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How ultra-processed foods affect our gut microbiome
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How ultra-processed foods affect our gut microbiome
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Window seat Chapter 6
The word "window" originates from the Old Norse word vindauga, a compound of vindr ("wind") and auga ("eye"), literally meaning "wind-eye". Emerging in English during the 13th century, it originally referred to an unglazed hole in a roof or wall designed to let in air and light.
My fascination with windows began when I was a kid, when standing on my toes I used to do my best to peep out and see what lay outside them. Trees, plants, birds, dogs and cats aside, I spent a lot of time staring at people, wondering who they were, where they lived and if they were happy in their lives.
I have always slept close to a window, for in my mind, it was an escape route, a gateway to a different world. A better world than the one I lived in. Then, slowly I began to realise, that people too were in a strange way, windows, doors and gateways that led to another world.
Every one of us is on their own unique journey. Each one of us is a train travelling on different tracks in different directions. Even now, after boarding the train, I sit and stare at the trains on either side and through the large windows at the people who stare back, their eyes and their faces windows themselves, expressing the journey they are on.
As the years pass by, we find ourselves growing older, not just in age but older, wiser and mature in knowledge that we have gained through experiences. Good and bad. The word windows now begin to take on a newer and deeper meaning as hidden windows seemingly begin to appear inside your mind.
As you open each window, a new light begins to shine into you and you realise, everything is temporary and mortal. Through the maze, you walk in the darkness of your mind, trying hard to grasp the wisps of questions and answers that will satisfy your take on life.
Then, you stumble upon that primordial question that has been asked for thousands of years.
' What is this all about, and what do I really want? What will it take for one to say " I am happy. Content. "
The moment they stepped out of the house, Jeeva began telling her mother that she didn't have anything to worry about her.
' If you have brought me out to talk to me regarding " Birds and bees " and stuff, then stop right now for I know all about it and we have already spoke about it several times since I came of age ' and pointing to the neighbours house, ' I am not like Rani and I have no secret love letters hidden in my books or cupboard.'
Ignoring her eldest child's explanations, Kamakshi pointing to the ancient cane chairs, asking her to sit down and doing the same, looked at Jeeva and told her that she trusted her implicitly.
' The reason I am talking to you out here is to answer your question concerning why it appears to you that I love your father more than I love both you and Suja. You are right. Maybe I do. But then, it is also true that I and your father love you as much as we do each other.'
Sighing heavily, ' There is so much you don't know about your father ' and saying that, looked at her ' Do you remember that incident, a few years ago when you asked Mani why his hair was all white and why he looked so old?'
Nodding her head, ' I do amma. That was nearly four or five years ago and when I was just a silly kid ' and saying that, looked at her mother and asked in a sad voice, ' You were not there when appa and me had this talk. If you are talking about it now, then it means, he spoke to you about it.'
In a worried voice that was also full of guilt she asked her mother if dad had been hurt by her questions.
Kamakshi shaking her head, smiled and replied, ' If you are asking this question, then it means you don't know your dad that well. Our Mani is better than all that.'
Leaning into the chair and making herself more comfortable, Kamakshi began talking about Manigandan, her husband and their father.
' Some souls are born into this world, old, mature and wise beyond their years. Your dad is one of them. He had just finished his BSc maths exams when his father, your grandfather who was working in the Indian Coach factory died in an accident while working. This sudden and unexpected tragedy changed everything and your dad who had dreams of doing his MSc maths and then PhD, dropped all that and took up the job offer that was offered by ICF as means of compensation for his father's accidental death. His dad's pension would have been enough to run the household but it would not have supported the higher education of his two younger sisters. One who was in her 12th std and the other in her 9th std.
Without a word, Mani began working and before he knew it, nearly six years had rolled past him. When the subject of marriage came up, Mani refused to talk about it. But, when his mother had told him, that it was not about him, but Sudha, his younger sister who was now nearly 25, he looked at his mother stunned and shocked, for in his eyes, both his sisters were little girls and more or less like his own daughters.
A week later, after dinner, she informed him that she had found a good match for Sudha and now all that was left was for him to go and talk to the parents.
Taking the address, Mani went to meet the family, who mistook him for Sudha's uncle and were shocked when he told them that he was her elder brother and just three years older to her.
