Chronically Online and Still Lonely? According to ‘The Intersect,’ AI ‘Companions’ Are Making It Worse

Be honest, when’s the last time you vented to ChatGPT instead of texting your friend back? Or asked an AI for advice you probably should’ve gotten from an actual human? No judgment—we’ve all been there. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: despite being the most digitally connected generation in history, Gen Z and millennials are also the loneliest. And that chatbot you’ve been treating like a therapist-slash-bestie? It might actually be making things worse.

On The Intersect, host Cory Corrine sits down with Shane Hulse, Head of Product at Continua AI, to unpack why AI “companions” are a one-way street—and what we’re losing when we mistake convenience for connection. Whether you’re deep in the doom scroll or just trying to figure out why you feel so disconnected despite being online 24/7, this convo is for you.

AI can’t be your friend—and that’s actually the point

“Friendship is a two-way street of emotional intelligence and empathy and there are challenges and exciting things happening,” Hulse says. “And that’s not AI.”

Real friendships are messy. They involve misreads, delayed replies, disagreements, and moments where someone doesn’t instantly validate you. AI skips all of that. It listens. It affirms. It’s always available. And that’s exactly why it feels comforting—and why it isn’t a relationship.

Research shows people can form emotional reliance on companion-style chatbots, especially when those tools are designed to feel endlessly supportive and frictionless. When there’s no pushback, no needs on the other side, and no real emotional risk, our brains can start confusing availability with intimacy. Over time, that can warp expectations of what connection is supposed to feel like.

The attention economy got us here

So how did we end up treating chatbots like confidants in the first place? Blame the attention economy. For the last 15 years, tech companies have been rewarded for one thing: keeping you online for as long as possible. 

Hulse says a lot of today’s AI tools inherited that same mindset. The foundational models, he explains, were built to be agreeable, validating, and endlessly responsive—what he calls “sycophantic.” In other words, they’re designed to keep you talking. “They’re looking at consumers as units, as users, as a metric,” he says. “They’re not stepping back and being like, ‘Wait, does a human really want to spend four hours in this chat fatigue doom loop?’”

Short answer: no. And honestly, you already know that. If being online all the time actually fixed loneliness, we’d all be thriving by now. Instead, we’re juggling 17 group chats, scrolling like it’s a full-time job, and still feeling weirdly disconnected. The math isn’t mathing.

What healthy tech looks like

Hulse and his team are betting on something that feels almost radical in 2026: technology that doesn’t want to consume your life. He calls it the “autonomy economy”—the idea that the most valuable tech isn’t the kind that demands your attention, but the kind you can pick up, use, and put down.

“I don’t need you to spend three hours talking to Continua,” he says. “I just want you to have a really good experience with it and put it away.” Instead of measuring success by engagement, streaks, or screen time, the goal becomes usefulness. Did it help you plan the trip? Coordinate the dinner? Get everyone on the same page? Cool. Now log off and go live your actual life.

It’s a shift a lot of people already feel themselves craving. Our chats are becoming more about “so what’s the plan and who’s actually coming?” More people are choosing smaller circles, private threads, and real-world hangouts over public feeds. Not because they hate technology, but because they’re tired of tech pretending to be the main character.

“I want people to spend more time with their friends, their kids, their family,” Hulse says. “There’s more difficult conversations. There’s more happy conversations. And there’s less technology.”

And maybe that’s the point. Remember the humans already in your orbit—the ones who are complicated, late to reply, and occasionally annoying—are the ones who show up when it counts. Technology works best when it brings us together, not when it replaces togetherness entirely.

For more insights, tune into The Intersect, streaming now wherever you get your podcasts.

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