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AI Companions Reduce Loneliness

Julian De Freitas, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Stefano Puntoni

Journal of Consumer Research, volume 52, issue 6 (2026), pp. 1126–1148

"Chatbots are now able to engage in sophisticated conversations with consumers in the domain of relationships, providing a potential coping solution to widescale societal loneliness. Behavioral research provides little insight into whether these applications (apps) are effective at alleviating lonel ... more

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Handbook on Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence
Deep Insights

Sahana Udupa, Peter Hervik (eds.)

Cheltenham (UK); Northampton, MA (US): Edward Elgar Publishing (2026), xix, 495 pp.

"This timely Handbook provides a groundbreaking collection of anthropological research on artificial intelligence (AI), examining how anthropology can help to comprehend and critique its development. Evaluating the limits, hopes and fears of AI, leading experts explore its influence as a sociocultur ... more

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World Happiness Report 2026: Happiness and Social Media

John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lara B. Aknin, Shun Wang (eds.)

Oxford: University of Oxford, Wellbeing Research Centre (2026), 268 pp.

"TRENDS IN GLOBAL HAPPINESS • Nordic countries lead the happiness rankings once again. Finland is still in a group of one at the top, followed by a group of three: Iceland, Denmark, and Costa Rica. Sweden and Norway complete the top six, followed by the Netherlands, Israel, Luxembourg, and Switze ... rland to round out the top ten. Costa Rica’s rise to 4th marks the highest ever ranking for a Latin American country. • Looking at changes in happiness from the 2006–2010 base period to 2023–2025, nearly twice as many countries have had significant gains (79) than significant losses (41), among the 136 countries ranked. • Within that period, most of the 21 countries that have gained a point or more on the 0–10 life evaluation scale are in Central and Eastern Europe, reflecting the convergence in European happiness levels that has been clear for more than a decade. Most of the eight countries with drops of more than one point are in or near zones of major conflict. • In general, most Western industrial countries are now less happy than they were between 2005 and 2010. Fifteen of them have had significant drops, compared to four with significant increases. • In a ranking of happiness changes for under-25s, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (the NANZ region) rank between 122 and 133 in the list of 136 countries. • In eight of the ten global regions shown in Figure 2.2 (covering roughly 90% of the world’s population), those in the youngest age group have higher life evaluations now than in 2006–2010, either in absolute terms or relative to those over 25. Youth wellbeing has only fallen in the NANZ countries and Western Europe, both absolutely and relative to adults. • Negative emotions are becoming more common in all global regions. They are less frequent for the young, except for NANZ, where the increases, relative to other regions, were in sadness. Worry rose more broadly for the young, while the frequency of anger fell everywhere, for young and old alike. • Positive emotions continue to be twice as frequent as negative emotions. In all regions, they are higher for those born recently than for their elders, except for NANZ, where that gap has closed in recent years. HAPPINESS AND SOCIAL MEDIA • Life satisfaction is highest at low rates of social media use and lower at higher rates of use, according to data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) covering seven internet activities for 15-year-old students in 47 countries (but not the NANZ countries, unfortunately). • Internet activities fall into two groups. Communications, news, learning, and content creation are associated with higher life satisfaction. Social media, gaming, and browsing for fun are associated with lower life evaluations. • All internet activities are associated with lower life satisfaction at very high rates of use, especially for girls and for those in the UK and Ireland, the two English-speaking countries in PISA. • Data from Latin America reveal that the type of platform is crucial. Platforms designed to facilitate social connections show a clear positive association with happiness, whereas those driven by algorithmically curated content tend to demonstrate a negative association at high rates of use. • When combined, the PISA and Gallup data show significantly higher youth wellbeing in countries that spend more time using the internet for communication, and insignificantly lower youth wellbeing in countries with higher average hours of social media use. Latin American countries combine high levels 6 World Happiness Report 2026 of social media use with high youth wellbeing, while English-speaking countries show lower youth wellbeing than their fairly typical patterns of internet use can explain. • The prevalence and use patterns for social media are similar in all countries, but their links to life evaluations are stronger in English- speaking countries and Western Europe. These differences do not account for the large drops in youth wellbeing in these countries, however. Much, no doubt, depends on how social media is used and the broader social and economic context. • When school belonging goes from low (10th percentile) to high (90th percentile), the life satisfaction gains for girls in the UK and Ireland are four times greater than social media use going from high (90th percentile) to low (10th percentile). In PISA’s 47-country global sample, the belonging effect is six times larger. This should be relevant when policy options are being considered. SOCIAL MEDIA IS HARMING ADOLESCENTS AT A SCALE LARGE ENOUGH TO CAUSE CHANGES AT THE POPULATION LEVEL • Is social media use reasonably safe for children and adolescents? We call this the “product safety question”, and we present seven lines of evidence showing that the answer is no. • The evidence of harm is found in: 1) surveys of young people; 2) surveys of parents, teachers, and clinicians; 3) contents from corporate documents; 4) findings from cross-sectional studies; 5) findings from longitudinal studies; 6) findings from social media reduction experiments; and 7) findings from natural experiments. • We show there is now overwhelming evidence of severe and widespread direct harms (such as cyberbullying and sextortion), and compelling evidence of troubling indirect harms (such as depression). Furthermore, we show that the harms and risks to individual users are so diverse and vast in scope that they justify the view that social media is causing harm at a population level. • We further argue that when these lines of evidence are considered alongside the timing, scope, and cross-national trends in adolescent wellbeing and mental health, they can help answer a second question: was the rapid adoption of always-available social media by adolescents in the early 2010s a substantial contributor to the population-level increases in mental illness that emerged by the mid 2010s in many Western nations? We call this the “historical trends question”. We draw on our findings about the vast scale of harm uncovered while answering the product safety question to argue that the answer to the historical trends question is “yes”. (Executive summary, pages 6-7) more

