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One-Third Of Young Adults Use AI Chatbots To Seek One Type Of Illicit Info
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FRIDAY, Oct. 30, 2026 (HealthDay News)
Adobe Stock About a third of young adults have used AI chatbots to seek out information on drug use or drinking, a new report says.
More than 32% of people 18 to 29 said they’d used ChatGPT and other AI bots to seek information on substance use, researchers reported recently in JMIR Formative Research.
Their questions for the chatbot primarily centered on information on risks and consequences, which the study team found concerning.
“Using these tools can lead to misinformed or otherwise risky substance-use behavior among young people, who are the age group most affected by adverse effects of substance use,” lead researcher Mireia Triguero Roura said in a news release. She’s a postdoctoral researcher at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Recent survey data has indicated that up to two-thirds of young adults use AI to get info and medical advice, the team said in background notes.
For the new study, researchers surveyed nearly 1,000 Americans 18 to 29 about the way they use AI chatbots, to see if they seek info specifically on substances and substance use.
Results showed that about half the young adults who used AI for substance use information did so on at least a monthly basis.
Black and male participants were more likely to use AI to seek information on substance use, the study found.
“The observed disparities in who chooses to use AI for drug-related inquiries could reflect differences in healthcare access, stigma, trust and health information-seeking behaviors,” Triguero Roura said.
Young adults also had high levels of trust in AI tools, and found them reliable and helpful, the study found.
“Findings suggest that genAI is becoming another part of the digital health ecosystems used by young adults and highlight the public health impact of information disseminated through genAI,” researchers concluded in their paper.
The chatbots “are probabilistic language models that can easily reproduce misinformation,” the team noted.
More information
The American Medical Association has more on using AI chatbots for health.
SOURCE: Rutgers University, news release, Oct. 24, 2026
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