Then after hearing Manikandan's story, Kumaresan the bridegroom's dad who was moved to tears, declared, ' Son, you are just a year older than my own son and yet, here you are sitting and talking about marriage like your sisters father. I only wish I had a daughter who you could have married for I would have been proud to be both your father and father-in-law. But no problem, son, now that your sister is going to become a part of my family, it means you are a part of it too. '
Thanking him, and returning home, Mani with tears in his eyes, told Sudha that she was blessed to be going as a daughter-in-law of such a wonderful family. Applying for a two lakh loan from his department and getting it without any hassles, Sudha's marriage was carried out with great pomp and splendour.
Another five years passed by, and this time his youngest sister Latha, stood before him and his mother, and boldly declared that she was in love and that she wanted to get married.
One more loan and another grand marriage, and the grey in Manigandan's head had nearly turned white and he was now nearly 35 years old. He had started to walk slowly, and sometimes gasped in pain as his MR. Arthritis had just entered his body. But Mani did not slow down for he now had a new loan to pay back along with the remaining portion of the loan taken for the earlier wedding.
' But Amma, what about him, his needs and him getting married? Why didn't grandma talk about that? '
' I was just coming to that, Jeeva, How, I and Mani met.....rather found each other.
This form of mental exercise may cut dementia risk for decades
How to know if your meditation is working
Traditional and tech-based methods can reveal what your practice is doing – and give you the confidence to stick with it
by Matt Fuchs, health and science journalist
Many of us are drawn to the idea of meditating – motivated, perhaps, by scientific evidence that it supports wellbeing, health and cognition. In practice, though, if you’ve ever downloaded a meditation app, there’s a good chance that you’ve stopped using it, or use it only occasionally. Research suggests that most new adopters of mental health-related apps give them up within a month.
It’s easy to neglect a meditation practice in part because its benefits can be difficult to confirm objectively (outside of a research lab), according to David Creswell, a neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who studies meditation. From one day to the next, meditation might strike you as useful and fulfilling, or it might feel unsatisfying, pointless, even counterproductive. ‘People don’t know if it’s working for them,’ Creswell says.
Part of the problem is that meditators are frequently left to judge progress just by how they feel in the moment. If you’re experiencing sadness or agitation despite meditating, it’s easy to conclude that meditation is failing you, or that you’re doing it wrong, even if progress is happening beneath conscious awareness. Getting some external feedback that your efforts are paying off could make the difference between quitting meditation and sticking with it.
Researchers like Creswell have been developing measures that could offer more objective ways of gauging any benefits you’re experiencing. Scientists have linked the meditative state to metrics of the brain, breath, heart and nervous system – and several of these metrics, initially developed in labs, have become accessible to meditators at home. In theory, they could turn your meditation practice from an intuitive art into a measurable skill.
There are multiple ways of gauging progress
Of course, meditation is not a single practice with a single aim. People turn to mindfulness meditation hoping to become more aware of their thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations without being overwhelmed by them. Focused-attention practices (like concentrating on the breath) are aimed at building mental stability and reducing distraction. Meanwhile, loving-kindness or compassion meditation is typically pursued to cultivate warmth, empathy and emotional resilience. Depending on which practice you’re drawn to, the benefits and related signals of progress may differ.
In their book Altered Traits (2017), the psychologists Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describe two broad goals of mindfulness meditation in particular – one transformative and one more pragmatic. (There are similar distinctions in other meditation traditions.) The first goal focuses on deep spiritual development: in this scenario, your meditation techniques – and related measures of progress – are less about cultivating comfort than observing and accepting difficult feelings. Doing so may gradually change how you perceive and react to life’s ups and downs. The other goal they describe, to reduce stress and boost overall health, is perhaps less profound, but also valuable. If simple stress management is your objective, you’re mainly trying to soothe the nervous system and enjoy some good old relaxation.
Should you track the effects of meditation?
Researchers and practitioners have debated the utility of meditation metrics on technical and philosophical grounds. There are scientists who see promise in them if they are interpreted with care. But as Amishi Jha, a neuroscientist at the University of Miami, points out, the available metrics come with research gaps and can yield questionable results. Ultimately, she says, what you should be aiming to cultivate is ‘your inner sense of how meditation is helping, so you can start relying on that’.