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Companion AI: Risiken von sykophantischen und suchtfördernden Designs von KI-Systemen, ihre rechtliche Erfassung und Handlungsempfehlungen
Deep Insights

Ramak Molavi-Vasse’i

Berlin: Zentrum für Digitalrechte und Demokratie (2026), 82 pp.

"Diese Studie untersucht Risiken von KI-Systemen, die im fortlaufenden Dialog mit Nutzern Emotionen erkennen, persönliche Bedürfnisse adressieren und darauf reagieren. Chatbots mit dieser Funktionalität werden als Companion-AI bezeichnet. Sie sind hochgradig personalisiert und treten Nutzern als ... soziales Gegenüber entgegen, das freundschaftliche, romantische oder sexuelle Nähe simuliert. Menschen können zu solchen Systemen eine emotionale Bindung aufbauen. Der Fokus liegt nicht nur auf spezifischen Companion-Anwendungen wie Replika oder Character.AI, sondern auch auf Universalmodellen wie ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok oder Meta-AI. Diese Systeme werden zunehmend für persönliche, emotionale und beratende Gespräche genutzt. Die Untersuchung kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass Companion-AI mehrere eng miteinander verbundene Risikodimensionen erzeugt. Psychische und physische Gesundheit: Companion-AI trifft auf eine Gesellschaft, in der Einsamkeit und psychische Belastungen zunehmen, während professionelle Versorgungsangebote knapp sind. Die möglichen Risiken sind klinisch belegt. Die Nutzung kann psychische Belastungen verursachen oder verstärken und in Einzelfällen gravierende Gesundheitsfolgen auslösen. Dokumentiert sind die Verschlimmerung psychotischer Zustände, die Verstärkung depressiver Muster und Angststörungen, suchtartige Bindungen mit Entzugssymptomen sowie die Erosion sozialer Kompetenzen, etwa eine messbar reduzierte Konfliktfähigkeit nach längerer Interaktion mit Companion-AI. Öffentlich bekannt gewordene Vorfälle sind in der Vorfall-Datenbank der Studie dokumentiert. Eingriff in die Privatsphäre: Companion-AI animieren Nutzer kontinuierlich zur Selbstoffenbarung und greifen damit in sensible Gedanken und die intime Gefühlssphäre der Nutzer ein. Zugleich ermöglicht die fortlaufende Interaktion eine zunehmend verdichtete Profilbildung. Entscheidungsautonomie und demokratische Meinungsbildung: Companion-AI können sowohl die Qualität von Informationen als auch die Entscheidungsautonomie der Bürger beeinträchtigen. Die Mechanismen, die Nähe und Vertrauen erzeugen, beeinflussen zugleich die Generierung, Aufnahme und Gewichtung von Informationen. Sykophanz, also die unkritische Bestätigung von Nutzeransichten, beeinträchtigt Genauigkeit und Verlässlichkeit der Antworten messbar. Sprachmodelle werden zunehmend als primäre Quelle der Informationssuche genutzt. Wenn dieselben Systeme Informationen erzeugen, beschaffen und präsentieren, fallen Selektion und Aufbereitung in einer Hand zusammen. Werbe- und interessengeleitete Einflussnahme greift dann nicht mehr nur in einzelne Kaufentscheidungen ein, sondern in die Voraussetzungen öffentlicher Meinungs- und demokratischer Willensbildung." (Executive summary, Seite 5) more

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Sexual Online Grooming of Children: Challenges for Science and Practice

Laura Franziska Kuhle, Daniela Stelzmann (eds.)

