Young People Use ChatGPT for Tricky Social Conversations, Experts Warn of Social Outsourcing Risks

Many young people now rely on AI chatbots like ChatGPT to handle tricky social situations, such as rejecting someone. A Yale student used ChatGPT to write a rejection message to a girl—though the wording was polite, friends soon realized it was AI-generated.

This phenomenon is called 'social outsourcing', where individuals use external entities (now AI) to handle social tasks. Research notes it originally referred to using social environments to improve cognitive performance, but the rise of AI has brought it into human-machine interaction.

Experts warn that overusing AI to draft sensitive messages may make users feel their own language and intuition are insufficient, which could harm the development of real social skills in the long run.