In March 2025, OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab released two parallel studies on how using ChatGPT relates to how people feel. The first was an automated analysis of nearly 40 million ChatGPT interactions, paired with surveys of 4,076 users. The second was a four-week randomized controlled trial led by MIT Media Lab researcher Cathy Mengying Fang, with 981 participants. The MIT study’s abstract reports that “higher daily usage—across all modalities and conversation types—correlated with higher loneliness, dependence, and problematic use, and lower socialization.” The same subset that used the chatbot most heavily was significantly more likely to agree with statements such as “I consider ChatGPT to be a friend,” though that view remains a minority in both studies. The authors write that “total usage duration, more than any other factor we have found, predicts affective engagement with the model.” Researchers warn the link is correlation, not cause, noting the direction-of-causality problem: heavy use may nudge people toward loneliness, or already lonely people may gravitate toward the tool. The Fang et al. paper notes that participants with stronger emotional attachment tendencies and higher trust in the AI chatbot were more likely to exhibit these patterns.