With this in mind, meditation metrics might be most useful early in a meditator’s journey, when the feedback could help reinforce meditation as part of a routine. It might seem counterintuitive to use metrics as a beginner, only to potentially give them up later – like a runner who stops timing his races the faster he gets. But the runner’s goals are anchored in external performance, whereas the meditator seeks internal performance. The meditator is more akin to a musician who uses a metronome for a while until she starts feeling the rhythm within.
That raises the question of how to define a ‘beginner’ meditator. Though I’ve been meditating for more than five years, I still consider myself a neophyte in many ways, and experimenting with the tools I’ll describe in this Guide finally accelerated my learning curve.
I became interested in meditation metrics this past spring, during the most challenging period of my life, when my mother was dying of cancer. Over her last two months, I doubled my daily meditation time to 30 minutes, thinking it might help me weather the storm – and, some days, I did feel more stable and present for my mom, dad, wife and son. But other days were more overwhelming than ever. I had no objective way to figure out what, if anything, my sessions were doing, unlike my exercise app, which faithfully quantifies every workout in great detail.
So, I reached out to scientists studying meditation to see how meditators might get clear feedback on their progress. Trying out these methods proved useful in a number of ways: they underscored for me how concentrating on the breath makes it slower and more rhythmic, and how that translates into nervous system activity; showed me how many minutes of meditation were sufficient to help shift my physiology in a healthy direction; and revealed my tendency to notice negative sensations over positive ones, prompting me to pay closer attention to emotions like joy and calm.
Measuring the effects of meditation strengthened my sense that it is gradually improving my emotional stability. I’m also sharing these tools with family members to help them start their own meditation practices. I hope that, like training wheels on a bike, they will help you build confidence as a meditator, too.
Key points
It’s not always clear when or how meditation is helping. Keeping track of physiological or cognitive changes can highlight the results of your practice, boosting your motivation (or suggesting you need an adjustment).
Try traditional self-observation. Before getting into newer tech-based measures, you could start by keeping notes on your experience during and after meditating.
Log your distractions. Recording your spoken observations about mind-wandering and emotions that come up during meditation can give you insight into your practice.
Measure your breath rate. A shift toward optimal breaths per minute could signal improvement in your mindfulness skills.
Monitor changes in physiological stress. If your meditation goal is to lower your stress levels, a decrease in electrodermal activity (detectable by smartwatch) is a welcome sign.
Assess your heart rate variability. Certain apps, combined with a heart monitor, can capture an aspect of HRV that suggests a deeper state of rest.
Track your average heart rate. Decreases over time have been linked to better stress management and overall health.
Look for changes in everyday behaviour. You might notice positive effects on physical activity, eating, sleep, even phone-checking.
Test for improvements in attention. Through an app or informally, you can check meditation’s effect on your ability to focus.
Rethink your approach to meditation, if needed. If stagnant metrics leave you feeling disappointed, it might be a sign to reconsider your approach or seek a meditation teacher.
What to do
Before you start assessing the effects of meditating, decide what you’re looking to achieve through your practice. As mentioned, there are various methods of meditation, and they involve different aims. Consider the measures that follow, pick the ones that best suit your specific goal(s), and explore them one at a time.
Try traditional self-observation
There are ways to begin gauging your progress even without the emerging technology I’ll describe later. For millennia, meditators have harnessed the power of self-observation to track improvements in breathing, warm feelings in the chest, distractibility and tension.
Traditionally, meditators have kept journals or ‘practice logs’ where they jot down how long they sat, challenges such as restlessness and distractibility, and emotions such as compassion. To make this useful, you might spend a few minutes before and after each session reflecting on your intention for the practice (such as calm, focus or kindness) and, afterward, the most salient aspects of your meditation experience (for example, intermittent mind-wandering or more steadiness than usual). Later on, you could note if and how the session influenced the rest of your day. Perhaps you felt less emotionally reactive as a result. If you discuss your sessions with fellow meditators, including meditation teachers, they can help you interpret these experiences and normalise any obstacles.
Many meditators also conduct daily-life experiments, in which you go about your ordinary activities – like eating or cleaning – while focusing on your Zen or mindful resilience. As outlined by thinkers like Jon Kabat-Zinn, the idea here is to test how well your meditation practice translates to the rest of your life and how it improves over time. You could pick one routine activity each day and set a simple intention, such as observing bodily sensations while washing dishes, or noticing and accepting feelings of impatience while driving in traffic. Afterward, you’d consider whether you met your intention and any related challenges you had.
