A.I. Is Changing Young People’s Social Lives. I’ve Seen It.

Ms. Lassman is an economist and the author of The Intimacy Economy on Substack.

I used all my savings to buy myself a Wi-Fi-enabled iPod Touch just short of my 13th birthday. Many of my memories follow from there: the portal to my formative experiences, the flutters of a first crush, the last text sent after our breakup. I learned romance through screens; I learned danger through screenshots. Like many Gen Z-ers, I see my Safari tabs as extensions of my most private inner world.

For most people my age, one of those tabs is often a chatbot.

When I write about artificial intelligence and intimacy, people tend to imagine A.I. girlfriends or tech fanatics. Only extreme users would use chatbots to manage their social and emotional lives, or so the thinking goes. But in conversations with other Gen Z-ers, I’ve........

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