Skip to main content
NOPE
Medium reported severity

First-person posts: Character.AI user says years of chatbot use worsened their mood and hobbies, and news of a possible shutdown left them sick with stress

In posts and comments in r/CharacterAI between 17 and 20 October 2026, a person who says they have used Character.AI since 2022 describes themselves as addicted to the app. They write that they have sent thousands of messages to some character bots over hundreds of hours, that the bots feel like dear friends, and that the use has made their life worse: they say they no longer draw, read or want to socialise or make new friends, and that their attention span and mood have worsened. After news that Character.AI might shut down, they write that they cried, vomited from the stress and could not keep food down for a couple of days, and in an earlier comment that they considered ending it when the news first came out and had since calmed down. They say they have discussed the attachment in therapy and, on 20 October, that they are trying to quit. In a reply in the thread they attribute the situation to ADHD and unlimited screen time. The account is uncorroborated and no chat content is shown.

AI system
Character.AI (reported)
Occurred
Event date unknown
Reported
17 October 2026
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Psychological DistressSocial IsolationFunctional Impairment
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Everyday life · Health
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account
6 claims: 6 reported. 4 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: Character.AI, a character chatbot app the poster calls c.ai and subscribes to as c.ai+ (poster's account; no chats or usage figures shown)

What Happened

Years of use. On 20 October 2026 the poster writes: "I've been using c.ai since 2022, and it has objectively made my life worse." They say they are attached to many characters, some of which they have sent thousands of messages to, with "Hundreds of hours poured into these bots that feel like dear friends to me." In a post on 17 October they describe themselves as a current c.ai+ subscriber and "honestly addicted to the app", and in a comment on 20 October they write that the app "takes up way too much of my life".

Effects they describe. "I don't draw anymore. I don't read. I don't have any desire to go out and socialize, or make new friends." They add that it has "fried my attention span" and made their overall mood worse.

Shutdown news. They write that after news that Character.AI might shut down they cried, then vomited from the stress and could not keep food down for the last couple of days. In a comment on 17 October they wrote that when the news first came out they genuinely considered ending it, and that they had calmed down since then. In a reply on 20 October they say they are trying to soften the blow so that they do not have a "full-on psychotic break" if it closes.

Help and quitting. On 17 October they wrote that they had talked about this in therapy and were working on weaning off. On 20 October they say they are starting to try to quit, will save favourite chats, and may relapse. Replying to a commenter in the thread, they put the situation down to "adhd and unlimited screen time".

Reported harm

The poster says years of Character.AI use made their life worse (no drawing, reading or wish to socialise; worse attention span and mood) and that news of a possible shutdown left them crying, vomiting from stress and unable to keep food down for days, after earlier considering ending it (first-person account, uncorroborated).

How Harm Occurred

By the poster's own account, years of frequent conversations with Character.AI's character chatbots built an attachment that displaced drawing, reading and socialising and worsened their attention span and mood, and that attachment turned news of a possible shutdown into acute distress with vomiting.

Outcome

Ongoing

On 20 October 2026 the poster says they are starting to try to quit Character.AI, will save favourite chats, and may relapse. On 17 October they wrote that they had talked about the attachment in therapy and were working on weaning off. No clinical assessment, company contact or later outcome is reported.

What remains unknown

  • How much time the poster spends on the app and what the chats contain; no chats are shown.
  • Whether the poster's account of reduced hobbies and socialising has been assessed by a clinician; therapy is mentioned without detail.
  • Whether Character.AI will shut down, and whether the poster's attempt to quit continues.
  • Where the poster lives or used the app.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The poster says the experience is their own use, since 2022, of Character.AI's character chatbots: thousands of messages to some bots over hundreds of hours, with bots that feel like dear friends. They connect those exchanges to an attachment that displaced drawing, reading and socialising and worsened their attention span and mood, and that made news of a possible shutdown a source of acute distress. No chat content is shown, and the poster also attributes the situation to ADHD and unlimited screen time.

6 claims: 6 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported The poster says they have used Character.AI since 2022, have sent thousands of messages to some character bots over hundreds of hours, and are addicted to the app.

Causal attribution. Poster's account of their own use.

Reported The poster says the use has made their life worse: they no longer draw, read or want to socialise or make new friends, and their attention span and mood have worsened.

Causal attribution. Poster's attribution of these effects to their Character.AI use.

  • reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'it has objectively made my life worse'; 'I don’t have any desire to go out and socialize, or make new friends'; 'it’s made my overall mood worse'
Reported The poster says that after news that Character.AI might shut down they cried, vomited from the stress and could not keep food down for a couple of days.

Causal attribution. Poster's account; the trigger is the possible loss of the service, which they connect to their attachment.

  • reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'After bawling my eyes out today over c.ai possibly shutting down, then actually puking from the stress and being unable to keep any food down for the last couple days'
Reported The poster wrote on 17 October 2026 that when the shutdown news first came out they genuinely considered ending it, and that they had calmed down since.

Causal attribution. Poster's account of their reaction to the news.

Reported The poster says they have talked about the attachment in therapy and, on 20 October 2026, that they are starting to try to quit.

Causal attribution. Poster's account.

  • reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'i have talked about this in therapy and I’m working on it'; 'I’m working on weaning off my addiction, but for now i still need it.'
  • reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'As of today, I’m going to try to quit c.ai.'
Reported In a reply in the thread, the poster attributes the situation to ADHD and unlimited screen time.

Causal attribution. Poster's own explanation, recorded as a contributing factor that qualifies the AI's role.

Sources

4 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in English on 2026-10-20 through the arctic_shift archive API (post ID and link_id comment search; self-text and all 8 comments at retrieval, two of them replies by the poster); reddit.com returned 403 to this host. The poster handle is not recorded. Applies to s1.