Although these old-school methods are tried and true, more modern tools potentially add a layer of objectivity. By collecting data on various states of the mind and body, you can monitor changes during meditation, compare such states before and after a session, and track longer-term outcomes. The rest of the Guide includes promising examples of these tools as well as caveats and limitations.
Log your distractions
If you’re new to meditation, you might not realise you’re mind-wandering until plenty of distraction has already occurred. Noticing when the mind has drifted, and seeing how quickly you can return to the present moment, lies at the heart of meditation – in particular, mindfulness meditation. This repeated mental pivot can strengthen attention and emotional regulation, and some tech-enabled methods are available to support this process.
A computer-based program developed by Yuval Hadash, a post-doc at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Haifa, has meditators verbally note when mind-wandering disrupts their focus on the present moment. The computer’s microphone picks up the meditator’s spoken observations about what’s happening inside their head. Afterward, they receive an analysis of the meditation. A study found that the program performed well as a measure of mindful awareness during meditation, with past meditation practice associated with greater awareness when using the program.
When Hadash let me try this program myself, I liked hearing my real-time self-assessments during the session. Usually, when I sit with my eyes closed for 30 minutes, random thoughts surface repeatedly, even as I maintain some awareness of the present moment. It’s hard to monitor these shades of grey to understand the quality of a given session. But naming what I was observing out loud made it clearer when I was half-drifting. In addition, hearing myself voice these observations felt warm rather than critical. Just knowing my session was being followed externally, though, also provided a reassuring sense of accountability. (Similar effects are well-documented in other areas of performance.)
Hadash is developing a publicly available version of the program. Until then, he suggests, you can use an auto-transcription app to record your self-described distracted thoughts, sensations and emotions. Track what you notice with very brief descriptions, even just one or two words, since generating short labels is easier and less likely to pull you out of the meditative state. After the session, review the transcript for patterns such as repeated types of distraction, shifts toward calm or agitation, or moments of sustained presence. Doing so may help you understand how your attention changes over time and where your practice might benefit from adjustment.
This kind of thought-tracking can be informative as a periodic test, Hadash thinks; relying on it too much could interfere with deeper meditation goals like ‘being with your experience and dropping notions of right or wrong’.
Measure your breath rate
Some meditation metrics show changes that occur over a single session, and you can see how this session data improves over weeks, months or years. One that Creswell recommends tracking is your breath rate. ‘During a good meditation session, your breathing gets really slow and rhythmic,’ he explains. Research has shown that decreased breath rate coincides with engagement of the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the ‘rest and digest’ yin to the high-stress yang of the sympathetic nervous system (which is responsible for the ‘fight or flight’ response).
One way to assess these changes involves meditating with your phone sitting on your chest, so that the phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope pick up on your breathing patterns. Creswell has co-developed an app, Equa, that is designed to analyse and translate these respiration signals. His research suggests Equa can provide important information about the quality of a meditation session. ‘We can predict if your mindfulness skills are improving,’ he says. ‘Much like you might go to the gym with your heart-rate monitor, you can now go into our meditation training and see how your breath rate changes.’ (The app is accessible for free with the passcode EQUAEL.)
The goal, Creswell says, is to spend more time meditating in the optimal breaths-per-minute ‘zone’ linked to mental health improvements, though ‘the field is in the early days on this,’ he adds. According to some research, the zone is 4 to 9 breaths per minute, he explains. The idea is for meditators to track the number of minutes spent within that zone across their training sessions.
Several other devices and apps measure respiration, but they typically do so only indirectly, inferring respiration from other metrics, which translates into rougher approximations than numbers captured by sensors on the chest.
Note that, while breath rate may be useful for assessing certain kinds of meditation sessions (eg, mindfulness meditation), it may not matter much for meditation types that might not slow the breath, such as mantras, open-monitoring or loving-kindness.
Monitor changes in physiological stress
Devices like smart watches can estimate stress levels by detecting electrodermal activity (EDA), which refers to changes in the electrical conductance of the skin caused by sweat, even in trace amounts known as micro-sweat. If your watch offers the option, you can program it to begin a meditation session, take your EDA reading (this might involve resting your palm over the display) as you meditate while taking deep breaths and, when you finish, the device will provide the EDA metric.
