That article doesn't actually link to the supposed study. I am going to ignore it, since I have no way of checking its methodology.
Unless my adblocker is just blocking the link, but my adblocker is also blocking so many requests from that website that the blocked count climbs to over 12k within seconds, so I'm not gonna turn that off to check.
Many people now rely on chatting with AI to relieve stress, which is a convenient way, but it also carries some risks, as people become increasingly closed off.
1 in 4, 25% , which is probably what could be expected from anything, anywhere, that has been hyped as hard and for so long as IA.
or to put it another way, it has been some time now since the "law of supply and demand" was broken and abolished and replaced with the fact of money having the power to supply more demand, for essentialy anything under almost any condition, at least initialy.
This is going to be framed in the usual "weird Japan" way but it's not at all limited to Japan. I don't know if similar studies have been conducted in the US or other other countries (and, as another comment note, the supposed study on which this is based isn't linked in this article), but phenomenon like r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and countless stories about people all around the world becoming entranced by "relationships" with AIs indicate this is not at all unique to Japan. I suspect a sadly large number of people everywhere feel this way, they just want someTHING to talk to if they can't/don't have someONE.
This is sad but not remotely shocking. Japan overall is a very lonely society based around distractions, whether that's the bright lights, work, pachinko, mobile games, whatever it may be. So many already replace friends with pretend people such as anime characters. The commoness of people who have huge pillows representing their favourite character that for them is a bedtime friend, that they talk to is far too common.
This isn't made easier for those who do have family and friends. They have minimal physical connections day to day due to societal rules that are arbitrarily restrictive and based in long should have been abandoned historical expectations.
Have you been to the local festivals where everyone knows everyone's names? Have you been to riverside bbq parties where multiple families hangout all day together? Have you been a part of company or community clubs? Have you observed how an overwhelming number of people have multiple-times-per-year gatherings with the university friends, middle-school friends and even kindergarten friends? For decades.
I have. And I feel not-the-least lonely, and I owe it to the above in Japan. Not the "decades-long-friendships" because I moved here as an adult. I can't compare it to anywhere else, because I haven't lived anywhere else for this long... but that's a sweeping generalization that about Japan.
That article doesn't actually link to the supposed study. I am going to ignore it, since I have no way of checking its methodology.
Unless my adblocker is just blocking the link, but my adblocker is also blocking so many requests from that website that the blocked count climbs to over 12k within seconds, so I'm not gonna turn that off to check.
The article cites Jiji Press, which eventually led me here:
https://jen.jiji.com/jc/i?g=eco&k=2026080100365
https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2026080100365
Looks like it's a newspaper reader poll or similar. I don't think this would count as a study.
Many people now rely on chatting with AI to relieve stress, which is a convenient way, but it also carries some risks, as people become increasingly closed off.
It's by design. Now we are all gig workers, solo everything. You can't have power if everybody works in isolation.
1 in 4, 25% , which is probably what could be expected from anything, anywhere, that has been hyped as hard and for so long as IA. or to put it another way, it has been some time now since the "law of supply and demand" was broken and abolished and replaced with the fact of money having the power to supply more demand, for essentialy anything under almost any condition, at least initialy.
This is going to be framed in the usual "weird Japan" way but it's not at all limited to Japan. I don't know if similar studies have been conducted in the US or other other countries (and, as another comment note, the supposed study on which this is based isn't linked in this article), but phenomenon like r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and countless stories about people all around the world becoming entranced by "relationships" with AIs indicate this is not at all unique to Japan. I suspect a sadly large number of people everywhere feel this way, they just want someTHING to talk to if they can't/don't have someONE.
They were already replacing relationships with relationship-workers, and in more minority, robots.
This is a natural evolution of the trend.
This is sad but not remotely shocking. Japan overall is a very lonely society based around distractions, whether that's the bright lights, work, pachinko, mobile games, whatever it may be. So many already replace friends with pretend people such as anime characters. The commoness of people who have huge pillows representing their favourite character that for them is a bedtime friend, that they talk to is far too common.
This isn't made easier for those who do have family and friends. They have minimal physical connections day to day due to societal rules that are arbitrarily restrictive and based in long should have been abandoned historical expectations.
>Japan overall is a very lonely society
Have you been to the local festivals where everyone knows everyone's names? Have you been to riverside bbq parties where multiple families hangout all day together? Have you been a part of company or community clubs? Have you observed how an overwhelming number of people have multiple-times-per-year gatherings with the university friends, middle-school friends and even kindergarten friends? For decades.
I have. And I feel not-the-least lonely, and I owe it to the above in Japan. Not the "decades-long-friendships" because I moved here as an adult. I can't compare it to anywhere else, because I haven't lived anywhere else for this long... but that's a sweeping generalization that about Japan.