Baden-Baden: Nomos (2025), 304 pp.

"Preparing potential victims for their later sexual abuse has always been an integral part of child sexual victimization. Sexual grooming is thus a common epiphenomenon of child sexual abuse that has already been described for child sexual abusers in the pre-internet era. With the advent of the Inte ... more

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TikTok: Prekäre Plattform

Die Politische Meinung, volume 70, issue 592 (2025), pp. 20-89

"Mit rund 1,5 Milliarden monatlichen Nutzern ist TikTok ein globaler Kommunikationsraum – und ein geopolitisches Machtinstrument. Die Plattform steht mit im Zentrum der Rivalität zwischen den USA und China. Washington drängt auf eine Abspaltung vom chinesischen Mutterkonzern ByteDance, während ... more

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Social Processes of Online Hate

Joseph B. Walther, Ronald E. Rice (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2025), xxiii, 311 pp.

"This book explores the social forces among and between online aggressors that affect the expression and perpetration of online hate. Its chapters illustrate how patterns of interactive social behavior reinforce, magnify, or modify this expression. It also considers the characteristics of social med ... more

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Me, myself and AI: Understanding and safeguarding children’s use of AI chatbots

London: Internet Matters (2025), 56 pp.

"This report explores how children are interacting with AI chatbots, which are computer programmes designed to simulate conversation with a person. Our findings show that while these tools can offer clear benefits, such as 24/7 learning support and a non-judgemental space to ask questions, they pose ... more

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Our Online Lives: Messages from Pre-Teens

Adrienne Katz, Ebru Ozbek

Youthworks (2025), 19 pp.

"This report describes responses from pre-teens about their digital lives, delivering insights into their experiences, feelings, and concerns. While there are challenges in educating children aged 11-12 about online safety, hearing firsthand about their experiences can help direct our attention to t ... more

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Der Gedanken-Code

Janosch Delcker

München: C.H.Beck (2024), 206 pp.

"Rund um die Welt kombinieren Firmen und Forschende künstliche Intelligenz mit Erkenntnissen aus der Hirnforschung. Ihr Ziel: den Code unseres Denkens zu knacken und zu verstehen, was in uns vorgeht. Schon bald werden ihre Technologien in viele Bereiche unseres Lebens vordringen. Das birgt enorme C ... more

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Real or fake? Teenagers managing life on screens. The cybersurvey 2023

Adrienne Katz, Aiman El Asam

Youthworks (2023), 43 pp.

"Teens remain enthusiastic about life online: 87% go digital to manage or calm emotions. They relax, chat with friends, listen to music, or find out what they want to know. Most importantly for them, they connect with friends. They also use it to fend off boredom (which ‘can let in anxiety’). Ov ... er 2/3 say, it is ‘my main entertainment’. Around half go online to ‘escape my issues’. 47% feel more accepted when online, while three quarters feel more confident when on a screen. Digital access: 85% have their own phone with wi-fi access. 68% of 11yr olds, 89% of 13 olds and 97% of 15 year olds have their own phone with wi-fi access. The impacts of life on screens: While this is hotly debated amongst adults, here teenagers talk about how time on screens makes them feel. Responses are grouped into four parts: A) Benefits include: ‘feeling closer to my friends through social media 81%, or via gaming, 69%. Three quarters or 75% feel more confident when on a screen. They value creativity, the privacy and autonomy of finding out whatever they want, and the ability to ‘escape my issues’ or access entertainment and relaxation. B) ‘Electronic mood management’ explores how large numbers of teens use technology to manage their emotions. Contrary to popular myths, 80% hardly ever/never feel anxious after spending time on social media. 6% often feel anxious. C) 'Body mage and perception of others’ play a large role in online life: Almost 1 in 4 always or often believe that ‘Other people have a better life than me,’ Almost 1 in 5 say ‘Because of what I see online I’ve often tried to change my body shape’. D) Acceptance: Some feel it is easier to be accepted online or to ‘find people like me’. This is particularly true for young people who are unsure where they fit in, or those with a disability. Accessibility tools are widely used. Identifying who is most at risk: The survey also explores those who are more likely to describe negative impacts such as teens with an eating disorder, or a mental health difficulty; those who worry about life at home, and those with vision or hearing loss, speech difficulties, young carers, children in care and those with other challenges. The findings in this survey remain consistent with our published research. This minority are less safe online then their peers, they are more likely to become anxious or depressed after time online (or offline) and need help to manage their online lives. Alongside experiencing problems and harms online, they tend to be living with offline difficulties, and emotional health concerns. Some report multiple vulnerabilities. For those living with challenges, and dealing with powerful emotions, or without the means to go out for entertainment, the internet plays a different role. It can represent both a refuge and a risk. Being deprived of it can cause deep distress. Belonging and trust, or feeling left out: Boys are more likely to feel a sense of belonging and trust at school, whereas only 1/3 of girls say ‘school is a place where I feel I belong’ and ‘there is an adult I trust at school’. Teens need to feel they can turn to parents or trusted adults if they need to, and that they belong to and are valued in a community and also among friends. Compared to teens who never feel left out, those who do, described more anxiety, were less able to recover when things went wrong online, and were more likely to add unknown people as friends." (Executive summary, pages 4-6) more