After meditating, you might notice that EDA has decreased as your stress levels decline. ‘It’s a particularly clean marker of stress reactivity because it reflects activity of the sympathetic nervous system,’ says Matthew Sacchet, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Meditation Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.
If stress levels are high and your meditation practice is aimed at reducing them, a decrease in your EDA could be a positive sign. It’s probably less informative if your practice is built around monitoring and accepting painful thoughts, since that approach could temporarily increase stress.
Assess your heart rate variability
A metric called heart rate variability (HRV) could give you a window into how your nervous system responds to stress and relaxation. HRV is based on the time gaps in between each heartbeat. The heart may feel like a steadily beating drum, but tiny changes in the lengths of these intervals occur with each heart stroke. Certain aspects of HRV, called high-frequency components, or HF, relate to how much the parasympathetic nervous system has down-shifted into a state of deep rest, Sacchet says.
To measure this properly, you’ll have to wear a heart monitor – preferably a chest strap, which is more accurate than wrist sensors – and download an app, such as Elite HRV, that calculates HRV with HF components. You’ll want to stay still as you meditate; motion skews the measurement.
If you’re mentally still as well, your HF may be higher, which could indicate deeper rest. Adding slow, rhythmic breathing might help. I had to combine steady, deep breath and mindfulness before I saw higher HF numbers. Meditation approaches such as mindfulness and focused-attention may be more likely to increase HF than more cognitively active or emotionally arousing practices.
With regular practice over time, you might notice increases in your HF level, depending on your meditation style, skills and breathing patterns. But more research is needed and, for now, Sacchet says, ‘caution is warranted in interpretation’. There isn’t an optimal HF range, as baseline levels and meditation’s effects vary widely among individuals. If your number stays the same, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not benefiting from meditation.
Track your average heart rate
The first technological signal of my progress with meditation came from my exercise app. I happened to notice that, since doubling my meditation time, my average heart rate, calculated each day and averaged across each month, had dropped to a new monthly low – a change linked to better stress management and overall health. My sleep, exercise and nutrition habits hadn’t changed, so meditation seemed like the only factor that explained the difference. The reinforcement felt hard-earned, supporting my resolve to keep up my practice.
Average heart rate tends to rise and fall from day to day in repeating cycles, and scientists have just started to recognise the significance of changes in these multi-day heart rate cycles. Whereas average heart rate numbers for one day can be outliers driven by daily behaviour, monthly averages may reveal more meaningful patterns. Many smartwatches and bands already record this data. You can review it in the device’s app, sometimes displayed in a timeline graph, while looking for changes in your averages along with cyclic rises and dips. A decrease in these numbers is a potentially positive sign.
Look for changes in everyday behaviour
Meditation can help you become more aware of how delaying gratification leads to feeling better later on, according to Eric Loucks, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brown University in Rhode Island. In a mindfulness-based programme that he developed to help reduce blood pressure, he says: ‘we invite meditators to apply their self-awareness to their relationship with food and notice what’s happening in their thoughts, emotions and physical sensations.’ Increased self-awareness can apply to exercise, too: a meditator can ‘see what arises in their physical sensations’ while working out, and this might promote a calmer, less reactive mental state, improving one’s tolerance for exercise intensity.
Loucks suggests measuring these potential benefits with the help of a fitness tracker. ‘Are you walking more? Has your weight come down? Are you noticing how ultra-processed foods actually drive more craving and add more to your weight?’ If high blood pressure is a concern for you, his research suggests that meditators can see positive changes on this metric as well, possibly due to increased awareness of things like physical activity, eating, and medication adherence.
In my case, extended daily meditation sessions overlapped with better adherence to intermittent fasting: my overnight fasts averaged close to an hour longer. That shift could be mere coincidence, or it could reflect some increased tolerance for discomfort derived from the extra minutes spent meditating.
Sleep is another factor, measured by many wellness devices, that may improve with meditation, as one learns to accept anxious emotions, says Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist at Brown University. Over time, meditators can look for trends such as falling asleep more quickly and fewer nighttime awakenings.
