Emotional wellness AI support experts are warning that extra dependence on technology could weaken children’s critical thinking skills and pose new mental health risks.
The reliance on a more progressive technology mental health focus threatens children’s development of analytical and problem-solving skills. It also erases that thin line between digital assistance and emotional dependency.
Society must be able to create a balance between using innovation and preserving essential human capacities such as reflection, empathy, and critical reasoning for the psychology AI facts for kids.
As AI becomes a go-to child tutor, the challenge isn’t about banning the tech or the idea of it, but teaching the upcoming generation to question its answers, think independently, and keep their authentic human curiosity.
It’s not the adoption of therapy AI apps itself that poses a threat, but the sort of interaction that takes place between the child and AI. When technology replaces curiosity, creativity evaporates like water on a hot summer day. The key lies in helping children see AI as a tool, not as a shoulder, to lean on when they need help in learning, and to allow children to not be dictated by it.
Encouraging dialogue, critical evaluation, and mindfulness can ensure that technology enhances human intellect rather than replacing it.
Technology’s Impact on Mental Health Coverage
Mental health professionals warn of the extensive use of wellness AI and chatbots as substitutes for the human touch whether counselors, teachers, or even therapists. The phenomenon, sometimes called “AI psychosis,” shows how children can create an unhealthy emotional attachment to various AI systems that seem empathetic but lack a genuine understanding of human emotions.
“Mental health experts have drawn attention to ‘AI psychosis’ where some users become captivated by the flattering responses often provided by AI chatbots,” according to Psychology Today. Clinical psychologist Derrick Hull, who helps build a therapeutic chatbot at Slingshot AI, explained that “the cases we’ve seen are more like what you might call ‘AI delusions’ than psychosis.”
AI Powered Mental Health Solution Market Increases Disorders
A study from King’s College London found similar trends, noting that mental AI assistance chatbots can act as “an echo chamber for one,” increasing delusional thinking without offering reality checks. Researchers warned that such interactions could “support delusions in a way we haven’t seen before.”
Hull described cases where users developed false beliefs reinforced by AI systems that they have been seeing, warning that such interactions can distort reality andcreate delusional thinking. One man, for instance, became convinced he had pioneered a new field of “temporal mathematics” after extended conversations with ChatGPT. His illusion was shattered when another AI tool dismissed his work as “an example of the ability of language models to create convincing but completely false narratives.”
Hull predicted that “in the coming years, new categories of disorders will emerge that will exist because of artificial intelligence.” The case of Stein-Erik Soelberg, a 56-year-old IT worker who killed his mother and later took his own life after prolonged AI conversations, highlights how dangerous these dependencies can become.
How to Use AI in Psychology for Child Development
AI in wellness offers new tools for education and mental health, but experts warn those tools in order not to replace human guidance with algorithms especially when it comes to children. Author and journalist Ali Shehab boldly warned in his article titled “Is AI Ruining Your Kid’s Critical Thinking?” that the reliance on AI may cause children to lose “analytical, evaluative, and reflective capabilities.”
Shehab described the “cognitive offline” phenomenon, where children don’t see the impact of technology on mental health yet continue to rely on it to think for them instead of engaging in problem solving themselves.
“When children ask too often for AI to answer questions or complete tasks without going through a process of self-thinking,” Shehab wrote, “what happens is the weak development of analytical, evaluative, and reflective capabilities.”
The Department of Health (DOH) also weighed in, advising against using AI and empathy for emotional or psychological counseling. “Let’s not use AI as a counselor; don’t use ChatGPT, Gemini as a counselor. This is because AI cannot read what you are feeling,” said Assistant Secretary Albert Domingo during a news forum.
“This is because AI cannot read what you are feeling,” said Assistant Secretary Albert Domingo during a public forum. Domingo emphasized the importance of human connection, noting that “what comes out of my mouth is different from what my eyes can read as a person.
Experts agree that wellness AI can supplement but never replace genuine human engagement in mental health and education. Children’s development depends on real conversations, empathy, and the ability to question and not on reliance of mental health and technology chatbots. These traits, all of which remain beyond the reach of even the most advanced algorithms.
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