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The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology
Deep Insights

Elisabetta Costa, Patricia G. Lange, Nell Haynes, Jolynna Sinanan (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2023), xxv, 617 pp.

"Comprising 41 chapters by a team of international contributors, the companion is divided into three parts: histories; approaches; thematic considerations. The chapters offer wide-ranging explorations of how forms of mediation influence communication, social relationships, cultural practices, partic ... more

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Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing)
Deep Insights

Emily Weinstein, Carrie James

Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press (2022), 229 pp.

"What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults’ assumptions, they are not simply “addicted” to their screens, oblivious to the afterlife of what they post, or missing out on personal connection. They are just trying to navigate a networked world. In Behind Their S ... more

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Umgang mit digitalen Medien und ihren Auswirkungen auf die psychische Gesundheit im schulischen Kontext

Julia Brailovskaia

Potsdam: Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (2022), 23 pp.

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Wir informieren uns zu Tode: Ein Befreiungsversuch für verwickelte Gehirne

Gerald Hüther, Robert Burdy

München: Verlag Herder (2022), 239 pp.

"Unsere globalisierte und digitalisierte Welt mit ihren trüben Zukunftsaussichten verunsichert viele. Entsprechend übermächtig ist das Bedürfnis nach wegweisenden Informationen. Doch das Informationszeitalter für alle hat sich in ein Zeitalter der allgemeinen Verwirrung verwandelt. Der Wettbewe ... more

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Du gehörst uns! Die psychologischen Strategien von Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat & Co - und wie wir uns vor der großen Manipulation schützen

Christian Montag

Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb), Sonderausg. (2022), 414 pp.

"Welche menschlichen Eigenschaften machen sich die Entwickler von Facebook oder Tiktok, Snapchat, Twitter oder Instagram zunutze, damit wir uns an sie binden, auf ihren Seiten verweilen, unsere Timeline pflegen, Beiträge liken, retweeten oder Kommentare posten? Welche kommerziell oder manipulativ n ... more

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Why’s Everyone on TikTok Now? The Algorithmized Self and the Future of Self-Making on Social Media

Aparajita Bhandari, Sara Bimo

Social Media + Society, volume 8, issue 1 (2022), pp. 1-11

"The video-sharing social media platform TikTok has experienced a rapid rise in use since its release in 2016. While its popularity is undeniable, at the first glance, it seems to offer features already available on previously existing and wellestablished platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and Fa ... more

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Locked down and online: Teenagers’ wellbeing and online lives in the COVID-19 winter lockdown 2020-21

Adrienne Katz, Aiman El Asam

Youthworks (2021), 36 pp.

"The Cybersurvey is an annual survey exploring online life and wellbeing among 11-17year olds. Data is gathered in the autumn term. In 2020/21 collection lasted from November 2020 until February 2021. Wellbeing year on year 2019/2020: More young people said they had a mental health difficulty in 202 ... more

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The Psychology of Fake News: Accepting, Sharing, and Correcting Misinformation

Rainer Greifeneder, Mariela Elena Jaffé, Eryn Newman, Norbert Schwarz (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2021), x, 239 pp.

"In a general climate where facts and misinformation blur, and are intentionally blurred, this book asks what determines whether people accept and share (mis)information, and what can be done to counter misinformation? All three of these aspects need to be understood in the context of online social ... more

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Ommm online: Wie wir unser digitales Wohlbefinden steigern

Stefanie Rack, Kim Beck, Fabian Sauer

Ludwigshafen: Klickksafe (2021), 38 pp.

Handbook on Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence Deep Insights

Companion AI: Risiken von sykophantischen und suchtfördernden Designs von KI-Systemen, ihre rechtliche Erfassung und Handlungsempfehlungen Deep Insights

The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology Deep Insights

Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing) Deep Insights

Handbook on Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence
Deep Insights

Companion AI: Risiken von sykophantischen und suchtfördernden Designs von KI-Systemen, ihre rechtliche Erfassung und Handlungsempfehlungen
Deep Insights

The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology
Deep Insights

Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing)
Deep Insights