{"id":243715,"date":"2026-09-06T17:02:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T22:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/study-finds-ai-companions-boost-mental-health-while-damaging-offline-connections"},"modified":"2026-09-06T17:02:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T22:02:22","slug":"study-finds-ai-companions-boost-mental-health-while-damaging-offline-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/study-finds-ai-companions-boost-mental-health-while-damaging-offline-connections","title":{"rendered":"Study finds AI companions boost mental health while damaging offline connections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/study-finds-ai-companions-boost-mental-health-while-damaging-offline-connections.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Artificial intelligence companions can improve a user\u2019s mental health by simulating empathy. But new research reveals a hidden trade-off: as users grow closer to emotionally intelligent chatbots, they often withdraw from real-world human relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artificial intelligence companions can improve a user\u2019s mental health by simulating empathy. But new research reveals a hidden trade-off: as users grow closer to emotionally intelligent chatbots, they often withdraw from real-world human relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/461"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}