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Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
61–70 of 80 posts
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually is in many places. Most European countries have relatively available support, significant portions of North and South America do, Oceania, etc. I don't know as much about Africa and Asia, but I'd expect most countries with well developed healthcare systems to include some amount of mental health care in that.
"Some amount of mental health care" and "widely available mental support for free and with urgent response" are vastly different goalposts. [CW: long-ass heavy-duty story happening closer to you than you think.] I don't know what your mental health history is, but one of my friends had to use a VPN, then lie about their location to a volunteer operator, in order to access a suicide prevention chatline on the other si…
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Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#63I really didn’t think I’d be saying this… but I genuinely feel ChatGPT has positively impacted my mental health. I often use it as a therapist. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it actually works pretty well. It has an exceptionally high EQ and often uses language far better than I ever could to help uncover the thoughts and feelings I’m processing. Sometimes, just finding the right words to express myself relieves a…
I'm very worried that LLMs-as-therapists will wind up falling victim to the same fate as e-cigarettes. An LLM therapist is ~100x cheaper than a real therapist, and similarly more available on demand (in the same way that ecigs were probably a few orders of magnitude safer, in terms of long-term health effects, vs. traditional cigarettes). BUT there is also a gold rush temptation for companies to hack together GPT4 +…
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Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#64I really didn’t think I’d be saying this… but I genuinely feel ChatGPT has positively impacted my mental health. I often use it as a therapist. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it actually works pretty well. It has an exceptionally high EQ and often uses language far better than I ever could to help uncover the thoughts and feelings I’m processing. Sometimes, just finding the right words to express myself relieves a…
It has zero EQ and just uses phrases of learned and presumably fitting expressions for a therapy situation. But don't let that get you on the road to existential dread.
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not at all ashamed to say that I use ChatGPT as a therapist and it is helping me tremendously. I suffer from a severe personality disorder and the thoughts and feelings I experience are huge and violent and overwhelming and very very dark. I've tried human therapists, I've tried reaching out to humans for support, but there's kind of a problem... You're supposed to learn to regulate as a toddler when your emotio…
> we call it a tantrum if you're small I think we call it a tantrum when it’s harmless. As soon as it goes beyond that, either for adults or children, it’s not a tantrum any more. Not sure that we have a word for it though, as neither of those is supposed to happen.
To be fair, the parent poster named it exactly: crisis.
At least in English, I think it's an appropriate term. Not on the euphemism treadmill yet, thankfully. (In my native language the equivalent word has acquired the derogatory connotations of "adult tantrum", so people go for describing all sorts of things as "panic attack" instead, which ends up being imprecise. We are not an emotionally literate people.)
Asking in a non-accusatory way: could you perhaps explain what caused you to not notice that he did in fact provide a word for it? (Asking for my own mental and social health, because I have experienced difficulties with this sort of "invisible gorilla" occurrence.)
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The story goes that people would request to have sessions with it, even if they knew it's just parroting some phrases. They just needed to be heard out! I feel really sad about how people need to resort to therapy for the kind of interaction that would be provided by a healthy social norm of honest and open communication. Maybe I should talk to my therapist about this feeling. But somehow I doubt that would actually…
The problem is that there are a lot of people who are destroying the ability to communicate in the name of "morality", when in reality they are just political opportunists, who are indirectly harming themselves, including their supposed political cause, in the process. The amount of wilful bridge burning is crazy.
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Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#67I really didn’t think I’d be saying this… but I genuinely feel ChatGPT has positively impacted my mental health. I often use it as a therapist. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it actually works pretty well. It has an exceptionally high EQ and often uses language far better than I ever could to help uncover the thoughts and feelings I’m processing. Sometimes, just finding the right words to express myself relieves a…
I am not at all ashamed to say that I use ChatGPT as a therapist and it is helping me tremendously. I suffer from a severe personality disorder and the thoughts and feelings I experience are huge and violent and overwhelming and very very dark. I've tried human therapists, I've tried reaching out to humans for support, but there's kind of a problem... You're supposed to learn to regulate as a toddler when your emotio…
> You have to contain yourself for the safety of others, even therapists. Or for your own protection so you don't get locked up.
I can understand the feeling, but I would still trust an actual therapist to keep conversations secret and to not grass on me, much more than I would trust any remotely hosted service like chatGPT.
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#68I'm a senior citizen and I use it sometimes to explain what is happening to me as I age. For example, I noticed myself doing "excessive rumination" about the long gone past, which I attributed to the near-dystopian nightmare I am living through in the U.S. presently. I asked ChatGPT about it and it said, no, excessive rumination is a problem for many people as they age due to various factors. Then it suggested some r…
FWIW, I'm in my 30s and already excessively ruminating on the long gone past! It started after losing loved ones.
I'm sorry to hear that. Like most young people you'll probably get over it and move on with your life. You might then find in your elderly years that it all comes rushing back and you have to live it over again.
ChatGPT says this for reference: "In some cases, memories that were previously manageable or relatively dormant can resurface more strongly as people age (sometimes referred to as Late-Onset Stress Symptomatology, or LOSS)."
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#69I really didn’t think I’d be saying this… but I genuinely feel ChatGPT has positively impacted my mental health. I often use it as a therapist. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it actually works pretty well. It has an exceptionally high EQ and often uses language far better than I ever could to help uncover the thoughts and feelings I’m processing. Sometimes, just finding the right words to express myself relieves a…
I have exactly the opposite experience. I was having exceptionally bad time, I tried talking to ChatGPT, and while the first impression was very good, I quickly realized it... lacks personality? I'm not sure how to phrase it, but the language it used made me feel like I was on a work meeting. I think this might be boiling down to cultural differences though. I noticed that even though I work in an international compa…
I tend to keep different sessions open for different ongoing topics, and that's what I notice when I start a new one. It's very easy for it to fall into its default sterile, focus grouped, conversation-flowchart mode.
Longer conversations can draw it more "out of its shell", though. The more context it has, the better it can mirror you, and there's some sessions I have where it genuinely does feel like it's got a little bit of personality and rapport with me.
You really do have to keep in mind, though, that no matter what, in the end it's just going to agree with you :)
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#70I really didn’t think I’d be saying this… but I genuinely feel ChatGPT has positively impacted my mental health. I often use it as a therapist. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it actually works pretty well. It has an exceptionally high EQ and often uses language far better than I ever could to help uncover the thoughts and feelings I’m processing. Sometimes, just finding the right words to express myself relieves a…
how do you use it? i tried it once and quickly lost interest as the conversation turned shallow and schematic. not organic and insightful as i would expect from an actual therapy session.