HCI study: 18 adults use ChatGPT, Claude for emotional support
TL;DR
- The study followed 18 U.S. adults from April to December 2025 through interviews, a four-week diary study, focus groups, and exit interviews.
- Socioemotional chatbot use often emerged gradually out of practical use, and when other forms of support were unavailable.
- Users' routines were disrupted by model updates, evolving public discourse about AI harms, and changes in personal circumstances.
Eighteen U.S. adults gradually folded ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini into their emotional-support routines across a longitudinal qualitative study conducted from April to December 2025, published on arxiv. Socioemotional use, the authors report, "often emerged gradually out of practical use and when other forms of support were unavailable."
The paper is by Meryl Ye, Briana Vecchione, Livia Garofalo and Ranjit Singh. Its method combined initial interviews, a four-week diary study, focus groups, and exit interviews.
Users built routines and boundaries around chatbot use. Those routines did not stay still. Participants' patterns, the authors write, were "disrupted by model updates, evolving public discourse about AI harms, and changes in personal circumstances."
The authors argue that "HCI researchers and designers should account for users' histories with their chatbots and broader care ecologies when evaluating AI systems over time and introducing updates that may disrupt established sources of support."
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🌟 NEW PAPER PREPRINT 🌟 "I Felt Very Seen, But Still Very Alone": For 6 months, we followed people who use LLMs (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) for mental/emotional support to track how it changed 🧵 Full paper here: arxi…
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Originally reported by arxiv.org
Read the original article →Original headline: "I Felt Very Seen, But Still Very Alone": Longitudinal Trajectories of General-Purpose LLM Use for Socioemotional Support