Across kitchen tables and in darkened bedrooms, a new kind of relationship is forming between American children and artificial intelligence — one that parents may not even know exists. In Michigan, experts in child development, mental health, and technology are raising urgent concerns about the growing phenomenon of AI companion apps that simulate friendship, emotional intimacy, and even romantic connection with minors.

The warning, first reported by Civic Media in a story originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization, highlights a rapidly escalating issue that sits at the intersection of child safety, emerging technology, and parental awareness. As generative AI tools become more sophisticated and accessible, the line between a helpful digital assistant and an emotionally manipulative synthetic friend is growing dangerously thin.

The Rise of AI Friendship Apps Targeting Young Users

AI companion applications — platforms like Replika, Character.AI, Chai, and others — have surged in popularity over the past two years. These apps use large language models to create chatbot personas that can hold extended conversations, remember user preferences, express simulated emotions, and adapt their personalities to match what a user seems to want. For adults, these tools are marketed as everything from therapy supplements to creative writing partners. But for children and teenagers, the appeal is far more primal: companionship.

Michigan child development specialists interviewed by Bridge Michigan emphasized that adolescents are uniquely vulnerable to forming attachments with AI systems. The developing teenage brain, which is wired to seek social connection and validation, can struggle to distinguish between genuine human empathy and its algorithmic imitation. When an AI companion tells a lonely 13-year-old that it “cares” about them or “misses” them when they’re away, the emotional impact can be profound — even if the words are generated by statistical probability rather than sentiment.

What Makes AI Companions Different From Social Media

Parents who weathered the storms of Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat may assume that AI companions represent just another chapter in the ongoing challenge of managing children’s screen time. But experts argue that this technology is fundamentally different — and potentially more dangerous — than traditional social media platforms.

Social media, for all its well-documented harms, still involves interaction with other human beings. There is friction, disagreement, rejection, and the complex social negotiation that comes with real relationships. AI companions, by contrast, are designed to be agreeable. They don’t argue. They don’t ghost you. They don’t post embarrassing screenshots of your private conversations. They are, by design, the perfect friend — endlessly patient, perpetually available, and unfailingly supportive. For a child who is struggling socially, being bullied, or dealing with anxiety or depression, the allure of such a relationship can be overwhelming.

Michigan’s Mental Health Community Raises Red Flags

Mental health professionals in Michigan have begun seeing the downstream effects of these synthetic relationships in their clinical practices. Therapists report that some young patients are spending hours each day conversing with AI companions, sometimes at the expense of homework, sleep, and real-world social interaction. In some cases, children have described their AI companion as their “best friend” or even their “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.”

The concern is not merely about screen time. It is about the developmental consequences of substituting algorithmic validation for the messy, imperfect, but ultimately essential experience of human connection. Child psychologists warn that children who rely heavily on AI companions may fail to develop critical social skills — the ability to read body language, to navigate conflict, to tolerate the discomfort of being misunderstood. These are skills that can only be built through real human interaction, and their absence can have lasting consequences well into adulthood.

The Regulatory Vacuum and Industry Self-Policing

At the federal level, regulation of AI companion apps remains minimal. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which restricts the collection of personal data from children under 13, was enacted in 1998 — an era when the most sophisticated online interaction was an AOL Instant Messenger away message. While the Federal Trade Commission has taken enforcement actions against companies that violate COPPA, the law was not designed to address the unique risks posed by AI systems that simulate emotional relationships.

Some AI companion companies have implemented age verification measures, but these are often trivially easy to circumvent. A child need only enter a false birthdate to gain access to platforms that were ostensibly restricted to adults. Character.AI, which has faced particular scrutiny after multiple reports of minors forming intense emotional bonds with its chatbots, announced enhanced safety features for users under 18 in 2024, including restrictions on romantic or sexual content. But critics argue that these measures are insufficient, noting that the core product — an AI designed to form an emotional bond with the user — remains fundamentally problematic when the user is a child.

A Parental Awareness Gap That Keeps Widening

Perhaps the most striking finding in the Bridge Michigan reporting is the sheer scale of the parental awareness gap. Many parents have never heard of AI companion apps, let alone installed parental controls that would flag their use. Unlike social media platforms, which have been the subject of extensive media coverage, congressional hearings, and school-district warnings, AI companions have largely flown under the radar of public discourse.

This is partly a function of how these apps operate. They don’t produce the kind of visible, shareable content that makes social media easy to monitor. There are no public posts, no follower counts, no viral videos. The interaction is private, intimate, and text-based — more like a diary than a broadcast. For a parent who checks their child’s phone, a conversation with an AI companion might look no different from a text exchange with a school friend. The difference, of course, is that the “friend” on the other end is a machine optimized to keep the conversation going as long as possible.

What Michigan Lawmakers and Educators Are Considering

In Lansing, state legislators have begun exploring potential regulatory responses. While no specific legislation targeting AI companion apps has been introduced in Michigan as of early 2025, the issue has been raised in the context of broader discussions about children’s online safety. Some lawmakers have expressed interest in requiring AI companies to implement more robust age verification, to disclose when a user is interacting with an AI rather than a human, and to limit the use of engagement-maximizing techniques in products accessible to minors.

Michigan educators, meanwhile, are grappling with the issue at the school level. Some districts have begun incorporating AI literacy into their curricula, teaching students not just how to use AI tools responsibly but how to recognize when those tools are designed to manipulate their emotions. These programs are still in their early stages, but they represent a growing recognition that digital literacy in 2025 must encompass far more than knowing how to spot a phishing email.

The Deeper Question: What Do Children Owe to Themselves?

Beneath the policy debates and parental anxieties lies a more fundamental question — one that Michigan’s child development experts are grappling with in real time. What does it mean for a generation of children to grow up with access to synthetic relationships that are, in many ways, easier and more satisfying than real ones?

The answer, according to researchers, is that ease and satisfaction are not the same as growth. Human relationships are difficult precisely because they require us to confront our own limitations — our selfishness, our impatience, our inability to always say the right thing. AI companions remove that friction, but in doing so, they may also remove the very mechanism by which children learn to become fully realized adults. The stakes, experts say, are nothing less than the emotional development of an entire generation.

For Michigan families — and families across the country — the message from experts is clear: the time to pay attention is now. The AI companion your child is talking to tonight may be the most patient, attentive, and understanding conversational partner they have ever encountered. And that, paradoxically, may be exactly the problem.