Loneliness on its own sucks to experience. And I’m sure we’ve all been there at times, in a personal sense. Many of us have even been there to help clients feel less lonely. But can big tech’s AI apps for loneliness actually help those who experience chronic loneliness?
Loneliness has become a health epidemic. In addition to emotional health, loneliness has negative impacts on both physical and cognitive health. It correlates with increased risk of depression, anxiety, dementia, multiple medical conditions, decreased immune functioning, and higher rates of mortality.
As therapists can help individuals or small groups of people through loneliness, tech companies are attempting to help at a large scale. In particular, multiple apps for loneliness using AI have been released for loneliness.
“friend” is an example of an emerging AI app for loneliness and other difficulties. Like it sounds, this app is designed to be a sort of digital companion. The product plans a release for July, 2025, but an official trailer shows what appears to be a necklace that hears your conversations. The AI then generates an encouraging response to the situation and sends you that response in a text message.
Unfortunately, we still do not have much evidence about the effectiveness of AI apps like this and Replika for loneliness. It is clear they are not without ethical pitfalls or controversy (e.g., privacy and data sharing concerns). And they seem to bring about mixed responses from therapists and everyday consumers. But do they effectively 1) reduce loneliness while 2) not inhibiting development of in-person social skills? Time will tell.
Initial encouraging evidence has emerged for a hardware/software device designed to reduce loneliness in aging adults, however. ElliQ works to encourage aging adults to engage in valued constructive activities and suggests conversation and activities for in-person interactions.
Luckily, effective evidence-based behavioral strategies for helping to reduce loneliness still exist for skeptical professionals and consumers. Dr. Matt B also released a brief clip for clients and consumers that describes multiple effective tools to cope with loneliness.
No matter one’s opinion on AI apps for loneliness, we can always be sure tech will make attempts to solve an issue at scale. Time will tell what particular effects these solutions have for a loneliness; a tale as old as time that has become particularly big in our current time.