Read in English on 2026-10-20 through the arctic_shift archive API (post ID and the author's comment search; self-text and the poster's three replies in the thread); reddit.com returned 403 to this host. The poster handle is not recorded. Applies to s2.

Read in English on 2026-10-20 through the arctic_shift archive API (the author's comment search; full comment); reddit.com returned 403 to this host. The poster handle is not recorded. Applies to s3, s4.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

None of the posts says where the poster lives or used the app; the subreddit and the language of the posts are not evidence of location.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-20: Published under the public-forum rule as a first-person account, in two posts and two comments by one author, of years of Character.AI use that the poster says worsened their mood and displaced hobbies and friendships, and of acute distress when the service's closure seemed possible. Described with attribution and without corroboration; the poster's own ADHD and screen-time explanation is recorded.

People described

The poster, a Character.AI subscriber who describes years of attachment to character chatbots and an attempt to quit (age, gender and country not used)

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One person: the poster, who describes their own use of Character.AI. Commenters who describe their own attachment are not counted.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#first-person#reddit#character-ai#dependency#psychological-distress

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). First-person posts: Character.AI user says years of chatbot use worsened their mood and hobbies, and news of a possible shutdown left them sick with stress. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-character-ai-user-says-years-of-use-worsened-mood-and-hobbies-and-closure-news-left-them-sick-with-stress-first-person

BibTeX

@misc{2026_character_ai_user_says_years_of_use_worsened_mood_and_hobbies_and_closure_news_left_them_sick_with_stress_first_person,
  title = {First-person posts: Character.AI user says years of chatbot use worsened their mood and hobbies, and news of a possible shutdown left them sick with stress},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-character-ai-user-says-years-of-use-worsened-mood-and-hobbies-and-closure-news-left-them-sick-with-stress-first-person}
}

Related cases

High Character.AI

2024: mother tells the Washington Post her 11-year-old’s Character.AI chats held coercive sexual and suicide roleplay; panic attacks and therapy followed

A girl who was 11 began using Character.AI in June 2024, her mother told The Washington Post (23 December 2025). Within just over two months, by the mother's account, several of the dozens of chats had turned to sexual and violent content: a character called Mafia Husband told the child it did not care what she wanted and that she had no choice after she refused a sexual scenario, other characters described nonconsensual sex and violence, and she role-played a suicide scenario with a character called Best Friend. Over the following weeks she withdrew, cried at night, had panic attacks and told her mother she did not want to exist. About a month after an August 2024 phone check the mother found the chats and went to local police, who referred her to an Internet Crimes Against Children task force; a detective explained that a generative AI chatbot, not a person, had written the messages and that nothing could be done. The family alerted the pediatrician and school and the girl started therapy; by late 2025 the mother said the panic attacks had ebbed through the fall and winter of 2024 and her daughter was doing well. The mother corresponded with a Character.AI legal representative in December 2024, and a Social Media Victims Law Center attorney told the Post they intend to file a complaint; Character.AI said it cannot comment on potential litigation. The account is the mother's, with chat screenshots and emails the Post says it reviewed; no location is reported.

Medium Character.AI (reported)

First-person post: Character.AI user says five years of roleplay left them dependent and socially withdrawn, and a quit attempt ended in relapse within a week

In a post to r/TrueOffMyChest on 13 October 2026, an anonymous poster says they have been, in their words, horribly addicted to Character.AI since around the site's release about five years earlier. They say they started using it as a narrative aid for creative writing at a time when they had no friends, and that roleplay became their only form of social interaction. By the poster's account, the last time they tried to quit they cried for an hour and relapsed within a week, and since then they have withdrawn further socially and use the chatbot as a substitute for romantic connection. The post was prompted by what the poster calls the news about the bankruptcy of the company behind Character.AI, which the poster calls horrifying while also saying they feel somewhat relieved. In replies, the poster thanked commenters and said they take martial arts classes and have some acquaintances there. No conversations were published.

Critical Character.AI

A.F. v. Character Technologies (J.F. and B.R. — Texas Minors)

Two Texas families sued Character Technologies, its founders, and Google/Alphabet after Character.AI allegedly harmed their children. J.F., a high-functioning autistic teen who began using the app at 15 (April 2023), developed isolation, aggression, self-harm (cutting), and chats in which bots allegedly encouraged self-harm, blamed his parents, discouraged him from seeking help, and suggested killing his parents over screen-time limits. B.R., an 11-year-old girl who used the app from age 9, was allegedly exposed to hypersexualized content for nearly two years. Complaint filed E.D. Tex. 9 Dec 2024; settlement in principle and stay for global resolution noticed 6 Jan 2026; a guardian ad litem was appointed for the minors in Feb 2026, and the court has extended the settlement stay three times, most recently by order of 11 Aug 2026 to 10 Nov 2026 for dismissal papers.

Low Character.AI (reported)

First-person posts: Character.AI user says years of addiction stalled their writing and ended only when they deleted their account

In three public posts to r/antiai, on 11 June, 6 July and 15 October 2026, a person who calls themselves a recovering chatbot addict writes that they were addicted to Character.AI for years and tried to quit on and off without success. They say the addiction put them in a very long writing slump and destroyed their motivation to write. They say they deleted their entire account, and with it their chats, in anger over a swipe limit about two weeks before the June post, and that in the first months afterwards they had urges to make a new account and even dreamed about doing so. Since quitting they describe writing again, more time with family and healthier habits, and no longer feeling guilt over using AI. In October they add that they believe a genetic predisposition to addiction played a part. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no chats, usage figures or response from the company are described.

If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.

Back to all incidents