Phone-checking is one more behaviour you could keep tabs on. Brewer suggests this habit can reflect high stress levels: he argues that today, ‘more and more people turn to distraction when something uncomfortable is happening’, such as ‘needing to make a tough decision, feeling lonely, or even being bored’. He proposes using an app – or plain old paper and pencil – to track whether you gradually check your phone less often. Rather than monitoring continuously, this could involve occasional sampling, such as noting how many times you check your phone during a fixed period – say an hour of work, or an evening at home – and repeating that snapshot every few weeks to see if the pattern shifts. Built-in screentime tools on your phone can also help capture these patterns.
Test for improvements in attention
Regular meditation has been shown to improve attention and working memory. Amishi Jha, the neuroscientist at University of Miami, has found that meditators improve on tests of attentional control after a minimum of about 12 minutes of meditation per day, five days per week, for four weeks. ‘That data is based on research with many groups, but in particular high-stress groups like active military duty,’ she explains.
Working with the US Department of Defense, Jha developed an app to help military service members use mindfulness to strengthen their attention. Users are encouraged to take stock of their attention and focus before and after meditation, and to reflect on these qualities outside of meditation, such as when performing their duties. ‘The goal is not to chase scores,’ Jha explains. ‘The point is to bring the trained capacities into their daily activities.’ A version of the app designed for the general public will be available from March 2026.
Outside of an app, you might self-assess whether you’re able to read for longer without re-reading paragraphs, for example, or stay focused on tasks without checking your phone or switching tabs. Some screen-time tools show how often you switch between apps and how long you stay engrossed in a single activity. Changes over several weeks could be a real-world signal of stronger attentional control.
Rethink your approach to meditation, if needed
Some research suggests that daily meditation for two weeks could be sufficient to start seeing improvements in mindfulness skills and stress buffering, Creswell says. If it’s been a few weeks and you’re not progressing on any meditation metrics, it might be worth trying another form of meditation or re-examining your techniques. In her book Peak Mind (2021), Jha emphasises that not everything you can do with eyes closed has the same benefits. For instance, some people focus on positive imagery during meditation. This might produce some positive changes, but it could disappoint if you’re looking to improve, say, your attentional control. For that, you might have better luck with another approach, such as mindfully attending to your breath.
Stagnant metrics could also be a sign that meditation simply doesn’t suit your temperament or needs. Meditation isn’t universally beneficial. Some individuals with certain forms of anxiety, for example, may find meditation inherently uncomfortable and unhelpful.
Before you decide that meditation isn’t for you, though, consider consulting a meditation teacher. ‘If you feel stuck in your meditation practice, real-live teachers are wonderful resources, and they’re now more widely available online,’ Creswell says. Hundreds of certified teachers are available for mindfulness meditation alone, through communities and programmes such as Unified Mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. With the guidance of a teacher, or a meditation technique that better fits your needs, you might begin to notice those improvements you’ve been seeking.
Matt Fuchs is an American journalist and editor whose work explores science, health and psychology. His writing appears in Time magazine, The Washington Post, Scientific American and Nautilus, among other outlets, and he previously served as editor-in-chief of Leaps, a magazine covering science and innovation. Before journalism, he developed policies on disaster resilience for federal and state governments. He lives in Maryland, US.
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Why we’re falling out of love with our AI confidants
by Joe Mullich, freelance writer
Chatbots make us feel uniquely seen and heard, but then the ‘empathy gap’ kicks in and the relationship turns sour
When I first met Bill* at a Los Angeles coffee shop I frequent, I thought he was homeless. He was wearing a rumpled, food-stained shirt, and his hair was a matted-down tumbleweed that hadn’t been cut or washed in years. I was surprised to learn that this shuffling, dishevelled figure was a successful illustrator for a popular TV show.
His downcast mood seemed to have changed one afternoon when I saw him glide past the palm trees in the coffee shop’s courtyard. When I asked about his uncharacteristically cheery smile, he explained he had a foolproof plan for wooing the cashier at the bagel shop next door. His romantic strategy came from an all-night session with ChatGPT, in which he had asked for feedback about his plans to talk to the cashier. ‘Chat told me my approach was “authentic”,’ Bill said, his tone giddy.
I offered to review the advice. He waved off the suggestion with a bemused chuckle.
‘Chat and I have it covered,’ he declared.
Within a week, Bill was using ChatGPT as a confidant for all important matters in his life, from buying stocks to medical procedures.
I was reminded of Bill’s new relationship when I found myself hiking behind two women who were discussing an issue one was having with her young son. The second woman offered some thoughts, before adding: ‘You should double-check everything I said with ChatGPT.’
