A recent study has found that social chatbots are effective in alleviating feelings of loneliness and social anxiety in young people. The Korean study specifically looked at the added value of social, AI-powered, robots for students struggling with loneliness and social anxiety. A well-known social chatbot ‘Iruda 2.0’ was used for the study.
The team of researchers managed to recruit 176 participants. They ‘talked’ to the social chatbot more than three times a week over a four-week period. From those conversations, standardised survey instruments were used to assess the participants' levels of loneliness and social anxiety. The study was conducted by Professor Dooyoung Jung and his team from the Graduate School of Health Science and Technology at UNIST, in collaboration with Professor Chul-Hyun Cho from the Department of Psychiatry at Korea University Anam Hospital.
Analyse and compare data
Data collected before and after the intervention were compared and analysed. In addition, small-scale interviews were conducted to gain an in-depth understanding of participants' experiences. The study aimed to evaluate how interactions with the chatbot contributed to improving individuals' emotional stability and social connections.
Results indicated that regular interactions with social chatbots reduced loneliness scores by an average of 15 per cent and alleviated social anxiety scores by an average of 18 per cent. Chatbot effectiveness in reducing loneliness was further enhanced when users provided detailed information about their feelings, thoughts and experiences, or when users showed higher resilience. The findings also suggest that chatbots can provide greater emotional management benefits to individuals who have difficulty with face-to-face interactions.
Added value of social chatbots
The researchers, whose results were published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, argue that their findings provide evidence that social chatbots can serve as effective digital tools for alleviating loneliness and anxiety.
‘This study is important because it empirically demonstrates that chatbots can provide more emotional support than technical devices alone, and that factors related to interpersonal relationships influence these effects,’ said Myungsung Kim, first author of the study and PhD candidate at the UNIST Graduate School of Health Science and Technology. ‘If used safely, social chatbots may be valuable for the prevention of mental health problems, especially in settings where professional resources are limited,’ Professor Jung added.
Follow-up studies
The research team plans further studies to improve the usability of chatbots and enhance personalised services in the future, while also exploring the potential limitations and biases of using social chatbots as a mental health intervention.
That social chatbots have value for healthcare is not new. Late last year, we reported on a programme for people wanting to quit smoking in which participants are supported, and motivated, by a virtual chatbot coach. Another example, from earlier that year, is chatbot Verne, which is available 24/7 to help patients undergoing treatment with a physiotherapist with exercise symptoms.
These are just two examples. However, there is also much work to be done. For example, a US survey in summer 2024 found that half of that country's citizens still have little or no confidence in the quality and accuracy of information they receive from chatbots. Those concerns were confirmed a few months later by a UK study that concluded that chatbots gave incorrect, or incomplete, answers to many questions about medication.
