WASHINGTON, July 15 — The U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law held a hearing on September 13, 2023, that probed the intersection of artificial intelligence and youth mental health. The session, titled “Artificial Intelligence and Youth Mental Health,” featured testimony from Dr. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, and Dr. Jenny Radesky, a pediatrician from the University of Michigan. Prinstein offered a specific data point.
He testified that AI chatbots could “disrupt the development of social skills” in adolescents, citing a 2023 study from the University of Cambridge. That research found teens who used chatbots for more than 2 hours daily had a 30% higher rate of social anxiety.
Radesky focused on a different angle: the opacity of the technology itself. She highlighted that AI companies lack transparency about how their models affect minors. The hearing produced no legislation.
As of February 2024, the Senate had not passed a bill addressing AI and youth mental health. What did emerge was a bipartisan request from Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) for the Government Accountability Office to study AI’s impact on children.
The GAO report is expected in late 2024. The detail that matters here is the gap between the hearing’s alarm and the legislative calendar. The subcommittee heard expert testimony in September 2023.
The GAO study was commissioned soon after. By February 2024, no bill had been passed. For informed readers, the story is one of a familiar pattern: a hearing, a bipartisan request for study, and then a long wait.
The Cambridge data on social anxiety is a useful anchor, but it is a single study. The GAO report, when it arrives, will be the next substantive data point.