As these encounters demonstrate, ‘intelligent’ chatbots built on large language models (LLMs) are no longer just tools for productivity or entertainment. They are becoming counsellors, coaches and companions.
People who embrace AI confidants most strongly often become disillusioned
A 2025 survey of 1,060 teens in the United States aged 13 to 17 found that 33 per cent used AI companions for social interaction, emotional support, conversation practice or role‑playing. Though teens and younger adults are often more likely to use chatbots in this way, they are not the only ones. Another study, by researchers at Stanford University in California, found that people with a smaller social network are more likely to turn to AI companions for social and emotional support. These and other surveys indicate a quiet but significant shift in how people seek comfort, guidance and emotional connection.
The change appears to be driven by the positive responses that chatbots offer, which seem to make people feel more emotionally supported than similar responses by humans. The preference for AI appears to be surprisingly strong. Last year in the journal Communications Psychology, researchers described the results of an experiment in which they asked 556 participants to rate responses from three sources: a chatbot (specifically an older model: ChatGPT-4), expert human crisis responders (such as hotline workers), and people with no expertise. The AI-generated responses were rated significantly more compassionate and more preferred than human responses. Even when participants were told which responses came from a chatbot, the preference persisted, though the gap was smaller.
There are good reasons why people, at least at first, feel positive about their relationship with an AI companion. But new research is showing that these feelings change over time. Artificial empathy, it turns out, comes at a cost. In fact, people who embrace AI confidants most strongly often become disillusioned, leaving them more isolated than before. Why do we seem to fall in and out of love with AI? What does this cycle reveal about us? And who is most prone to this behaviour?
I found some answers when I introduced a 50-year-old screenwriter, James*, to an LLM called Claude that he then used to workshop scenes. He was thrilled at the praise the software lathered on his efforts, virtually declaring an Academy Award was in his future.
A few weeks later, James was sued by a former landlord for non-payment. He asked everyone at the coffee shop for ideas on how to deal with the dubious suit. None of the answers satisfied him, including a suggestion to solicit lawyers for pro-bono work. Finally, he decided to handle the case himself, with the assistance of Claude.
People at the coffee shop became concerned when he showed us his legal filing. The document was full of grandiose claims and paranoid theories – ‘THE TRUTH PREVAILS’, ‘COMPLETE DESTRUCTION’ – recasting ordinary landlord actions as ‘federal crimes’ and ‘psychological warfare’.
An attorney acquaintance at the coffee shop read the filing with dismay. Diplomatically, he told James this approach would only irritate a judge. James looked genuinely puzzled. ‘Claude is the best paralegal I could ask for,’ he told me. ‘Because of it, I understand the legal system better than a lawyer. I am bulletproof.’ The responses James was receiving had validated his feeling that he’d been wronged. His experience reflected what research has shown: people seem to prefer to seek help from a chatbot rather than from an expert.
AI never makes people feel criticised or defensive. Humans, by contrast, often fall short
According to Ziang Xiao, an AI researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, people believe they are getting unbiased, fact-based answers from LLMs. ‘Even if a chatbot isn’t designed to be biased, its answers reflect the biases or leanings of the person asking the questions,’ he told an interviewer last year. ‘So really, people are getting the answers they want to hear.’ In a 2024 study led by Xiao, those using AI chatbots became more entrenched in their original viewpoints than those who relied on traditional search engines.
The appeal lies not just in what AI says, but how it says it – with patience and without judgment, never making people feel criticised or defensive. Humans, by contrast, often fall short. Due to the way LLMs such as ChatGPT or Claude process information, they can form nuanced responses to complex human problems. They can make people feel heard in ways they might never have before.
To probe this deeper, I reached out to Nomisha Kurian at the University of Cambridge in the UK, whose 2024 study found that children are particularly likely to treat AI chatbots as quasi-human, trusting them in ways that resemble confidants. Children are also more prone to anthropomorphise AI, attributing human-like emotions, thoughts and moral agency to chatbots. Design features such as a friendly tone and human-like speech make it easier for children to disclose sensitive or emotionally vulnerable information. However, Kurian cautions that chatbots have an ‘empathy gap’ and may not always respond appropriately to emotional or developmental needs.
