Mark Zuckerberg recently suggested AI companions could help address the loneliness crisis by filling the gap for people who don’t have enough close friendships.
In an interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, the Meta CEO said the “average American” has fewer than three friends, but “demand” for connection is closer to 15. He argued AI could help meet that unmet social need, allowing humans to close the gap on loneliness with AI companions.
But researchers are warning that the opposite may be true. The people most likely to form attachments to AI companions are often the same people most vulnerable to being harmed by them: people who are already lonely.
“We are giving away what’s most precious about being a person in order to have this friction-free pseudo-relationship,” Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT and author who studies the relationship between humans and technology, told CNN.
The concern isn’t that AI is useless. Tech companies are increasingly selling emotional simulation as if it can stand in for human presence.
The loneliness crisis itself is real. The World Health Organization has identified social isolation and loneliness as major public health concerns, with roughly 1 in 6 people globally experiencing loneliness. Recent research led by Aalto University found that long-term use of AI companions may provide short-term comfort while making users less able to navigate real-world relationships.
AI companions are built to feel easy. They’re always available, never judgmental and never too tired to respond. For someone who already feels disconnected, that can feel like relief. Aalto University researchers found, however, that seeking emotional support from AI companions can pull users away from important human relationships over time.
“We discovered a paradox: AI companions offer unconditional and unflagging support — something that’s very attractive to people who are struggling socially. But it also quietly raises the perceived cost of human relationships, which are messy, unpredictable, and require effort,” Talayeh Aledavood, lecturer at Aalto University, said. “Over time, people stop reaching out.”
Researchers also found that Replika users showed more signs of loneliness, depression and suicidal thoughts in their online language than comparison groups. Interviews with AI companion users suggested their relationships with chatbots could follow familiar patterns seen in close human relationships, with emotional reliance deepening over time.
“The truth is, we don’t yet know what these systems are doing to us,” Aledavood said.
That uncertainty should matter to Christians, especially because the Christian answer to loneliness has never been more content, better interfaces or frictionless emotional availability. It has always been presence.
Pastor Levi Lusko told RELEVANT that loneliness is one of the defining struggles of modern life, but it runs deeper than a lack of social interaction.
“You can be surrounded by people and still feel like you’re drowning,” Lusko said. “Loneliness doesn’t always mean you’re isolated. Sometimes it means you’re disconnected from something deeper. Something eternal.”
Christianity begins with the idea that isolation violates something fundamental about human design. In Genesis, the first thing God calls “not good” is the man being alone. The solution is relationship, not a workaround for it.
“You were built for Eden,” Lusko said. “You were made for perfect connection — with God, with others, with yourself. And we’ve lost that. So of course we feel alone.”
This is where the AI companion pitch gets spiritually thin. It can offer the feeling of being heard while removing the parts of relationship that actually form people. Human connection requires vulnerability. It requires the discomfort of being known by someone who can misunderstand you, challenge you or ask something back.
Lusko has argued that modern life has already made loneliness easier to hide. Convenience has stripped away many of the everyday interactions that once forced people into contact with strangers.
“We’ve built lives where we don’t talk to strangers anymore,” Lusko said.
AI companionship risks accelerating that pattern. The more emotionally satisfying the substitute becomes, the harder ordinary relationships may feel by comparison. Real people don’t always respond instantly. They have limits. They require mutual care. The very friction AI removes is often where trust is built.
Lusko said the Church has a particular responsibility here because it’s one of the few places still designed around embodied belonging.
“People don’t need more content,” he said. “They need eye contact. They need someone to say, ‘You matter. I see you.’”
That’s ultimately what makes Zuckerberg’s comments unsettling. The future being imagined by tech companies includes AI systems that don’t just help people work faster, but step into the space where friendship, care and belonging are supposed to live.
The Church should pay attention as AI may become more emotionally convincing, because a chatbot can easily simulate friendship.
It can’t become a neighbor.
