New research shows young people are turning to AI because they feel like a burden, can’t be their real selves, and have no one to turn to. We have the antidote.
We’ve all seen the headlines. Young people are using AI companions in increasing numbers—always-available, never-judgmental listeners—and a lot of teens are turning to these chatbots for far more than homework help. Roughly one in eight teenagers is confiding in a machine for emotional support. Parents and mental health professionals aren’t comfortable with this.
But the real question isn’t how many teens are turning to chatbots for comfort—it’s why. A study from The Rithm Project pinpointed what drives this behavior. As one researcher explained, the strongest predictors are teens “feeling like a burden to others, feeling like you can’t be your real self, [and] feeling like there’s no one to turn to.”
This is where every music educator should sit up and take notice. Every one of those needs is met through the act of making music together.
You Are Needed Here: The Cure for Feeling Like a Burden
One of the researchers from the project referenced above, noted that “burdening” one another is a good thing. It’s how we build reciprocity and maintain the social contract.
The good news is music programs are built on the premise that every single participant matters. No one sits on the bench! The second violin part matters. The inner alto line matters. If a student doesn’t show up, the group literally sounds different. In fact, it’s the individual who comprises the whole. This the reality of how ensembles work. A young person who has experienced isolation will find the exact opposite condition in the music room. The ensemble cannot exist without every member.
Reciprocity is rehearsed every day in the music room. You cover for the friend who got lost in a tricky passage. They steady you when your solo entrance goes awry. The “messy human friction” the report worries that kids are offloading to a chatbot is exactly the friction an ensemble teaches students to work through in real time surrounded by people who have their backs.
No Filter Required: Permission to Be Your Unfiltered Self
An ensemble is one of the last places in a teenager’s life where being unfiltered isn’t just allowed—it’s encouraged. In an instrumental ensemble, you can’t play a phrase with feeling while holding yourself back. In a choir, you can’t blend and balance if you fear the sound of your own voice. Expression is key to music-making, and that vulnerability happens in a room full of peers doing the same thing, which is what makes it safe. Nobody pulls out a phone to mock another section when they’re busy performing right alongside them!
Many young people carry a fear of being judged everywhere they go. It’s why so many would rather “play it safe” than risk looking foolish. However, these feelings shift once the ensemble finds its culture. When everyone in the room is taking the same risk at the same time while leaning into a crescendo or executing a sforzando, everyone is exposed together.
This is what a chatbot can’t provide. It can tell a student they’re lovable all day long, but the ensemble allows them to find it out for themselves, wrong notes and all! Music-making offers something far more sustainable than blind affirmation. The self-confidence students gain from these experiences leads to real affirmation and, eventually, to genuine self-acceptance. That freedom to be themselves will serve them well in their adult futures.
We’ve Got You: Someone to Turn To—In Person
Young people are reaching for chatbots in their moments of need. They find comfort in AI because it’s easier than sitting all alone with their feelings or working up the nerve to talk to a friend. To quote a student respondent, “nobody decides they want AI to be their emotional support system, it just keeps feeling easier than the alternative, until one day the habit is already there.”
Music programs build the alternative before that crisis ever arrives. A student in an ensemble doesn’t have to manufacture a reason to be around trusted people. They’re already there in the same room. Research has long shown that a caring, consistent adult is one of the most powerful protective factors in a young person’s life. The music director who works with the same students year after year is often exactly that person.
There’s also a glaring equity gap. Young people from low-income households were three times less likely to engage with AI, yet they reported far higher rates of loneliness, of feeling like a burden, and of not belonging. Thus, the students using AI the least carry the heaviest load, and they were doing so long before chatbots. School music programs are one of the few belonging-builders available to every student, regardless of household income.
Conclusion:
The Rithm Project report concludes that AI companions wouldn’t be nearly so disruptive if our social fabric were sturdier. It’s the weakness of the fabric, not the technology itself, that should concern us. The honest question for parents, educators, and policymakers isn’t only “How do we limit the AI?” It’s “What are we offering instead?”
Music programs are one of the best answers we have. They give young people a place where they’re needed, where they’re free to be unfiltered, and where there is always someone to turn to. Affirmation doesn’t come from a screen. It happens in a music room, in real time, with real people making something beautiful none of them could make alone.