In the beginning, there was the Facebook “friend.” In 2006, when Facebook became available to anyone with an email address, it changed our understanding of friendship in subtle yet permanent ways. Accumulating Facebook “friends” became a way to publicize and garner attention for one’s connections. “Friends” signaled one’s status in the online world, but it also made such relationships more instrumental and automated. Facebook would remember friends’ birthdays for you, and the introduction of the “Like” button in 2009 allowed users of the platform conveniently to scroll through content, rewarding their “friends” with a brief bit of attention before moving on. Online friendship was a more convenient and controlled experience, and the habits of mind we formed through daily use of social media platforms prepared us to accept more mediated relationships.

Whatever amount of time one spent interacting with Facebook “friends” and, later, Instagram followers or Snapchat subscribers, few people, if asked, would have suggested that those interactions were proper replacements for one’s fellow human beings.

That sentiment is changing, particularly among younger generations of Americans. A 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center of US teens ages 13—17 found that “most teens use social media and have a smartphone, and nearly half say they’re online almost constantly.” That increase in time spent online coincides with a decline in time spent with others. Data from the American Time Use Survey show significant declines in the amount of time Americans spend face-to-face with friends; in the past 20 years, time spent with others has declined more than 20 percent, and more than 35 percent for people younger than 25. We spend an increasing amount of time in self-isolation, and some experts warn that the 21st century might be one marked by a “loneliness epidemic.”

This has proven fertile ground for a new generation of technologies that offer a simulacrum of friendship with the ease and convenience we’ve become habituated to expect in daily life thanks to our personal devices. It’s prepared us for the era of artificial friendship.

A 2024 survey by the Institute for Family Studies and YouGov found that one in four young adults “believe that AI [artificial intelligence] has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships.” Writing in the MIT Technology Review, researchers Robert Mahari and Pat Pataranutaporn warned that sophisticated chatbots and other non-human agents posed new risks to human beings, a kind of artificial “addictive intelligence” that takes advantage of what we know about human behavior. “The allure of AI lies in its ability to identify our desires and serve them up to us whenever and however we wish,” they note. “AI has no preferences or personality of its own, instead reflecting whatever users believe it to be,” what researchers call “sycophancy.”

New, wearable AI-enabled devices make on-demand sycophancy possible.

Consider “Friend,” a necklace with an embedded sensor that records all the wearer’s activity and uses an AI-enabled chatbot to send constant text messages to the user’s phone like a real friend. The slightly creepy video unveiling the device features one person talking to her “Friend” while on a hike, another discussing her falafel sandwich with the device while on a break from work, and a third getting teased by the AI as he loses a video game. Avi Shiffman, the creator of Friend, told Wired magazine that not only does he want the device to be your friend, “he wants it to be your best friend – one that is with you wherever you go, listening to everything you do, and being there for you to offer encouragement and support.”

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