of reach, some young people turn to online spaces and AI for advice. The immediacy and anonymity of the support these platforms offer can make young people feel safer and make them more accessible than formal mental health services. But convenience isn’t always a substitute for human connection,” the report said.
The YEF’s Youth Advisory Board discussed the findings of the survey, highlighting in particular the significant portion of teenagers turning to AI chatbots. In the video posted to YouTube, members called the widespread use of AI “scary” and “really worrying,” with one noting that using AI lacks personal, human interaction.1 in 8 US Young PeopleIn the United States, researchers from RAND, Brown University School of Public Health, and Harvard similarly found that young people are turning to AI chatbots for mental health advice.Their study, based on 1,058 responses and published Nov. 7, found that more than one in eight (13.1 percent) of 12- to 21-year-olds reported using chatbots for mental health advice, with there being higher rates among young adults aged 18 to 21 years old (22.2 percent).Ateev Mehrotra, professor at the Brown University School of Public Health and a co-author of the study, said that while there had been a lot of discussion around teens and young adults using AI chatbots, to the researchers’ knowledge, no one had quantified what the proportion was.
“I think the most striking finding was that already, in late 2025, more than 1 in 10 adolescents and young adults were using [large language models] for mental health advice and that it was higher among young adults,” Mehrotra said. “I find those rates remarkably high.”
Study authors said that the findings come at a time when the United States is experiencing a “youth mental health crisis.”
“In the past year, 18 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years had a major depressive episode; 40 percent of these received no mental health care,” they wrote.Young AI Users Prefer Talking to TechLast month, a study found that almost 1 in 5 11- to 18-year-olds (19 percent) in England who use AI instead of talking to someone admitted that they do so because it was easier than talking to a real person.The analysis was carried out by OnSide for the youth charity’s fourth “Generation Isolation” report, which looks at how young people spend their time.Generation Isolation was launched in 2022 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The charity’s chief executive, Jamie Masraff, wrote in the latest report’s foreword published on Nov. 19 that “since then, Generation Isolation has painted a consistent picture of young people’s social lives as increasingly digital, often solitary, and too often disconnected from the in-person experiences that create real belonging.”
There is growing concern about children’s relationships in the digital age, particularly in relation to social media and AI.
In recent years, there have been reports of AI-induced self-harm, prompting several lawsuits that allege AI models drove users—including children—to commit suicide.Australia has sought to mitigate the risks to mental health and other harm caused to children by bringing into law a ban on social media for those under 16 years of age, which came into force on Dec. 10.