Excessive and Impairing Time Investment

Description

AI use interferes with sleep, hygiene, work, school, parenting, social life, or basic responsibilities.

Rationale

Behavioral interference — lost sleep, skipped work, neglected parenting — is the most concrete evidence that AI use has crossed from choice into compulsion. Functional impairment is a threshold concept in most behavioral frameworks because it marks the point where internal state becomes observable harm.

Evidence Base

• The Dawn of the AI Era: Teens, Parents, and the Adoption of Generative AI at Home and School

  Madden, M., Calvin, A., Hasse, A., & Lenhart, A. (2024). The dawn of the AI era: Teens, parents, and the adoption of generative AI at home and school. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.

  Government / agency report

• Building safer artificial intelligence mental health chatbots: a framework for transparency, evaluation, and shared accountability

  Hannah Lee, BS, Rebecca Handler, MSc, Tushar Mungle, PhD, Tina Hernandez-Boussard, PhD, 2026. Building safer artificial intelligence mental health chatbots: a framework for transparency, evaluation, and shared accountability. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 33(8), 1538–1553. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocag078

  Peer-reviewed study (original research)

• A scoping review on the mental health harms of LLM-based chatbots

  Diel A, Torous J, Cuijpers P, Kleesiek J, Nensa F, Weber N, Faust F, Lalgi TJ, Mellis FS, Teufel M, Bäuerle A, 2024. A scoping review on the mental health harms of LLM-based chatbots. npj Digital Medicine, 9(644). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-03054-x

  Peer-reviewed study (original research)

• Patients are bringing AI to therapy Highlights from the 2026 Chatbots and Mental Health Survey

  https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/chatbots-mental-health-2026

  Narrative review

• Intelligent Systems, Vulnerable Minds: A Framework for Radicalization to Violence in the Age of AI

  Kunst et al., 2026. Intelligent Systems, Vulnerable Minds: A Framework for Radicalization to Violence in the Age of AI. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 30(3), 395-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683261430089

  Peer-reviewed study (original research)

• Inside a Mass Shooter’s Harrowing History With ChatGPT

  Mark Follman, 2024. Inside a Mass Shooter’s Harrowing History With ChatGPT. Mother Jones.

  News / journalism

• It Is the Journey, Not the Destination: Moving From End Points to Trajectories When Assessing Chatbot Mental Health Safety

  Morrin H, Au Yeung J, Agnew Z, Østergaard SD, Pollak TA, 2024. It Is the Journey, Not the Destination: Moving From End Points to Trajectories When Assessing Chatbot Mental Health Safety. JMIR Ment Health, 13(e91454). https://doi.org/10.2196/91454

  Commentary / Editorial

• Use of generative AI chatbots and wellness applications for mental health: An APA health advisory

  American Psychological Association, 2024. Use of generative AI chatbots and wellness applications for mental health: An APA health advisory. American Psychological Association.

  Government / agency report

• 2026 | THE COMMON SENSE MEDIA CENSUS AI Use by Tweens and Teens

  The Common Sense Media Census: AI Use by Tweens and Teens, 2026 https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/2026-ai-use-by-tweens-and-teens-1.pdf

  Government / agency report

• “You Need to Drop the App”: Online Community Responses to Teens’ Disclosures of Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots

  Mohammad (Matt) Namvarpour, Ananya Mhetras, Jessica Y Medina, Mamtaj Akter, and Afsaneh Razi, 2026. “You Need to Drop the App”: Online Community Responses to Teens’ Disclosures of Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots. In ACM Conversational User Interfaces 2026 (CUI ’26), July 21–24, 2026, Bremen, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 16 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3816046.3816214

  Peer-reviewed study (original research)