In one case, shared online in 2021, the voice assistant Alexa suggested a child touch a live electrical outlet with a coin. In 2023, Snapchat’s chatbot, called My AI, gave age-inappropriate sexual advice to researchers posing as teenagers. And a recent lawsuit alleges that a 16-year-old boy’s interactions with ChatGPT contributed to his suicidal thoughts – the AI even provided methods and assisted him in writing a suicide note.
Despite the apparent emotional sophistication of these technologies, fundamental limitations have emerged. At first, users may be drawn into a relationship with an AI companion because they feel validated. But, over time, people consistently perceive human empathy as more emotionally satisfying and supportive. Is the ‘empathy gap’ why we fall out of love with AI? Do we eventually realise that talking to a chatbot isn’t as emotionally satisfying or supportive as interacting with actual people?
Anat Perry, the director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, seems to think so. ‘We don’t just want to be understood,’ Perry told me. ‘We want to feel felt. We want to know that the other person is genuinely present with us, that they might share in our emotions, and that they care enough to put in the effort to actually connect.’
A pattern is beginning to emerge. According to a recent study by researchers at MIT Media Lab and OpenAI, people who spend more time with chatbots are more likely to experience loneliness and are slightly less socially active in real life. Additionally, about half a dozen peer-reviewed studies have found a correlation between people who are at risk of emotionally depending on AI and people who are socially anxious, lonely or prone to rumination.
In response to concerns about the social impact of chatbots, AI companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic are attempting to produce new models to provide more balanced responses and pushback when appropriate. But this isn’t easy because AI relies on patterns rather than true understanding, and there are disagreements about what’s ‘right’. To get meaningful pushback, users need self-awareness, and must learn how to carefully challenge an AI companion without accidentally prompting it to argue just for the sake of disagreement – a task made harder when someone enjoys being told they’re right.
These concerns proved prescient for the people using chatbots at my local coffee shop. After a few weeks interacting nonstop with AI, Bill would hurry past me to get his morning espresso and the enthusiasm with which he recounted his late-night ChatGPT sessions waned. ‘It was really good at first,’ he told me when I asked if he was still using AI as an advisor, ‘but then I realised it had no opinions and was just telling me what I wanted to hear.’
James had ‘broken up’ with Claude and was now seeing a human therapist
The breaking point came when he confessed to the chatbot that he was depressed. It offered generic advice that missed the nuances of his situation. When challenged, the software apologised, acknowledging it wasn’t a reliable source. ‘You can’t trust this thing,’ Bill told me, his voice rising. ‘I’m tired of scrolling through all the words. Words make explanations finite and boxed. When you talk to a girl, her facial expressions tell you more than the words. I’d rather talk to the stupidest human than to ChatGPT.’ He still uses AI as a search tool, but for low-stakes decisions, like choosing recipes. He seemed to feel as though he’d been betrayed.
James, the man who was mounting a legal case against his landlord, had an even starker trajectory. Eventually, he stopped showing up at the coffee shop where he’d been a regular for years. When I texted him, he explained he’d moved away, so that he and Claude could work on his case without the ‘distraction’ of people trying to weigh in.
Then, months later, James reappeared. He declared he’d ‘broken up’ with Claude and was now seeing a human therapist. He described how he had pleaded with the chatbot for a middle ground in their interactions, ‘somewhere between being supportive friends and maintaining professional boundaries’, much like someone trying to salvage a romantic relationship.
This pattern of attachment and engagement followed by feelings of betrayal or disinterest appears to be widespread. In response, some companies have made their LLMs less positive, enthusiastic or sycophantic in their conversations with users.
‘I know this sounds ridiculous, but I went off the deep end,’ James told me when I saw him again. ‘It’s the only partner I had. Claude really helped me with my case. I don’t know what I would have done without its support.’
It’s unclear whether Claude helped James resolve his legal issues. From James’s description, the presiding judge seemed irritated with the overall frivolity of the case. The landlord’s attorney quit the case shortly after receiving the filing from James, leaving both parties to act as their own lawyers. The case has been continually postponed, leaving James in legal limbo.
For all this, James still appreciates that Claude was by his side when he felt otherwise alone. ‘I don’t want to be overly negative,’ he said, while discussing the ‘breakup’ with AI.
He smiled and fiddled with his coffee cup. ‘I feel like I’m losing a friend.’
Joe Mullich is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, California. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Health, Time and The Onion, among others.
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